Creative Commons Corporation: Because it sure seems to cost a lot of money to give things away for free

By Chris Castle reposted from August 2010 Hey Jude by John Lennon and Paul McCartney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial–NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at http://www.musictechpolicy.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.musictechpolicy.com. Quotes regarding “the Commons” “What we [copyfighters] want to tell Hollywood is get […]

The Triumph of the Middleman: How not to monetize file sharing (in Sweden or elsewhere)

Update: Helienne Lindvall reporting in the Guardian tells us the latest tripe from Sweden–sorry–“meme” is the more correct for hive minders, right?  “Now Swedish songwriters are up in arms after their minister for trade and Centre Party leader, Annie Lööf, came out in favour of legalising illegal downloading “for private use”, in an effort to […]

Rep. Gohmert Nails It: Search Engines Should Block Adjudicated Infringers

At last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on H.R. 3261 (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”), former judge Louie Gohmert (R-TX) raised an interesting line of questioning:  If a website is found to infringe by a court order based on probable cause, why should it appear in search results.  Not surprisingly, Rep. Lofgren’s (D-Mountain View) response to the question dutifully […]

The Attack of the Unholy Alliance

Thanks to artists standing up for their human rights, the ugly truth that publicly traded companies in the US are profiting themselves from the theft of the intellectual property of creators was uncovered last year.  The enormity of this enterprise is difficult to get your mind around at first, but no more difficult than say, […]