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TechDirt Jul 29 09 JohnForDummies alerts us to a suggestion from Dan Lyons over at Newsweek, saying that sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube should just start charging for their basic service. He brushes off those who think it's a bad idea as "the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley today is that everything on the Internet must be free." Except, that's not true. No one (NO ONE) is saying "everything on the internet must be free." This is just a silly strawman put forth by folks with little understanding of the business models people are actually discussing. Lyons also fails in recognizing that his "example" isn't even a very good one. Full story...
Just as with our discussions on the
efficacy of rain dances, I am most fascinated by stories of the baffling
choices of copyright maximalists which, albeit unintentionally, most definitely
promote content piracy/theft [insert
Chris Dodd's buzzword of the week].
One of the things we've heard for years, whenever we talk about awesome marketing campaigns and business models that musicians and other artists have put together, is that it's somehow a "shame" that the artists are getting attention for the campaign/business model, rather than the art itself.
Summary of Parts One and Two: The essential balance of copyright between incentives for creators and the feeding of a rich and unlicensed public domain has been undone by a long series of misguided efforts to save copyright by making its rules both stronger and less enforceable at the same time.
Most people will be familiar with Moore's Law, usually stated in the form that processing power doubles every two years (or 18 months in some versions.
We know it's bad for our health, but somehow we just can't get enough of artery-clogging fried foods because they taste so good.
We've written a few times that the end goal behind ACTA and TPP is to put in place frameworks by the US and Western Europe for certain things, and then pressure the key developing nations to join in based on the framework that has already been established.
Bloomberg Law has put together a short video about Adam Yauch and the sampling lawsuit filed against the Beastie Boys the day before his death.
For years we've argued over and over again that stricter enforcement does nothing to slow down or stop infringement.
Okay, here's a bit of a two-fer. With all of the attention that Amanda Palmer has been getting for her massively successful Kickstarter campaign, we had some commenters here questioning whether or not she would freak out if people then shared her music.
While there have been some claims that Google has supported CISPA (whereas the company does not appear to have taken an official position), at least one top person at Google is not all pleased with the bill.