Music Industry Plans To Pay Off Federal Deficit
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 23, 2011 by admin in Music
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011How else would you explain a $75 Trillion lawsuit? Yes. We said trillion.
It’s been clear for a while that the established music industry missed the boat to the digital age, and that their innovative new business model is primarily based on suing the pants off their own customers and pirating music from their own artists. But if you’ve been following these bizarre attempts by the music industry to remain profitable, one thing that that might be troubling you lately is the way that the government seems to be operating as a tool for the entertainment industry to execute this doomed strategy. The fact that the Department of Homeland Security basically admits that it’s the private police force of the entertainment industry raises perfectly reasonable questions like “Is CD Piracy a Matter for Homeland Security?” And for the entertainment industry to pursue this kind of strategy more aggressively than ever – especially at a time when consumer piracy has declined almost 50% in three years – has personally left me perplexed. Until today, when I finally figured out the long-term goal of this bizarre partnership between agencies devoted to national security and the people who bring you wonderful and innovative products like Justin Bieber and Toy Story 3. They’re out to eliminate the federal deficit. How else would you explain the music industry’s $75 Trillion lawsuit against Lime Wire? Yes, you read that right. Seventy five trillion dollars. That’s enough to pay off the current federal deficit 45 times, if you’re curious.
Colour Trademarks: Don’t Get Pantowned
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 28, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010Cadbury and T-Mobile are probably the only organizations that defend their colors more vigorously than Crips and Bloods.
When you think of the color purple, what do you think of? How about magenta? Well I’d be willing to bet you don’t immediately think of Cadbury and T-Mobile. Which is perhaps unfortunate for them, because they’ve both gone to great lengths to establish colour trademarks . I don’t imagine the telecom company Orange struggles so much with this brand protection problem. Nor does Big Blue, in spite of long ago losing their corner on the market for the actual use of the color. And the massive conglomerate Altria seems to be trying to cover all the bases with their logo . But what sense is there in actually pursuing these kinds of trademarks? In my opinion, very little in most situations. I mean, in this context, if I ask you to think of a brand that’s defined by bright green and yellow, you’ll probably think of BP. Yet in spite of a sixteen year legal battle and their place in the relative no-man’s land of corporate colors (see below) they were unable to claim the color as a trademark in Australia. And if I mention yellow and red, there’s a fairly good chance you’ll think of McDonald’s, but they let the colors speak for themselves, and strangely more often try to protect their McName. Unlike Adidas, which has no color to protect, but defend the “three stripes” so vigorously that they sue whether you’re using two or four stripes. There are situations situations in which defending your color may make sense though, like Dow Corning protecting their pink insulation, or Tiffany defending their Tiffany Blue, which is a private Pantone color (PMS 1837) matching the year they were founded . These non-conventional trademarks can be rather amusing; although we’ve all probably worked with someone who has a “trademark smell”, I’d have to agree with the decision handed down in this case. Read the rest of this entry »
Righthaven LLC: Suing Bloggers For Fun & Profit
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 19, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Thursday, August 19th, 2010Although the music and film industries seem to have eased up on suing as a business model, an opportunistic lawyer has filled the gap by doing the same for online news.
 Mickey Isn’t The Only One Shackled By Copyright Law Abuse |
Sometimes I wonder if poor Sonny Bono ran himself into a tree while skiing on purpose, to punish himself for his part in helping drive forward the endless onslaught of frivolous and abusive lawsuits and copyright trolling of the past decade or so. We’ve touched on issues relating to this before, mostly in reference to the RIAA or MPAA, but it appears there’s a new copybully on the block, and he’s here to save the world from all the money-grubbing bloggers that are apparently solely responsible for the continued demise of the news industry, with their felonious linking and article-citing practices. That Wired article just linked to sums up the story pretty well, but if you want to keep up to speed, visit RighthavenLawsuits.com, which is NOT the website of Righthaven LLC, but rather a site set up to track the insane number of lawsuits being served up by these greedy bastards. I say “greedy”, because the main guy behind this all has stated publicly that he’s doing it primarily for profit, and I say “bastard” because I think anyone could tell by looking at the bloated, smug, self-satisfied jerk in this photo that he is one. Interestingly, Righthaven doesn’t seem to have a site themselves, unless they’ve sued into oblivion everyone with a link to it. If you want to be sure you avoid any of the many news organizations being represented in these actions, a list of Stephens Media Newspapers can be found here, and Clayton Cramer’s Blog has a simple Firefox-based solution here. And to “avoid their wrath”, see this blog post by Las Vegas trademark and intellectual property attorney Ryan Gile.
Film Industry Is Only FCCing Itself With New Regulations
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 10, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, May 10th, 2010How the film industry’s latest victory in its battle to control how you watch your movies may actually contribute to its demise.
It is with mixed feelings that I bid adieu to the MPAA and the major motion picture companies of America, because although some of the epic films that came out of….oh hell. Who am I kidding. I’m already planning a party. The desperate land grab for your hard-earned CD’s and song files that the RIAA and the established music industry attempted with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and DRM has spawned one of the most creative decades in pop music, and put more money in more artists’ pockets than ever before. Although smart pop media influencers like Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing are in a tizzy about the admittedly insane new “Selectable Output Control” power that the FCC is handing the film industry, the development should come as no surprise; I can only guess that the reason Cory is so upset is that he must be a cable subscriber. As an avid film lover, this will have little impact for me personally. As just one of the more glaring examples of why this should come as no surprise, one of the people who more recently spun through DC’s revolving doors was Catherine Bohigian, chief of the office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis at the FCC, who left in 2008 to take a job with the cable giant Cablevision. To me the most shocking thing about this recent round of nuttiness being promulgated by the in-some-ways shadowy MPAA is that it’s taking so darn long for the movie industry to undermine itself the way the music industry did. It shouldn’t take too long though; although the studios haven’t been aggressively suing their customers on a regular basis like the record companies, they do have a pretty batshit-insane shopping list for how to protect their market. And after witnessing the indy music industry explosion of the last decade, I personally don’t see any reason why this couldn’t happen with film. The film industry is doing exactly the same thing the record companies did; they’re routinely annoying their best customers, and sticking it to a key distribution channel in their maniacal grab for control of intellectual property. The RIAA did it with radio, the MPAA is doing it to theaters. And they’re doing this at a time when professional-quality production and distibution tools are within the reach of just about anyone. In my opinion there would be nothing cooler than a massive movement comprised of small-house indy film venues showing nothing but indy film in intimate settings using HD technology. I say go ahead and FCC yourself, MPAA.
So It’s Canadian Pirates vs. The RIAA, eh?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 20, 2010 by admin in Music
Saturday, February 20th, 2010Not content with suing dead people, old ladies who don’t own computers, and their own artists and distibution channels, the record industry is going after those archvillains of the arctic, CANADA.
In their never-ending quest for most absurd litigation to make its way into the apparently oblivious judicial system, the record industry is stepping it up a notch. No, it wasn’t enough to steal from their own artists and corrupt the legal system, or to sue a single woman for $80,000 per allegedly pirated song (oh wait, it got reduced to a mere $2,250!), or sue dead people, people who don’t even own computers, and the entire radio industry. No, now they’re taking on the country that – as we all know – is home to the most ruthless criminal networks of the Americas. You know, Canada. Who knew that aside from being a country full of pretty nice people whose greatest crime may be occasionaly finishing sentences with “eh?”, Canada is also a hotbed of profit-robbing music piracy? As far as I knew, the only threat that Canada had brought to the established music industry recently was a really awesome indy scene, but the RIAA sees things a little differently. Fortunately, this may be one of the last times that you’ll have to endure wingnuts like me ranting about this; dinosaur labels like EMI are soon likely to be laying about in massive heaps gasping for their last breaths like their metaphoric counterparts at the end of the Jurassic period, as they continue to blame their $2.7 billion losses on piracy rather than their failure to adapt to competition. I tend to get a little over-the-top when I discuss this topic; for a much more sane overview from an artist’s point of view, check out this New York Times piece by Damian Kulash Jr. of the band OK Go, in which he calmly describes how EMI’s disabling of the “embed” feature on YouTube has probably lost them exponentially more than what they made by “protecting” their property.