Pop Loser

Format Shifting and the Canadian Government

Your government at work. Ug.

As TechDirt notes:

It’s scary that people so clueless about the basics of what they’re discussing not only get elected, but then presume to make new laws based on their gleefully on-display cluelessness.

The Beastie Boys and Copyright

The day before MCA passed away, the Beastie Boys were hit with a lawsuit over samples used on Licensed to Ill and Paul’s Boutique. Slate notes that Paul’s Boutique couldn’t be made today, which echoes the licensing math in the excellent book Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling.

I like the idea that the most fitting tribute to the life of Adam Yaunch would be to fix the disaster that is copyright law once and for all.

Forget the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, where’s the Adam Yauch Right To Sample Act? We shouldn’t even have to fight for our right to sample.

Results of the Louis CK Experiment

Louis CK is being very open about how his video experiment is performing.

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

Copyright Culture

Andy Baio on copyright culture:

Here’s a thought experiment: Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote. What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe “I downloaded but didn’t share” will be the new “I smoked, but didn’t inhale.”) Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.

Wired Goes CC

All photos taken by Wired.com staff are now available under a creative commons license, which is kind of cool.

Europe has extended music copyright to infinity. (Well 70 years, but it’s just as stupid.) [via]

Copyright on many of the most popular 60s tunes, including many Dame Shirley Bassey hits, had been due to expire within two years but will now last until at least 2033.

The directive is expected to be implemented by EU member states by 2014. The law applies only to the performers of the music. Composers already own copyright over their music until 70 years after their death.

How did a folk song collector end up with a song credit on a Jay-Z album? Copyright law. [via]

Here’s where the story gets truly silly. When KRS-One sampled Grand Funk Railroad’s cover of “Inside Looking Out,” he needed the permission of both the owner of the recording and the underlying composition. This is in spite of the fact that the sample is from an instrumental section that Grand Funk added, and that doesn’t reference the original melody at all. And even though Jay-Z sampled KRS-One’s unaccompanied vocal, he also needed to get copyright permission from everyone sampled in KRS-One’s track. Including Alan Lomax.

Cory Doctorow looks at the new book Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. (Which I now need to order.)

The best example of this is a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the cost to clear the samples on two of the best-loved, uncleared albums of all times: the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique and Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, both of which typify the kind of album that couldn’t possibly be made today. By the authors’ math, Black Planet would lose $6.8 million in sampling fees on 1.5 million sales; Paul’s Boutique would lose an eye-popping $19.8M on its sales of 2.5m.

Turns out the licensing model Turntable.fm is (hopefully) operating under is only valid in the US, so they’ve blocked the rest of the world. Which sucks because I was rocking out to some obscure electronica with a Hungarian guy with awesome taste in music last week.

Andy Baio was sued by photographer Jay Maisel over an 8-bit rendering of the cover photo of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. This is a prime example of why there needs to be massive copyright (and general legal system) reform.

But this is important: the fact that I settled is not an admission of guilt. My lawyers and I firmly believe that the pixel art is “fair use” and Maisel and his counsel firmly disagree. I settled for one reason: this was the least expensive option available.

(If you’re unfamiliar, Andy organized the creation of Kind of Bloop, a chiptune tribute to the seminal Davis album. Ironically, he got permission to cover all of the music.)

UPDATE: Check out some of the comments on Maisel’s Facebook page.

UPDATE 2: Maisel closed his Facebook page.

How does the excellent Turntable.fm operate without music deals in place?

The music business has a long tradition of resisting good ideas. So how did the Turntable.fm guys finally get the industry on board? They haven’t. The start-up doesn’t have deals in place with any labels or publishers.

Peanutweeter has been shut down. Weak.

But even beyond the legal aspect here, let’s discuss the basic common sense approach here. Now, obviously, Peanuts is a huge licensing business these days, but so is Garfield. In the case of Garfield, Davis and others quickly (and correctly) realized that such derivative works didn’t harm or tarnish the brand in any way. Quite the contrary, it brought renewed interest in the strip, especially from an audience that might not normally care. On top of that, the friendly and encouraging approach resulted in a book from which they could all profit.

On the flipside, you have Iconix/Peanuts, who have just pissed off thousands of people online who followed Peanutweeter on Twitter and Tumblr — and all for what?

The Oatmeal vs. FunnyJunk. This is as good an example of the internet in action as you’ll find, from the blatant infringement to the megalomanic webmaster to the lunatic commenters who say “fag” a lot.

I realize that trying to police copyright infringement on the internet is like strolling into the Vietnamese jungle circa 1964 and politely asking everyone to use squirt guns. I know that if FunnyJunk disappeared, 50 other clones would pop up to take its place overnight, but I felt I had to say something about what they’re doing.

[…]

The owner of FunnyJunk made it so the site changes all instances of ‘The Oatmeal’ to ‘the fag,’ and none of the stolen material I mentioned was taken down.

SPIN tries to C&D @spin for control of the Twitter name because other people are stupid. This is hilarious, ridiculous and kind of sad.