Tag Archives: copyright

Or at least have your voice heard.

Colin Murphy writes:

Independent TDs Catherine Murphy and Stephen Donnelly (above) this morning launched an online crowd-sourcing process as part of their response to the Copyright Review Committee, which is tasked with overhauling Ireland’s copyright regime.

Murphy and Donnelly have prepared their draft report in collaboration with a group of industry experts: Digital Rights Ireland director Antoin O Lachtnain, Boards.ie co-founder Tom Murphy, and internet law expert and solicitor Simon McGarr.

The draft version of that report has been published online at a dedicated site: Copyrightreform.ie. Using an innovative application called Digress.it, they are seeking feedback from the public.

Digress.it allows people to comment on individual sections of the submission. People will also be able to add their signature to it.

They are also making the submission available in editable format to the public under the Irish Creative Commons Attribution licence. This means that anybody can take any part of the submission with which they agree and use that as the basis of their own submission to the Copyright Review Committee.

In other words, the submission will be a model of a crowd-sourced and open-source policy document, setting an example for how the policy process can be made collaborative and can encourage participation, in the public interest

“Copyright exists to protect intellectual property – but a healthy copyright regime also fosters innovation and serves the public interest,” said Stephen Donnelly. “We believe the current law is imbalanced. Particularly following the Statutory Instrument brought in without consultation by Sean Sherlock earlier this year, there are a lot of concerns amongst the tech community and start-up sector that our copyright regime could be inhibiting innovation. Our submission, I hope, will help rebalance that,”

Their draft recommendations are as follows.

The Government should:

1.  Ensure the right of free speech is a central element of the new copyright regime, including in the areas of parody and satire;
2. Legalise legitimate forms of copying by introducing an explicit and broadly defined “Fair Use” policy;
3. Ensure the extent of copyright ownership is balanced against the public good;
4. Design a system which is clear to all parties, including end users;
5. Design an enforcement mechanism which is easy to understand, transparent and accessible to all parties;
6. Target penalties at those who infringe on copyright rather than on third parties such as intermediaries;
7. Future-proof the new regime by basing it on applicable principles rather than rules relevant to today’s technology only;
8. Make it easy for end-users to identify and engage with owners of copyright material.

The Copyright Review Committee  was established in May 2011 by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to examine current copyright legislation and identify areas where reforms might be made. The Committee this week announced a limited extension of time for submissions (closing date was May 31) until June 29 in limited circumstances.

Iarla writes:

The Sex Pistols have just signed a new deal with Universal Music (see below), which if they got a decent advance/signing fee will mean that because of mergers etc., they will essentially have gotten 5 advances for the same album from what is now the same company. The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle indeed. Breakdown as follows:

1976 – Sex Pistols sign a deal with EMI. They get dropped weeks later, but keep the advance. (Famously singing about it on “EMI Unlimited”)
1977 – Sex Pistols sign a deal with A&M. They get dropped weeks later, but keep the advance.
1977 – Sex Pistols sign a deal with Virgin, who eventually releases the album.

Meanwhile, over in the land of labels consolidating with each other…

1992 – Virgin Records sold to EMI, meaning that Sex Pistols are back
on EMI (re-inking a new deal, new Best Of etc.)
1998 – Polygram (who bought A&M in 1989) gets bought by Universal,
meaning all A&M catalogue ends up on Universal.
2011 – EMI bought by Universal.
2012 – Sex Pistols sign a new deal with Universal.

Which means the Sex Pistols have signed a deal with EMI (twice), A&M, Virgin and now Universal, all of whom are now/will be owned by Universal, and all essentially for the same album – “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”

And the lesson?

This is why you should own the copyright to your own albums.

 

Sex Pistols Sign New Record Deal With Universal (BBC)


Some Irish members of the Reddit community are justifiably tearing us a new one for quoting humungous chunks of Fintan O’Toole and Conor Brady‘s articles in the last two days. And by doing so offering ‘old media’ a perfect example of the wanton anarchy of some elements of the ‘new media’. We have removed the text in each piece bar a paragraph to give some flava. The quotage was larcenously excessive.

 

In what the federal authorities on Thursday called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy.

 

But.

Not so fast G-men…

Coming just a day after civil protests in the United States over proposed antipiracy bills, the arrests were greeted almost immediately with digital Molotov cocktails. The hacker collective that calls itself Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the Justice Department and several major entertainment companies and trade groups in retaliation for Mega-upload’s seizure. The Justice Department’s site and several others remained inaccessible for much of Thursday afternoon.

 

7 Charged as F.B.I. Closes a Top File-Sharing Site (Ben Sisario, New York Times)

Thanks Lara

 

HADOPI, the French agency that disconnects French Internet users for alleged copyright infrigement conducted a study on media purchasing habits earlier this year. It concluded that the biggest unauthorized downloaders are also the biggest customers for legitimate media. That is to say, pirates are also heavy legal consumers.

This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news. Every other report conducted on the same subject has come to the same conclusion. HADOPI has been attempting to downplay its findings but Joe Karaganis from SSRC reformatted the results to make them clear.

Cue new, reasoned thinking from the copyright police?

Don’t hold your breath.

Another Day, Another Study That Says ‘Pirates’ Are The Best Customers… This Time From HADOPI (TechDirt)

pic/via

Lady Gaga is now demanding that photographers surrender the copyright of photos taken at her concerts – and photographers are incensed.

Washington, D.C. website TBD.com made this practice public on Friday when they published the release form given to their photographer Jay Westcott. In addition to standard release restrictions regarding the use of images shot at her concerts, the document states that any photos taken at the show  become the property of Lady Gaga. This an especially bold demand as the government has established that copyright exists the moment when a work is created, which in this case is the moment when a photographer clicks their shutter button.

Good luck with that, Miss Germanotta.

Photographers Respond to Lady Gaga’s New Copyright Demands (Rolling Stone)

via Boing Boing