I Own My Music

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Paying for information is “a dying behemoth,” says Alice Taylor, commissioning editor for education at Britain’s Channel 4 TV.

“‘ ‘Piracy’ – as done by teenagers, all my friends, pretty much everyone I know, is simply demand where appropriate supply does not exist,” she says on Scotland’s new Perspectives website, going on:

“Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies — in other words, anti-copying, anti-fair use — are also anti-accessibility. They attempt to block and restrict, and they …

p2pnet news view Music | Mobiles:- ASCAP recently sued AT&T, claiming each time a cellphone ringtone rang, you were listening to a performance. And that required a royalty payment to ASCAP.

So says Mashable.

“Thankfully, federal judge Denise Cote has ruled that a ringtone going off does not constitute a public performance, because the carrier has no way to control when a ringtone plays nor any expectation of revenue when it does,” says the story, continuing »»»

She also said there was no …

Magistrate Judge: Neither Ray Beckermann Nor The RIAA Vexatious TechDirt
Remember last year when the RIAA sought to have lawyer Ray Beckermann declared a vexatious litigant and asked for sanctions? Well, a magistrate judge has now said that the RIAA’s complaints were “largely overstated” (shocking, I know) and that Beckermann should not face any sanctions: “Although defendant’s counsel took an unusually aggressive stance and, at times, veered into hyperbole and gratuitous attacks on the recording industry as a whole, I do not find clear evidence …

p2pnet news view | P2P | Movies:- A significant number of movies — most? — which show up on the P2P networks originate in Hollywood as screeners, work prints and other associated ‘product’.

But through their MPAA, the major studios insist their problems centre on kids with camcorders of the kind made by Sony, one of the loudest complainers.

Nowadays, you can’t go to the cinema without fear of being hassled by an eager usher with night vision specs, or having staff …

p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- Niklas Zennstrom (left) and Janus Friis created Kazaa which, in 2009, arguably has the singular distinction of being the most hated and despised of all corporate P2P digital media distribution applications. Priit Kasesalu is the third, rarely mentioned, member of the team.

Owned either by Australia’s Sharman Networks or Sharman associate Brilliant Digital Entertainment — actual parenthood remains uncertain — it was the application most used by victims of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner …

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Texas Instruments should stop using the DMCA to threaten hobbyists who blogged about potential mods to the company’s programmable graphing calculators, says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

TI’s calculators perform a “signature check” that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded onto the hardware, says the story.

But, “researchers were able to reverse-engineer signing keys, allowing modders to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators’ hardware,” it says, going on:

“In response …

p2pnet news view | Freedom:- Even smokers wouldn’t deny repeatedly inhaling deeply toxic smoke from burning leaves mixed with carcinogenic substances can’t be anything but bad.

Very bad.

But of all addictions, smoking is one of the hardest to break and people still struggling with the Big Tobacco demon are victims who deserve our sympathy.

However, anti-smoking zealots often seem to think people who still smoke do it because they want to, and some tobacco abolitionists go to ridiculous extremes in demanding measures meant to …

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- “I first started getting interested in ‘copyfight’ and issues related to filesharing in college, where I was introduced to a local network where resident students across the university campus could connect and share what they loved on- and offline,” writes Michael Castello on his mistypedURL blog.

As the music industry continued to, “ratchet up their anti-sharing campaigns, I thought that the iTunes Music Store, the EFF’s Voluntary Collective Licensing plan and later, Warner Music’s Choruss …

p2pnet news view P2P | Politics:- The IOC Almighty is stomping, or wants to stomp, people who dare to publish Olympics news or images without its permission.

Now, further news reveals British Columbia, p2pnet’s home province an the location of the forthcoming Winter Olympics, has also decided censorship is the way to go.

“A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice,” according to the CBC.

Raids on people’s home …

p2pnet news view Music:- It’s official! The corporate music industry is in deep —- sorry, in desperate need of salvation!

And Spotify’s Daniel Ek  over in Sweden and producer Rob Cavallo in the US believe they’re just the guys to assist.

Can a streaming service, “help rescue the music industry from meltdown”? – asks Times Online.

Ek reckons so, although, “In terms of monetisation, we’ve admittedly not made it easy for our users to buy music,” he says in the story.

“That’s an area …