b.cognosco

Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.

Most Popular

Book Reviews

Recently

Sunday, May 22, 2005

More Lies, Abuse, Other Reprehensible Practices from the Copyright Cartel

A lecturer at Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV in Spain has lost his job and been asked to remove all record of his employment at the university for giving a lecture on the legal uses of P2P networks.

Jorge Cortell has been lecturing on intellectual property at the university for five years. Earlier this month Jorge was asked to give a lecture on P2P as a part of Free Culture week. But Jorge made the mistake of telling Spain’s copyright cartel SGAE, the National Police, and the Attorney General in advance.

During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works (according to the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, Private Copy provision, and many research papers, books and court rulings). I was even going to use the network to "prove" that it was legal, since members of the Collecting Society "SGAE" had appeared on TV and newspapers saying that "P2P networks are ilegal" (sic) just like that, and to that extent I even contacted SGAE, National Police, and the Attorney General in advance to inform them about it.

The aforementioned agencies informed their cohorts in the industry cartels and shortly Promusicae – the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA – and our very own MPAA were pouncing on the Dean, the University, and everyone they could find with threats, warnings, lies, and abuse to stop the lecture.

The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association "Promusicae" as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people.

Later on that day (May 4th, I will never forget), I received a call from the Director of the Masters Degree Program where I was teaching telling me that the Dean had called and had asked him to "make sure I did not teach there again", and on a second call saying "it's your choice, but also your responsibility".

The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.

Once again we have morally reprehensible actions being used to stifle the spread of legal technologies, and justified on the claims of stopping piracy. Mr. Cortell was not engaged in piracy, nor was he promoting it. He was demonstrating the effective use of technology for legally sharing both copyrighted and non-copyrighted works. And once more we have examples that nothing the Copyright Cartel tells us can be trusted – not their numbers, not their judgement of technology, not their interpretation of what’s legal. Lawrence Lessig reports today on how Bilboard magazine legal affairs editor Susan Butler has written a piece grossly misrepresenting Copyright, Creative Commons, and an author’s right to choose:

As Creative Commons chairman and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig travels the world encouraging international adoption of Creative Commons, the movement has begun to arouse concern in the music business. Some industry leaders say that the group's approach -- applauded by many -- is in effect a Trojan horse that could erode copyright protection or harm unwitting artists.

"My concern is that many who support Creative Commons also support a point of view that would take away people's choices about what to do with their own property," says David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and former chairman of the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force.

The Cartel has shown a complete lack of integrity, ethics, and honesty in their actions on Copyright, and they will continue to act this way as long as it works. We need to make sure our legislators know we’re watching, and we will no longer tolerate the making of bad legislation and support of corrupt business practices as a quid pro quo for nice contributions and rubbing elbows with stars. EFF has an action alert on the Broadcast Flag. That’s a good place to start.

The lawyers and lobbyists are moving fast, but you can move faster. Tell your representative you don't want Hollywood to hobble your digital media devices, and knock out the Broadcast Flag for good.

Make your voice heard with the EFF Action Center:

http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=129

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:43 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Copyright, Music, Technology

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

IP Theft and the Trade Deficit

The Glittering Eye has collected some useful information on Chinese piracy and the scope of its impact on our economy. There’s a good collection of reference articles and press releases – “US May Bring WTO Case”, “Hollywood Loses $900 Million to Pirates”, and Forbes - and the author does a good job outlining the available options for correcting the problem.

Or part of the problem. As with almost every single story on piracy, the articles listed above use wholly inappropriate, even ludicrous, numbers for the value of piracy. Whether the numbers come from former US Trade Rep Bob “Patent ‘til you drop” Zoellick or the self-serving lawyers over at MPAA/RIAA, they all share one common trait — they take a universal 1–to-1 ratio between pirate copies and lost sales. This act of starting from a false premise and proceeding logically leads to absurd conclusions like this – “ U.S. music, movie and software industry groups estimate they lose between $2.5 billion to $3.8 billion annually in China through sales of illegal copies of their products.”

$3.8 billion my lilly-white ass!! Have you ever been to China – where they still hand-carry their raw sewage in buckets? Have you seen Chinese peasants riding 20–year-old bicycles down modern, but empty, thoroughfares? Sure, there is lots of economic growth in China (I do some business there), but growth from a zero base has to go a long, long way before spending a month’s pay for a movie looks like a good idea. If you think for a minute that the typical Chinese wage supports paying $15 USD for a CD, $20 USD for a DVD, or $299 USD for a copy of Windows XP then I have some great business investments I’d like to show you.

If the vast majority of Chinese didn’t have pirated copies they wouldn’t have any. They don’t just hop in a Beemer, run down to Chairman MaoMart and buy one. No, they wouldn’t have a copy. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. And that’s the real economic impact of the vast majority of pirated copies – zero.

I don’t know if the actual ratio is one lost sale for 100 copies or 1,000, but the bottom line is that, while there is clearly an economic impact to the theft of American soft products in China, it is nowhere near the dollar value the industries and flag-waving bureaucrats like to pretend. The premise that a pirate copy in Asia has a direct corollary to a lost sale (the music industry in Germany went so far as to assume a 1–to-1 ratio between the number of blank CDs sold and lost sales) is as realistic as assuming that every television viewer of a sports broadcast is a lost ticket sale (Oh, wait – the NFL makes exactly that assumption.) And the companies complaining the loudest *know* that. Why else would they be falling all over themselves to get their products into Chinese markets? If all those markets meant were losses you can be sure they would be running in the other direction.

Instead, US companies are dying to get into the Chinese market. And that – along with the knowledge that piracy is nowhere near the economic threat they like to proclaim – is why the US won’t do anything significant about China’s piracy problem.

BTW, the next time anyone starts talking about losses to piracy, China or otherwise, ask them a simple question – “What’s your estimated ratio of pirated copies to lost sales?” If they give you an answer that is anywhere close to 1–to-1 just laugh and walk away, because they’ve obviously taken you for an idiot. (Via EEJD)

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 8:56 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Business & Finance, Copyright, Music, Policy & Regulation

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Frank Zappa Was THE Man

As Zappa would have said — “Poot”

But that Would Have Killed the Music Industry, Right?

Quoted

“We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1…

All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.

The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.”

-- Frank Zappa invents Rhapsody, Napster in 1983 [Good Morning Silicon Valley, via Shawn] via Jenny Levine

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 1:24 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Copyright, Music, Technology

Syndication

Contact

 

Presence

 

 
 ICQ

 

 

 

www.flickr.com More of GratefulZed's photos

This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT