In an otherwise rather lengthy (but interesting and relevant) blog-entry (on statements of ASCAP about CC licensing) Lawrence Lessig makes a good and important point:
“ASCAP historically has played a crucially important role in helping artists get paid for their work. Today, the nonexclusive ASCAP agreement is a model for collecting rights societies internationally. In […]

An interesting discussion on librarything (click to see it) on the question if writers would rather prefer being paid or being read. It turns out that it’s all about “I love it when people read my work” and “I don’t want someone else making money from my writing while I don’t”, acknowledging that it is […]

Today we recieved a comment on this campaing website by some guy called directoryguru which I’d hesitate to hide from our readers (as I do on a regular basis with all the penis enlargement, naked girls and investment opportunities):
Hi there! I was surfing the internet Wednesday afternoon during my break, and found your blog by […]

Sorry, folks, I have to get that rant off my chest.
First, read this press release from the Conservatives (UK): David Cameron to call for extension in copyright term. Then let me summarize it, as I read it:
“We all agree that you poor music industry loose millions of pounds due to illegal downloading.” — ignoring that […]

This is probably the silliest story that came in today: Book publisher steals Google laptops. The CEO of Macmillan Publishers, Richard Charkin, boasts in his blog1 how he nicked two computers from a Google stall at Book Expo America in New York. He admits of feeling “rather shabby playing this trick on Google”. Poor boy.
Reading […]

As a maverick between arts and culture, business, IT, and many more topics that are of minor or even major interest to me I also read the occasional business analysis piece. This morning an essay by Nicolas G. Carr, contributing editor to strategy+business1. The essay is a review of one famous paper by Eric S. […]

The mashup cuts up and splices audio from many Disney movies to explain the intricacies of US copyright law and the fair use doctrine. It takes the works of “the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms” and flips them to argue against longer copyrights and attacks on fair use.
Have a look!

Today is the 26th of April. The UNESCO celebrations of books and copyrights still resound all over the world. It’s been a happy party of books, writing and reading.
But today, there is another sound in the air. The sound of ‘intellectual property’, of ‘my creativity is my castle’ — it’s the WIPO’s ‘Celebrations’ for the […]

WIPO went to see a group of 16-17 year old students at an international school to find out, how they think about downloading music from the Internet. The first point went to WIPO — the students actually believe that downloading is illegal (which it might or might not be, depending on national legislation). […]

“I’ve always wanted publishers and organized crime to swap.” This strapline caught my eyes this morning when I was combing through my already spam-stripped inbox. Some semi-intelligent robot out there on the net must have picked it up in order to fulfill one of my requests for up-to-date knowledge. (Yes, I admit, […]