Credit: Brent and MariLynn [CC BY] Mike Masnick questions the word “balance” in the copyright debate: I’ve long thought that balance is the wrong way to look at it. The purpose of copyright law is to incentivize the creation of new content, and thus the standard on which copyright law […]
copyright
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I submitted the following to the Canadian Copyright Consultation, a little hastily as midnight approached on the initial deadline. It’s built off the same notes I used to speak from at the townhall. Copyright matters to me for a variety of reasons. I’m a musician, writer and programming. I was […]
This post originally appeared on Techdirt. Last Thursday, I attended the Canadian Copyright Consultation Toronto Town Hall (video). Despite the stated intention of soliciting a “breadth of perspectives,” the record industry dominated the event. Michael Geist described it as the “Toronto Music Industry Town Hall” and a local publication called […]
Thursday night, I had a chance to speak at the government’s Copyright Consultation Toronto Townhall. I’ll post more detailed thoughts shortly, but in the meantime, Nick Dynice was kind enough to upload a video of my comments to YouTube. I wasn’t expecting a chance to speak and hadn’t prepared much, […]
This post originally appeared on Techdirt When Joe Satriani sued Coldplay for copyright infringment last December, lots of people were quick to notice that a bunch of other songs shared the same melody, including some predating Satriani’s tune. Last month, Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) made headlines claiming […]
This post originally appeared on Techdirt. Despite claiming to represent the interests of songwriters and composers, ASCAP has consistently provided bad advice on how they should respond to digital technology and the internet. For ASCAP and many other collection societies, anything that doesn’t involve royalties seems automatically bad (despite all […]
This post originally appeared on Techdirt. Howard Knopf, a well known Canadian copyright expert, recently took a look at some of the failed copyright levy proposals in Canada. The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) administers the tax levy on blank CDs, which now accounts for almost 90% of the price. […]
This article originally appeared on Techdirt. In the April 2009 issue of Entertainment Law & Finance, three partners in the Intellectual Property Group at Kilpatrick Stockton LLP take a look at the role that “amateur musicologists” have played thus far in the copyright battle stemming from Satriani’s lawsuit against Coldplay […]
This article originally appeared on Techdirt. Greg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) recently participated in a live chat as part of a Download Decade series run by the Globe and Mail. Gillis makes music entirely from samples, combining existing songs in creative ways to make something new. His last album, which […]