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Music Industry Plans To Pay Off Federal Deficit

admin — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 02:55:09 +0000

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

admin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:51:35 +0000

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.

In spite of being in the no-man’s land of corporate color, BP couldn’t get a trademark.

Righthaven LLC: Suing Bloggers For Fun & Profit

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:56:01 +0000

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

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 23:58:36 +0000

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?

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:01:35 +0000

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.

Mexican Pop Star Makes Sony Walk Their Own Gangplank

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:46:10 +0000

Sony, the company that tries to infect our computers with spyware & malware, that sues its customers to the tune of 2 million dollars for piracy, that has been investigated themselves for software piracy, and that is guilty by association of corrupting our judicial system, has gotten a tiny taste of their own medicine. Like me, you may not have heard of Mexican mega popstar Alejandro Fernández before, but today he’s sort of a hero. It seems that while Sony was in the process of screwing him out an entire album, he turned the tables by having police raid their Mexico City offices to seize thousands of his CD’s, audio masters, and artwork. Sony’s PR people seem to be getting less easily rattled these days; although they expressed that they were “shocked” at the multimillion dollar settlement in their favor when suing a customer for piracy, they apparently are only “surprised and disappointed” by the recent raid. Personally, I think we should all show our support by buying some Alejandro Fernández songs. And I think Sony needs to just chill out. Don’t they know that pirates are ten times more likely to buy music than other people?

Now that he’s got his music back he looks like he’s ready to kick Sony’s ass too:

Support Corporate Fascism – Buy A CD

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:01:14 +0000

If you’ve shared any music with your friends in a digital format recently, you might want to wipe your hard drive. That rascally RIAA is at it again, winning an absolutely psychotic copyright infringement case against a single consumer, to the tune of $1.92 million. Who knows how they expect Jammie Thomas to pay the nearly two million dollars she owes for the 24 songs she “pirated”….wait. Did I just say 24 songs for $1.92 million dollars? Yes. I did. That’s why I’m reviving the CopyReich Shop I created a while back. If this isn’t fascist behavior on the part of the recording industry, I don’t know what is. The stupid consumer won’t buy your crappy overpriced products? Destroy their life by suing the f*ck out of them! We just talked about the CopyFight last week; frankly I thought it was kind of a dead movement. Maybe it’s time we revitalized it. If you find the Nazi-esque images of the CopyReich Shop offensive, we also have the Copyfight Shop, which pokes fun at the Creative Commons license. And which is also perhaps due for a revival; it seems Instructables.com may be perverting it’s purpose to screw their content creators. By the way, here’s a nice flowchart if you’ve ever wondered how the RIAA decides to pursue these cases.

Copyright Law Isn’t All It’s Quacked Up To Be

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:19:22 +0000

It’s someone’s birthday today. I’d love to tell you about it, but I’m not sure if the use of his name (clue: he’s a duck) is a violation of trademark or copyright law. You see, the individual in question is a property (and you thought slavery had been abolished!) of a large media company that regularly protects its intellectual property with considerable aggression. Back in 2005, I got intrigued with the copyfight movement and created a couple of parody products on CafePress – the CopyReich Shop , which pretty heavy-handedly pointed a finger at the RIAA and MPAA’s fascist behavior, and the Copyfight Shop, which poked fun at the Creative Commons license. I suggested them for BoingBoing.net, and got this reply from Cory Doctorow: “This stuff is funny, Ian! I’m uncomfortable with the Nazi stuff, though — I’m a believer in Godwin’s Law and worry that the discreditation that accrues to its violators would outweigh the humor. Sorry.” I guess I was too edgy for the edgy. Oddly, CafePress didn’t mind the images, although recently they wouldn’t let me use these images. Maybe they’re anti-gay. Who knows. In any case, something that’s often overlooked when people discuss copyrights is who they were intended to protect, and what their purpose really was. In the United States, the government gave itself the right to copyright material ostensibly to: “…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (US Constitution, Section 8, Clause 8). The idea being that if a creative person could gain an exclusive financial benefit from their creation for a time, there would be plenty of motivation to create wonderful things that would benefit mankind later, when these creations entered the public domain. In my opinion, this has all been completely perverted by the copyright extension act to protect the profits of corporations, at the expense of the individual. What do you think? Below are the images from the CafePress shops.

This image is from the shop that made Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing reject our suggested link:

This shop was intended to make fun of the communist nature of “open source” copyrights:

This is Mickey, who sadly is copyrighted until the end of time: