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.
Mexican Pop Star Makes Sony Walk Their Own Gangplank
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on September 8, 2009 by admin in Music
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009Pretty soon the RIAA is going to have to change its name to the Argh!IAA
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
Support Corporate Fascism – Buy A CD
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on June 19, 2009 by admin in Music
Friday, June 19th, 2009Shared any music with your friends lately? You may owe the RIAA $80,000 per song.
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
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 9, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009It’s someone’s birthday today, but we’re afraid to tell you more because of a bunch of Mickey Mouse Copyright Laws
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.
ABC Tells Pushing Daisies Fans To Stick It In Their Pie-Hole
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 12, 2008 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, December 12th, 2008Pushing Daisies Soon To Be Six Feet Under
The entertainment industry in general (music, film, television) seems to me to have made some secret suicide pact with itself. The RIAA constantly suing its customer base, the film industry’s vain and annoying attempts at copy protection, and the television industy’s gift for cancelling top-rated shows with rabidly loyal viewers all suggest a weird death-wish. Which (because of the show’s name) is ironic in the case of ABC’s cancellation of Pushing Daisies