David Lowery to speak at Copyright and Technology Conference 2012 NYC Dec 5th.

Please join me.  Judging by last weeks fireworks it should be fun! We have a Trichordist friends and family discount code.

Code: 100GBRJYH  Get’s you in and registered for $100!

From the website:

This special day-long event will examine the latest developments and technologies in the fields of copyright and content security.The nation’s leading experts in the fields will join GiantSteps Media Technologies, publisher of the Copyright and Technology Blog, and Gotham Media for a special program.

This conference is fully accredited for 4.5 CLE Credits by the NYS CLE Board. Financial assistance will be available and discounted rates will be available for government and non-profit attorneys.

Registration: $399 Before November 1; $450 After November 1

http://www.gothammediaventures.com/commerce/orderform.php?id=113

by Dr. David C Lowery

Lars Was First And Lars Was Right

Charlie Rose featured guests Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Chuck D from Public Enemy in 2000 to discuss Napster, the internet and the future of the music industry. In stunning clarity, Lars saw the grim future that would disenfranchise millions of artists, musicians, photographers, authors, writers and other creators who would have their living illegally appropriated by internet robber barons.

“if the record labels are not making the money, than the internet companies will be, and if they are not paying the artists, they are profiting illegally.” -Lars Ulrich

Nearly thirteen years later every statement Lars made in this interview has come to pass as truth. The new gatekeepers of the internet profit from the illegal distribution of  artists’ work while paying the artists nothing, nadda, zero, zip.

Meanwhile Chuck D’s prediction definitely did not come true:

“I think there’s going to be more music sold than ever,” – Chuck D May 2000 Washington DC

But Lars is still treated like a pariah.  Especially by those in the tech blogosphere who were wrong then and continue to be wrong now!

CNN: Music’s lost decade: Sales cut in half

And despite the predictions of legions of corporate false prophets there has been no emergence of a new independent professional middle class of musicians. In fact, the complete opposite has happened, there are 45% less professional musicians (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) from 2002 – 2011.

Lars was right on the money, literally.

This was never about art, music or freedom.  It is simply a new set of even more ruthless artist-exploiting corporations taking over for the old ones. For example,  in the image below Jeep is advertising on one of the top known pirate sites 4Shared via Google’s Doubleclick ad network. Google alone is estimated to make almost $35 billion dollars annually,  95% of that revenue coming from it’s advertising sales. Google is not sharing ANY of this money with artists that it is exploiting. At least in the 1950’s music business you got a Cadillac every once in a while.

As Lars predicted The New Boss is Worse Than The Old Boss.

by Trichordist Editor

The Internet Radio Fairness Act’s Attack on Free Speech

In case you missed it: yesterday, the Future of Music Coalition held its annual summit, a full day’s worth of varied speakers and varied topics. The primary topic was the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) — Pandora’s Tim Westergren led off the summit with a “conversation panel” designed to drum up support for the bill. Senator Ron Wyden, sponsor of the Senate’s version of the bill, had the honor of keynoting the event, and his remarks centered around the legislation.

The Trichordist’s own David Lowery participated on a panel in between the two devoted to the bill. He was joined by General Counsel of the American Federation of Musicians Patricia Polach, SoundExchange General Counsel Colin Rushing, Consumer Electronics Association lobbyist Michael Petricone, and AccuRadio founder Kurt Hanson.

Lowery had earlier challenged Westergren on the free speech implications of Section 5 of IRFA. Westergren deflected: “I’m not going to get into a back and forth over legislative language.”

During the panel discussion, Lowery focused again on the chilling effect that Section 5 would pose to artists and artist organizations. The AFM’s Polach echoed his concerns.

When Senator Wyden took the podium, he attempted to address these concerns. With his voice raised, he conceded that “If the consensus in the legal community is that this restricts the First Amendment, it will be a very short-lived provision.” Techdirt’s Mike Masnick jumped to Wyden’s defense:

As we noted in our prior post, IRFA’s chilling effect on free speech is not a bizarre interpretation.

Satellite radio provider Sirius XM is currently suing SoundExchange and the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) primarily because of blog posts expressing their opinion on direct licenses pursued by Sirius. It is seeking monetary damages, a permanent injunction, the dissolution of SoundExchange, and the invalidation of all copyrights licensed by SoundExchange — copyrights involving over 70,000 performers — because these organizations representing artists engaged in speech that Sirius disagrees with.

These groups have explicitly raised the First Amendment in defense. As A2IM argues in its memorandum supporting its motion to dismiss, filed last June, “a trade association’s mere recitation of facts and its opinion on an issue or standard cannot constitute an antitrust violation.”

Instead, such a recitation is protected free speech. … Sirius pleads nothing more than just such protected expressions of A2IM opinion.

Artists and artist advocates should not need to run things by their lawyer whenever they want to communicate to other artists their thoughts and opinions on deals offered by Sirius, Clear Channel, or any other business that relies on their music.

We don’t have to wonder if there is a free speech concern with Section 5 of IRFA — there is. We don’t have to guess if corporations will sue artist organizations for speaking up — they already are.

Section 5 would only codify and set in stone this suppresion of dissent.

That IRFA’s own authors, self-described defenders of the First Amendment, weren’t aware of the definite chilling effect of the bill until yesterday only reinforces the idea that Congressional tampering with artists’ royalties is not yet ready for prime time.

by Trichordist

Google’s Serial Obfuscation: Music Canada,BPI, Billboard Question Whether Google Has Really Lowered Pirate Sites Search Rankings

Back in August Google announce it would push down search rankings for pirate sites.  This was greeted with a lot of hoopla by both opponents and proponents of illegal piracy.  But it now appears that this announcement was just newspeak from the GOOrwell Ministry of Truth.

Graham Henderson at Music Canada has just posted an article that puts Google’s claims into question.   In the article Still Searching for Results in Google’s Wasteland of Illegal Sites and Takedown Notices  Henderson details the emptiness of Google’s claims.  A search for Carly Rae Jespersen’s Call Me Maybe  results in zero legitimate music sites on the first page.  The lone exception is the Google owned YouTube.  It’s not till the second page of results that  the 800lb gorilla of the digital retail, iTunes shows up!   Not only does this illustrate the difficulties facing artists it illustrates how tough it is for the legitimate music tech companies to reach their customers.  It’s odd that the myopic music tech companies like Pandora still seem to think it’s the artists that are the enemy.  They refuse to acknowledge that Google is eating their lunch.

It get’s even worse.  We looked at every single link on the first page of search results for “Call Me Maybe Download”.  Google has no incentive to push these infringing links down.   Every link except one apparently generates revenue for Google!!   How?  either directly through Youtube,  by (illegally?) selling advertising on the site hosting the infringing links, or using one of googles many other tools to generate revenue.   We give you the evidence here:

Here is the first page of search results.

Clicking through to the links reveals Google’s DoubleClick serving advertising directly on each these sites or evidence that they have in the past. 5 of these links definitely generate revenue for Google.  Two other  links resulted in queries to Google for ads  but in this case didn’t directly receive ads.  The last two use other google tools to generate revenue    Just like the online pharmacy case Google is complicit in what appears to be illegal activity.  Maybe now the election is over the Obama administration will pursue this.

BeeMP3’s ad traffic has been decimated of late, but google is still selling their android app.

by Dr. David C Lowery

Note that David will be speaking on this panel on Tuesday November 13.

12:50 PM – 1:30 PM
Radio-active: Internet Broadcasting and Artist Compensation

Learn more about Artists and Creators Rights:

Music Technology Policy

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations

The Future of Music Policy Summit will convene for the 12th year on November 13.  The Internet Radio Fairness Act will be front and center–both Pandora Founder Tim Westergren and Senator Ron Wyden have been added in the last few days and they are not there to talk about the weather.  Or stock options.

When FOMC first started, it was viewed as a grass roots organization and the policy summit was a new idea–bring current issues in the music industry before the Washington, DC policy environment.  New faces appeared on the panels as well as familiar ones.  A mix of Members of Congress and bureaucrats showed up as well…

View original post 1,742 more words

by Chris Castle

Weekly Recap and News Sunday Nov 11, 2012

Grab the coffee!

Recent Posts:
* Madison Avenue and Media Piracy, Are Online Ad Networks the Birth of SkyNet?
* Bad News, Good News, Bad News. Internet Radio “Fairness” Act Sponsor and Conservative UT Congressman Chaffetz Taunts Musicians; Admits to Belief in Evolution; Urges Government Interference In Markets.
* Muzzling Free Speech By Artists: IRFA Section 5 Analysis
* Lobbyist For CCIA Makes All Kinds of Wild Claims About Copyright Management Organizations. BMI ASCAP SOCAN SAMI Included in Charges of Corruption.

From Around The Web:

Copyhype:
– Friday’s End Notes 11/09/12 (Essential Weekly Reading)

Dan Ariely
– How to Stop Illegal Downloads
“Before it was my book being illegally downloaded, I was more on the “Information wants to be free” end of the spectrum. The sudden, though predictable, shift in my feelings when I found my own work being downloaded for free was a jarring experience.”

Digital Music News
– Goldman Sachs Is About to Invest $100 Million In Spotify…
– Dear Pandora, You Totally Suck. Signed, Songwriters…
– Pandora Is Now Suing ASCAP to Lower Songwriter Royalties…

TechCrunch:
– Spotify Is Having A Good 2012: Revenues Could Reach $500M As It Expands The Digital Music Market

Billboard:
– Songwriters Are Left Out of Pandora’s Royalty Plan: Guest Post by Downtown Music’s Justin Kalifowitz

The Hill:
– NAACP blasts Pandora-backed Internet royalty bill

The New York Times:
– A Clash Across Europe Over the Value of a Click

The Precursor Blog:
– Google’s Top Ten Anti-Privacy Quotes — Part 3 In Google’s Own Words Series
“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic

Torrent Freak:
– Supreme Court Rejects Hearing For Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde
– RapidShare Limits Public Download Traffic to Drive Away Pirates
– “Six-Strikes” BitTorrent Crackdown May Target Private Trackers

Columbia Journalism Review:
– Audit Notes: digital ads, margins of error, freehadists – French publishing’s online revenues make the Americans look good

Music Tech Policy:
– IRFA and the Future of Music Policy Summit: Why Would FOMC Miss An Opportunity to Defend Artist Rights?
– Stretching the Possibilities of Offensiveness, Pandora Demonstrates How to be Ugly at Scale

The Washington Examiner:
– Report: Google and Facebook competing for an Obama cabinet slot

Digital Trends:
– Sorry, Internet, SOPA had zero effect on election day results
“Of the 24 House Members up for reelection who co-sponsored or otherwise supported the highly contentious anti-piracy legislation, all but three won reelection on Tuesday. This includes Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, of Texas, SOPA’s author and chief co-sponsor who became the Internet’s Enemy No. 1”

ChinaDaily:
– Free Online Music in China Coming to An End?

by trichordist

Lobbyist For CCIA Makes All Kinds of Wild Claims About Copyright Management Organizations. BMI ASCAP SOCAN SAMI Included in Charges of Corruption.

I don’t even know what to say about these statements by Jonathan Band, one of the long-time lobbyists for the Computer & Communications Industry (read Google).   The whole thing just seemed kind of crazy to me.  To be clear I don’t have a dog in this fight.   Just curious where these allegations come from.  Cause I researched a bit and I don’t really see anything to justify most of these charges.

Perhaps our readers can help?

But otherwise he does do a good job of answering a question that has always been of interest to me: Google’s acquisition of Rightsflow.

Listen for yourself.

Memo (2)  Jonathan Band at Michigan State University  Law School.

by Dr. David C Lowery