Language is important. It shapes our view, our thinking. It’s necessary for our expression and understanding. It’s important to pay attention to the terms we choose. The commonly used phrase “intellectual property rights” is loaded and problematic. Intellectual property rights: Ambiguous; it lumps copyright, patent and trademark law all under […]
copyright
57 posts
The latest Nine Inch Nails album has been released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license (via Lessig). While the license isn’t quite free as in freedom, it’s a huge step forward; it allows sharing (copying, distribution, performance) and remixing, though only for non-commercial purposes. Reznor, now label-free, released the album […]
Sen. Arlen Specter has proposed copyright leglislation in the United States in an attempt to provide an exemption for places of worship to broadcast NFL games. Bars and restaurants currently have this exemption, but the NFL has been busy sending nastygrams to churches using big screen televisions. Patry thinks the […]
Since the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) proposed to legalize file sharing, many Canadian groups have responded, both positively and negatively. The Canadian Music Creators Coalition called it a “forward thinking approach” that ought to be discussed, while foreign corporations’ Canadian representatives (such as the Canadian Recording Industry Assocation) slammed […]
William Patry highlights Cary Sherman’s defence of the RIAA against the recent Washington Post article, offering further explaining for the quote that copying a song you bought is a “nice way of saying ‘steals just one song’” from a Sony BMG representative: “The Sony person who (Fisher) relies on actually […]
I take it back. According to TechDirt the Washington Post got it wrong. The RIAA isn’t (yet) insane enough to bring a lawsuit against someone for merely copying files to their computer, but the lawsuit in question is actually one of simply making those files available (which is contestable as […]
A message from QuizSource.org If you like music then you can find some music quizzes on the Internet to suit any tastes. For those who want to do a fun quiz but they aren’t interested in music you can find online quizzes in a wide variety of themes, from quiz […]
While I was very pleased with the proposal the Songwriters’ Association of Canada recently put forth to legalize file sharing in Canada, I couldn’t help but slam my head against the table when reading the “what some music creators have to say” link. With the exception of the a few […]
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently released software which it urged some of America’s largest universities to employ in order to monitor their networks for unauthorized file sharing. Not only do the universities not owe the MPAA anything, but the toolkit was found by security specialists to raise […]