April 21, 2008

Time to rethink copyright...? (Shane Richmond / Telegraph)

A good read here
Read my related EndofControl essays here
The column "Copyright in the Age of Uncontrolled Distribution" is here

Different_words_same_thing_gerd_pic

Apr 21, 2008 5:25:00 PM | Copyright

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Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses (Cory Doctorow in the Guardian) Cory Doctorow (one of my favorite writers - his recent book "Overclocked" is a must-read if you like science fiction that is not-very-much-fiction-at-all) has a very good column in the UK Guardian, here. Cory is really good at nailing stuff down that is otherwise left in more murky waters - here is a high-light: "We need to stop shoe-horning cultural use into the little carve-outs in copyright, such as fair dealing and fair use. Instead we need to establish a new copyright regime that reflects the age-old normative consensus about what's fair and what isn't at the small-scale, hand-to-hand end of copying, display, performance and adaptation..." Cory also mentions the 'Access to Knowledge (A2K) treaty' which seems like a good thing to tune into.
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In music, the LongTail still won't work without a head and a body: Announcing big changes at Sonific (Over & Out) Update: Sept 10, 2008: Sonific is over, for good. Thanks for waiting. My music widget startup, Sonific, just announced that it is going offline on May 1. Below are some snippets from my announcement, all other details are on Sonific's blog, here. This obviously a tough development but we are hoping that while this door may be closing now another may open up. Sonific.com will go offline on May 1, 2008 A message by Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder & CEO As a consequence of a the unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling Sonific's founders and investors have decided to temporarily take Sonific.com and Sonific.net offline. While we are looking for other ways to realize our vision we are also open to talking to any interested party that may have use for Sonific's user base, content relationships, technologies or distribution network (please contact us anytime to find out more). Together with some other partners, we may also investigate the concept of making Sonific a paid-for service that is provided to artists, record labels and other content providers on a white-label basis. Here are some background details on our decision: 1) There are countless startups providing access to any and all music streams without any license whatsoever. However, when we approached the major record label decision makers in order to obtain licenses for some of the music in their catalogs we have routinely faced demands for very large cash advances and fixed per-stream minimum payments, pressure to give them 'free' company equity, and requirements of utterly bizarre usage restrictions. It seems that the industry's major stakeholders still prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow real-life, workable and market-based solutions to emerge by working with new companies such as Sonific. This is not the way...

Gerd Leonhard

Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist

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