Fair Use Day team Joins the RIAA March 31, 2006
For immediate release: April Fools!
The International Fair Use Day (IFUD) team has, after extensive review, come to the conclusion that fair use rights are illegal and unconstitutional and therefore must denounce fair use as the work of Satan. (more…)
Free Downloads 6, new album-mix-type-thingy March 28, 2006
The Kleptones announced the release of their new 2-CD album “24 Hours”. I am only half way through this amazingly cool collection of mash-ups but I will definitely be checking out their other 4 albums later. Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing us to this free download. You can download individual tracks, the whole album as one file, or all the tracks in one zip file.
While I was poking around at the Kleptones blog I came across a link to “Introduction to Copyfighting“, “a brief but informative introduction to the current on-line war of intellectual property rights” by Scott Kleper. It’s a good read while you are listening to some great tunes.
Save the music fan March 18, 2006
The EFF miniLink says it all, “Music label launches campaign to stop the RIAA suits.” The CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, Terry McBride, is offering to pay legal fees and fines for a family being sued by the RIAA. The web site is here.
You really should watch the video clip of the interview with McBride who’s label is home to artists like Avril Lavigne and MC Lars. The 15-year-old daughter of the family being sued heard the MC Lars song “Download This Song” which slams the recording industry with lyrics like “Hey Mr. Record Man, your system can’t compete/It’s the new artist model, file transfer complete,” and emailed Lars who passed it on to McBride.
Edit: More coverage here.
Free downloads 5, South by Southwest
From their about page “the 2006 SXSW Music and Media Conference showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over fifty stages in downtown Austin…” and you don’t have to go there to enjoy the music. Presently, they have released two torrent files to download with almost 1000 free mp3’s. I have been listening to these two collections for over a week and the music is great. I’ve found several new favorites to add to my play list.
Bound By Law, Fair use comic March 15, 2006
The comic book “Bound by Law? (Tales from the Public Domain)” is a fantastically good read on copyright, fair use, and how they impact the making of documentary films. Created by three law professors at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain this is the most entertaining and informative book ever on the complicated subject of copyright. The story is based on Akiko, a filmmaker wanting to capture a day in the life of New York and dealing with all of the obstacles that copyright puts in the way.
“A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true?”
This book is a great educational resource as well as being a lot of fun to read. It’s published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license so you can read on line, download it, or buy it and help support this non-profit effort. I bought two, one to keep and one to pass around.
USACM issues policy recommendations on DRM March 13, 2006
There is a post on EFF: Deeplinks about the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (USACM) who has issued a set of policy recommendations regarding DRM. These sound very reasonable and we all should expect no less. Heres a snippet
“Copyright Balance: Because lawful use (including fair use) of copyrighted works is in the publics best interest, a person wishing to make lawful use of copyrighted material should not be prevented from doing so. As such, DRM systems should be mechanisms for reinforcing existing legal constraints on behavior (arising from copyright law or by reasonable contract), not as mechanisms for creating new legal constraints. Appropriate technical and/or legal safeguards should be in place to preserve lawful uses in cases where DRM systems cannot distinguish lawful uses from infringing uses.”
Consumer Protection: DRM should not be used to interfere with the rights of consumers. Neither should DRM technologies interfere with any technology or use of consumer systems that are unrelated to the copyrighted items being managed. Policymakers should actively monitor actual use of DRM and amend policies as necessary to protect these rights and interests.”
Now lets hope the policy makers listen.
Free downloads 4, Evil free music March 3, 2006
I want to tell you about a record label that lets you listen to their entire catalog for free, Magnatune.com . I’m serious! They actually want you to listen to their stuff for free, no DRM, no time limits, no restrictions. And get this, you are not gonna believe this, they want you to share the mp3’s you get from them. They don’t mind. If all this were not insane enough they go right over the edge and let you use the music from their artists to create derivative works. They call it “Open Music” and describe it like this
“Open Music is music that is shareable, available in “source code” form, allows derivative works and is free of cost for non-commercial use. It is the concept of “open source” computer software applied to music.”
The Broadcast Flag is back, again
In yet another attempt to strip fair use down to nothing Representative Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.) has introduced the Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006, H.R. 4861, (pdf)
“To authorize the Federal Communications Commission to
impose licensing conditions on digital audio radio to protect
against the unauthorized distribution of transmitted
content.”
Notice how it says “unauthorized”. This bill could make it illegal to use your fair use rights. In order to make unauthorized, but still legal copy’s for any kind of use you would have to get permission from the copyright holder. On page 2 of the bill it says
“such licenses shall include prohibitions against
unauthorized copying and redistribution of transmitted
content through the use of a broadcast flag or similar
technology,”
The broadcast flag will take another huge chunk of fair use away. Find your Representative and let them know that you don’t want the broadcast flag. There is also a message form on the EFF action alert page where you can send your rep a letter.
There is more coverage of this story here and here. The EFF has some other alerts in the Action Center you may be interested in.
