Tag Archives: RIAA

Music for a Pound, or a Pound of Flesh?

Music not shared is music not heard, and a band not shared basks only in obscurity. Gene Simmons regrets not having been more vigilant in his marshaling of the RIAA cavalry back in 2007. A fundamental question is how to monetize an industrialized art form without creating an artificial scarcity that undermines the cultural popularity on which that art form is dependent. Ars Technica has an article this week highlighting the competing views on how to monetize music in the absence of natural scarcity. Continue reading

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EU suggests reason and logic behind ACTA

According to the EU, ACTA will ignore “infringing goods [that] are not part of large scale traffic.” ACTA will also not force already taxed enforcement officers “to look for a couple of pirated songs on an i-Pod music player…” Continue reading

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Are there benefits to “piracy”?

The pro-copyright lobby groups would have you believe that all unauthorized reproduction (and distribution), colloquially known (inaccurately) as piracy, is horrid for the industries concerned, and is destroying them. Many say that unauthorized copying actually benefits the concerned industries. Do you think this is true? If so, which industry benefits the most? I’ve created a poll and I would like you to let me know what you think. Feel free to comment to this post. Continue reading

Posted in Business Law, Information Technology, Intellectual Property, Video Games | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

RIAA and MPAA hijack the border (or someone like them)

Cyberion, at Tazzu, posted a link to the Vancouver Province story on the threatened border checks (ACTA) on the legitimacy of electronic media. (Cyberion’s post) I had some rather strong feelings, and ranted the following: This is one of the … Continue reading

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Why the RIAA should be subject to Judicial Review

Nate Anderson of Ars Technica published a piece on March 11 entitled, “RIAA tells Ars: We’re not hypocrites“. Essentially it boils down to this: The RIAA’s collective spin-off — in some ways similar to SOCAN here — is called SoundExchange, … Continue reading

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Collective mens rea? Or a lack of musical supply…

Ben Jones of TorrentFreak published an article a couple of weeks ago discussing the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey in the U.K., in which it was revealed not only that so-called “piracy” is rampant, even among the generally non-criminal element. What’s … Continue reading

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Nine Inch Nails in the RIAA’s Coffin

According to Prof. Larry Lessig, Nine Inch Nails’ latest album has been released under Creative Commons. Kudos to Trent Reznor! http://lessig.org/blog/2008/03/nin_goes_cc.html I tried to comment but Prof. Lessig’s blog is giving me some sort of SQL error. Here is my … Continue reading

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Michael Geist lauds CRIA; jeers RIAA’s “hassle” policy

The difference between commercial piracy and private copying was clear in the Copyright Act’s s.80, it was made clearer by BMG v. John Doe, and now we can see the difference in action. Professor Michael Geist compares the RIAA’s “hassle … Continue reading

Posted in Intellectual Property | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment