Archive for: copyright
Last month we reported that Apple was suing popular Mac accessory maker, HyperMac. In their legal filings, Apple cited copyright/IP infringement specifically on their MagSafe adapters as the reason for the gavel toss. At first, anger is the only thing that came to mind. I mean, how could Apple put a truly innovative company out of business? Especially since Apple themselves won’t produce any type of external battery like HyperMac? And then it came to light that HyperMac was in talks with Apple to license their technology a bit more legally this time so that the 3rd party battery love fest could continue.
And continue it has. Sort of. HyperMac announced today that they will be re-branding themselves to “HyperJuice” in accordance with Apple’s lawsuit and licensing regulations. Hopefully a deal can be worked out so we can get these extremely useful batteries back on the market once again. Speaking of which, HyperMac batteries will officially go offline tonight at midnight. So if there was any lingering desire in your soul to get a HyperMac, now is the time.
First off — Eat a dick RIAA. You are the cancer of this planet. With that off our chests, let’s continue.
Over the last several months, Viacom and YouTube have been at each others’ throats in court over the basic principle of copyright infringement and liable YouTube is for 3rd party/users’ uploaded content. If Viacom would have won and had their way, YouTube would be front and center of the firing squad for something they literally have no control over — users’ uploaded content.
Thankfully, the judge overseeing the trial looked at the bigger picture, which, included such statistics as YouTube proactively removing up to 10,000 claimed “infringing” videos in a single day. That sounds out right amazing.
But given the RIAA’s insatiable appetite for stupidity and public malice, they’ve gone on the record, “enraged” and upset over the ruling, stating that YouTube doesn’t do anywhere near enough to combat piracy. Excuse me, but 10,000 videos per day is a huge amount of material to sift through, even with thousands of employees at your disposal. Furthermore, anyone who believes that a company or person should be held responsible for a third parties’ actions is a fucking idiot plane and simple. That “fucking idiot” in this case would be the RIAA.
The reality of the situation is that the outcome of the Viacom-YouTube trial was a huge success for consumers’ rights and common sense worldwide. It was one of the bigger victories over stupidity, namely RIAA-backed polices. Companies and people shouldn’t be held responsible for a third parties’ foils provided that the company/person in question follows the timely and necessary steps to correct the claimed “problem”
What we have is the RIAA yet again reaffirming what we all already know — they’re useless. They have nothing but their own interests and monetary values on their minds. And finally, “fair rights/consumers’ rights” mean absolutely nothing to them. Oh yeah, they are also void of any single shred of common sense.
Case closed.
Those concerned with “fair use”, the rules of engagement revolving around DRM, and countless other pro-consumer copyright issues need to stay the hell away from Canada. The person to thank — canadian federal Industry Minister Tony Clement. It is under his command that Canada is trying to push ahead with a grossly biased and one-sided anti-piracy bill.
The most disturbing of all the stipulations included focuses on DRM, specifically, removing or going around DRM. WIth the new additions to Canada’s Copyright Act, anyone — even that 11-year old kid copying his dads CD to put on his iPod — will be considered breaking the law and fined $5,000. Conversely, actual fines for people found uploading and downloading copyrighted materials will go down. How do they figure that…?
In this day and age, it’s becoming an increasingly common trait to misuse and confuse copyright law in the digital age. The simple matter of it is, you cannot place rules, business models, or regulations that were designed decades ago for physical goods on digital ones today. But alas, it is what it is. With that, we end up where we are today — Microsoft apparently realizing Android is a growing threat and instead of actually keeping their head down and putting all of their resources into Windows Phone 7, are looking to go down the legal route with Android.
If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em…
As time moves along, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the little guy/end user is having more and more of their rights and freedoms taken away. For today’s depressing example, we’ll look at Sony and their continual effort to fuck over PS3 users.
Follow me inside for the joyous news…
- February 15, 2010 2:34 pm
Score one for common sense today.
The basis of the internet is that the flow of information should be unencumbered and open to all. As more and more businesses finally get around to making the move online however, paywalls, false restrictions, and other types of anti-consumer/greed driven policies are being thrown up all over the place. Not only that, but common sense has been thrown out the window. In numerous cases over the last several years we’ve seen rather harmless and innocent actions such as merely linking to a page with copyrighted content getting the person doing the linking into hot water. One such case that perfectly illustrates this is the case involving tv-links.co.uk.
For several years now, tv-links has been fighting the UK courts and entertainment industry for being accused of aiding in copyright infringement by simply linking to YouTube videos of infringing content. To the you and I, individuals with at least some amount of common sense, drawing any correlation between a simple link to outright “theft” (as the entertainment industry would like to call it) is rather shortsighted.
Cooler heads have prevailed however as a UK court ruled in favor of tv-links, stating that they did not in fact, infringe on any content. While a happy ending for common sense and the general internet population as a whole, it’s still a shame that so much time (years) and countless dollars were wasted on such a frivolous and stupid lawsuit.
When will big media learn the ways of the web…
TechDirt
Joining the likes of Metalica’s Lars Ulrich and U2 manager Patrick McGuinness, U2 frontman Bono is starting off 2010 showing his incompetence and complete lack of understanding of the music marketplace in the digital age. In an article in the NYT, Bono claims the entire world needs stricter web copyright policies and more policing. This is the exact opposite of what really needs to happen. The real solution is simple — change your decades old business model (which does not work in a digital world/market) and reinvent your sphere of the commercial market.
Sadly, while I did enjoy U2′s music, it just won’t be the same for me anymore. How can I continue to support someone who automatically thinks I’m a criminal, not to mention wants to make my experience with music harder and full of countless more roadblocks, rules, and stipulations?
It could be worse however. I could live in Britain. Over yonder, rules have been set in motion to attach a £25 fee to every broadband bill in the country to help fund a universal web monitoring program that will set out to weed the internet of illegal files. The only hiccup is that a wide range of groups oppose the measure. Groups such as ISP’s, MI5, and intelligent musicians have all spoken out against the monitoring program as a bad idea. So why press on?
The world is run by lobbyists, not the very people who vote to put those in power in their positions. It’s a cold hard truth. They can push stronger policing efforts all they want. At the end of the day, the pirates and those they’re trying to catch will always get away while the rest of the general public suffers.
Stop on by TechDirt at any point and you can find countless articles showing how countries around the world with less emphasis on copyrights and IP law have more innovation. There’s some false belief in the States that more copyrights and copyright laws will somehow make more inventions. Case in point: Google won’t put multi-touch apps on the Android platform themselves for fear of legal attack by Apple’s lawyers. (Why HTC, Palm, and several others do and get away with it remains a mystery). If it is in fact Apple’s lawyers keeping Google from using the feature, their copyright is preventing innovation. Google could come out with a revamped multi-touch experience or use it in a way we’ve never thought of. Unfortunately we’ll have to forever wonder what it would be like.
The most telling example of Bono’s utter lack of intelligence when all things digital are concerned, he cites the movie industry as succeeding in quelling piracy and online file sharing problems. First of all, I can find any movie I want online just as easily as I can music. They (the movie industry) has not solved anything. Second, the movie industry is even more removed from the equation. With even stricter web/digital policies on movies, they are even worse off. Why someone would want to replicate such a poor example of how to run a business and distribute content is beyond me.
It’s quite sad really. The movie industry has gotten to a point where they’re lobbying congress to pass rules to let them disable analog outputs on TV’s for select movies/TV shows under the guise of “reducing piracy” and help them more easily release movies on TV before being made available via normal retail channels. It’s complete BS. It’s an easy way for them to milk our wallets even more. Just imaging if some music labels banned together and tried to disable outputs and other pieces of our audio gear to prevent file sharing/end of the world? It would be a legal shit storm to put it mildly.
It is people like Lars, Bono, and McGuinness who are destroying the music industry and any chance they have to actually making a good impression/fully maximizing potential in the digital age. With every rule, every DRM scheme, every web monitoring plan, they are pushing themselves further and further into irrelevance. These people completely miss the point of the digital age — it is not to steal, but to share and share openly. That is why the internet was invented for. Intelligent music artists whom are breaking away from the traditional music label structure and instead going it alone or at least commanding more control over their works are finding fans and income greatly benefit.
It is the year 2010. You cannot charge $10-$15 for 8-15 digital files that cost absolutely nothing to reproduce, distribute, or “package”. Plain and simple.
Pocket-Lint > NYT
TorrentFreak
- November 20, 2009 1:28 pm
Just when you thought YouTube was becoming this all knowing all loving *now HD* online video giant, they go and pull some stupid crap like revoking the rights of countless 3rd party hardware and service partners by making their API’s off limits. Specifically, the new YouTube ToS prohibit anyone from using YouTube API’s if they are “created for use on television set top boxes, television game consoles, or video screens packaged and marketed as television sets”. Wow, asshole move there isn’t it? There are a ton of 3rd parties who use YouTube’s API’s and will therefore be hurt by this newfound douchery.
Mind you, not all 3rd parties are being excluded from using the API as there are a few exceptions. So far the “few exceptions” appear to be the likes of Sony’s Playstation 3, Nintendo’s Wii, TiVo, Panasonic, Samsung, and several other licensed partners are safe. So in the end it’s all about the money again. Unfortunately that leaves many start ups and innovative services such as the now YouTube-less “Popcorn Hour” (YouTube denial pictured above) out of luck and less one highly sought after feature.
So we have to ask, is this something related to a Google-based decision, or is it because of they’re new buddy buddy relationship with the various assholes in suits big recording labels?
Engadget
- November 19, 2009 10:39 am
Living in the UK and using the internet, particularly any type of torrent or P2P software/service whether legal or illegal is soon going to become a nightmare. The reason for the hoopala is because of an planned change to the Digital Economy Bill currently under debate by Pariliament. The person seeking those changes, Secretary of State Peter Mandelson, is aiming to create a “secondary legislation” that can amend laws and bills at will and without debate or approval from any other government party as long as it’s in the name of “copyright protection”. Bullshit. This guy is a f’ing idiot. It gets worse…
