So much for “there’s no copyright in ideas”

Words can’t express how ridiculously, ridiculously stupid this verdict is:

Photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind.

The images in question are here (PDF) if you fancy a look.

The economics of piracy

This is fascinating: Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy

Suppose the CEO of Wal-Mart came to Congress demanding a $50 million program to deploy FBI agents to frisk suspicious-looking teens in towns near Wal-Marts. A lawmaker might, without for one instant doubting that shoplifiting is a bad thing, question whether this is really the optimal use of federal law enforcement resources. The CEO indignantly points out that shoplifting kills one million adorable towheaded orphans each year. The proof is right here in this study by the Wal-Mart Institute for Anti-Shoplifting Studies. The study sources this dramatic claim to a newspaper article, which quotes the CEO of Wal-Mart asserting (on the basis of private data you can’t see) that shoplifting kills hundreds of orphans annually. And as a footnote explains, it seemed prudent to round up to a million. I wish this were just a joke, but as readers of my previous post will recognize, that’s literally about the level of evidence we’re dealing with here.

Good copy, bad copy

I found Coffin Dodgers on a couple of pirate sites yesterday, and it really annoyed me. Assuming it’s actually there – there’s no guarantee that just because a free download site says it’s got a book that it actually has the book – it means I’ve fallen victim to the wrong kind of copying.

There are two kinds of copying. There’s good copying, and there’s bad copying.

(This is a long post, so I’ve split it so it doesn’t overpower the entire home page)

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The other side of SOPA and anti-piracy legislation

I like Michael Marshall, and his blog post about the other side of the piracy debate is worth your time. Not all anti-piracy sentiment comes from swivel-eyed loons or Disney.

The government is supposed to be on the side of laws, isn’t it? Copyright is a law too. If they don’t defend that law in the new kind of social space that the internet represents, where will the laxity end? What other laws will be let slide on the grounds that they might impede the rights of Internet users to do what the heck they feel like? What about your right to privacy? You care a lot about that one, don’t you? What makes it so desperately important for the government to defend your rights there, but not defend others’ rights to be paid for their intellectual property?

This is why some of us worry about copyright cops

When people like me get worked up about ISP censorship, national firewalls and other wonderful ideas, it’s not because we condone theft. It’s because the people who do the censoring are often idiots. Here’s yet another example: the UK Music Publisher’s Association (MPA) managed to get an entire public domain music site taken offline because it – wrongly – believed that the site was hosting an illegal music score.

“You’re all our bitches now”

Good news for the BPI: BT and TalkTalk’s appeal against the Digital Economy Act has been rejected. It turns out that the Act is perfectly fair and decent and nothing to worry about whatsoever.

Amazingly, I have an opinion about that.

“Shareholders and customers of BT and TalkTalk might ask why so much time and money has been spent challenging the act to help reduce the illegal traffic on their networks,” BPI boss Geoff Taylor said. “You’re all our bitches now.”

OK, he didn’t say that last bit. But it’s true all the same. If BT and TalkTalk don’t appeal, we’re stuffed.

Illegal downloading did not cost the UK record industry £1 billion

Fun with bullshit statistics: the BPI says dodgy downloads cost record companies nearly £1 billion this year. But as the Guardian points out, even the BPI knows that figure is massively exaggerated:

While the notional worth of the 1.2bn illegal downloads was almost £1bn, the BPI estimated the actual loss from “forgone spend” was £219m in 2010.

Andrew Orlowski at The Register has a wonderful take on the news:

The British record industry group estimates there are 8 million people, or 23 per cent of the UK online population, using P2P software.

That means around two-thirds to three-quarters of people don’t indulge in piracy – a figure rarely mentioned in this debate, and a remarkable figure considering the risk of being caught (which are negligible) and potential savings (which are considerable). That means most people are fairly honest, and a considerable amount of money is not being tapped by the legitimate music business.

The BPI figures also neglect to mention that the music business is growing. Yes, sales of physical products are declining, but overall it’s party time. A report by PRS last year showed a changing industry:

retail product sales have declined, but the other parts of the industry have grown noticeably more than the decline in retail sales. This growth has come from a few sources. Live show attendance has increased more than retail sales have decreased. Consumers have actually spent more. On top of that, the business to business side of the industry (sponsorships, licensing, advertisements, etc.) has grown as well, opening up new and lucrative means of making money.

It’s not all good. There are real concerns that the money’s coming largely from established acts, the U2s and the Muses and the Rihannas and so on: they get a disproportionate share of the money pie, and there are fears that there isn’t another generation of enormo-acts behind them.

That may be true, but the reason for that isn’t piracy: it’s a whole mess of factors including an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the rise of alternative forms of entertainment such as videogames and so on.

Another big factor is the way in which record companies have changed: increasingly the landscape is one of mega-corporations whose need to satisfy shareholders means they want results now, not ten years from now. As the cliche goes, if U2 were around today, they probably wouldn’t get signed – and if they did get signed, they’d be dropped before their third album.

Over at No Rock, Simon H B adds:

Taylor [Geoff Taylor of the BPI] ends with a plea for more legislation. The BPI always think that what is needed is more unenforceable legislation.

How could the record labels ensure their demands get a sympathetic hearing? Here’s one idea: Private Eye reports that Universal Music gave £80,000 to the Tories in July.

Back to Simon:

The trouble is, with the bunch of turnips sitting in Westminster at the moment, they might get their wish. More time, money and effort trying to buck the marketplace. It’ll still fail, though.

Fembots, bats, twats

A few things I’ve written are online: first up, I’m doing Techradar’s weird tech section and I’ve got scary fembots, splattered bats and USB sticks as art.

If we were asked to describe the last seven days in one word, we’d say “week” – but if we weren’t allowed that word, we’d say “roboty”, “batty”, “flashy” or “printy”.

And here’s a wee piece about the government’s exciting new plans for “Silicon marshes” in London’s East End and some Google-friendly changes to our intellectual property laws.

Is it just me, or is there something horribly unethical about all of this? Having Google and Facebook throw Shoreditch a few crumbs while avoiding hundreds of millions, even billions of pounds in tax is a bit like someone stealing your dinner and then offering you a half-chewed chip.

Power, corruption and lies

Me, writing about the Digital Economy Bill debacle:

Could Spotify work for ebooks?

As long term readers will know, I’m amazed by the way in which the music business spent more than ten years missing every business opportunity the Internet brought them, effectively handing their entire business over to the pirates. Services such as Spotify should have turned up a long time ago.

Could the same kind of thing work for ebooks? Is there enough ad money to go round? Do book readers want to social network?

we have real-world equivalents for both its free and subscriber services. Libraries give books away for nothing – or seem to; in reality authors get a little bit of money in the form of Public Lending Right (PLR) royalties, a gap that online ad revenues could easily plug – while book clubs have offered heavily discounted prices to subscribers for decades.

Could similar ideas work online?