No Royalties for Ringtone ‘Performances’

Posted on 15. Oct, 2009 by refe.

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There are two big stories in the news today related to intellectual property and music royalties. The first, which I will save for a separate post, is the passing of the Performance Rights Act by the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’ve written about the PRA before, but there have been some new developments since then and [...]

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Listener Value vs. Commercial Value

Posted on 29. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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What makes music valuable? And who is it valuable to?
I recently had a discussion with a musician who is convinced that new business models – specifically those involving free or open licenses, such as Creative Commons – “devalue music.” The spirit behind his position is simple: the less control he has over the tracks he [...]

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Deconstructing the Week in Music 6.22 – 6.28

Posted on 28. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Know something we don’t? Submit a story.

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Creative Culture and the Growing Copyright Extremism

Posted on 19. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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Creative culture is on the rise, thanks largely to recent technology. Anybody can shoot a video or record a song and upload it to YouTube and millions of people might see it. Digital technology has put the arts back into the hands of the people.
Copyright lawyer and chairman of Creative Commons Larry Lessig gave a presentation about [...]

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BitBlinder Baits RIAA With Free Anonymous Filesharing

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by refe.

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The RIAA is not going to be happy about the newest evolution of file-sharing technology.
BitBlinder is a free new service that claims to hide users’ IP addresses, allowing them to
use BitTorrent anonymously. There is only one reason for this, of course, and that is to
hide illegal activity from the authorities. In the words of one [...]

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Danger Mouse Releases ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ As Blank CD-R

Posted on 16. May, 2009 by refe.

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Danger Mouse – real name Brian Burton – was a relative unknown until he produced the Grey Album, which took the vocal tracks of Jay-Z’s a capella Black Album and laid them over beats that he created using samples of the Beatles’ White Album. The Grey Album couldn’t be sold commercially, but quickly spread across the [...]

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YouTube Blocks Music Videos in Germany

Posted on 01. Apr, 2009 by refe.

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Google recently blocked all music videos from YouTube users in the UK, and now it looks like it has done the same in Germany. In both cases the deal breaker was royalty fees that Google deemed unacceptably high. Google’s contract with GEMA – the German royalty collection agency - expired last Thursday and GEMA is requiring royalty [...]