CRIA/RIAA/etcReports from or about the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) and other regional lobbyists for the legacy methods of creation, distribution and funding of music they represent. Major label lobby group CRIA's dishonest name changeI offered the following as a comment to a Billboard article by Karen Bliss discussing CRIA's name change to "Music Canada". Seems to be an ongoing thing where the more controvercial a group becomes, the more likely they are to change their name. There is also a desire by some organizations to change their name as part of a lobbying effort to confuse people as to what roll the specific organization actually plays.
Thoughts about C-32 committee meeting 15Today was a music industry day, with the morning session being representatives of the recording industry ("makers of sound recording"), and the afternoon session being music composers and their publishers. The story in the morning was very familiar: The sky is falling -- look at how bad it is (spin the wheel of alleged misfortune) -- and something must be done. Bill C-32 is "something", so clearly it will stop the sky from falling. It must be passed, and we should stop talking about it.
Falling off the edge of a flat world?Professor Birgitte Andersen has posted a very interesting response to old-economy industry association critique of studies she has authored. While focused on copyright, I found the section talking about evidence based policy making vs "intuition" to be useful for all political discussions.
My response to Loreena McKennittMusician Loreena McKennitt penned an opinion piece where she spoke about declining revenues for a whole series of largely unrelated industries, and then made two wild unfounded claims: first, that "today's online environment, where piracy is virtually unchecked" was the problem, and second that Bill C-32 was a solution.
EMI Evolves Along With Music Industry ChangesMore good news in a Wired article by Eliot Van Buskirk. While the article doesn't go into the nitty-gritty details, it looks like EMI is moving from being a label focused on sales of product to licensing music (compositions and recorded performances) as widely as possible. They may focus on the "not available for sale to you" problem. I am hoping this signifies a change in lobbying strategy as well from what we have seen from CRIA in Canada, which has been focused on protecting legacy label business model rather than protecting the competing interests of the wider music industry.
Differentiating allies and opponents in the Copyright debateCopyright is often claimed to be a balance between rights-holders’ interests on the one hand and the interests of users and society as a whole on the other hand. I only wish things were that simple. I could take my place alongside other rights-holders, and know that copyright law would at least be taking the interests of creators into serious consideration. The problem is that the reality is quite different. With digital copyright you have potentially 4 rights-holder groups. Even if you only consider the interests of copyright holders, the vast majority of the debates I have witnessed have been between and within copyright holder groups, not between copyright holders and some other individual or group. Just as with previous bills, the tabling of Bill C-32 will bring new people to the debate. Reading how I evaluate my allies and opponents may be useful as a kick-start for those people. Read full article on IT World Canada's blog
Separating Science from Science Fiction on the Business News NetworkLast week I had the opportunity to discuss the new copyright bill on the BNN show Squeezeplay. The other guest was Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Hill, and the hosts were Andrea Mandel-Campbell and Rudyard Griffiths. It became obvious during the interview that the hosts had the misconception that they had a creator and a consumer, or even a creator and someone who wanted to infringe copyright. At one point Mr. Griffiths even asked me if I were supportive of the rule of law, which threw me for a loop as I hadn't expected that type of bias. What they actually had was two creators with a different level of technical knowledge, and thus a different understanding of the impact on creators of the policy we were being presented in the bill.
Fairness in an expanded Private Copying regime for recorded musicNo matter what I feel about the Private Copying regime for recorded music, it is clear that the music industry wants this. When I say music industry I mean composers and performers who have come out strongly in favor of the regime. It has become clear that the recording industry can no longer be said to represent musicians or the overall music industry. I can live with this regime being expanded to devices as I consider it the lesser of two evils: a levy on devices, or non-owner locks on devices. In order for the regime to have any resemblance of fairness it should be obvious that we can't allow both.
Why do some people claim that Canadian copyright is "weak"?In a series of postings over the years, lawyer Howard Knopf has detailed how Canadian Copyright law is strong (protects incumbent copyright holders), including many ways that Canadian law is stronger than that of the USA (See: 21 Reasons Why Canadian Copyright Law is Already Stronger Than USA's, 22nd Example of How Canadian Copyright Law is Stronger than US - and Another Possible US Treaty Violation) I had a recent twitter conversation with lawyer Barry Sookman, who has clients in the recording, motion picture and proprietary software industries. As a response to his tweet, "Canada again named to USTR’s Priority Watch List for weak IP laws", I said "Canada being on the USTR priority watch list for having strong Copyright (stronger than US in many ways) only makes list a joke". He then claimed I was wrong, pointing me his submission to the summer 2009 copyright consultation. His submission didn't provide me with what I was looking for, which was something as detailed as what Mr. Knopf has authored.
Podcast #35: The iTax & Fair DealingJesse Brown interviewed Charlie Angus about his private copying regime private members bill and fair use motion.
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