At some point in the coming days, there will be an announcement for the new head of the U.S. Copyright Office. I fully expect that everyone will have their litmus test for whether the new person (called the “Register” for historical reasons that have probably outlived their usefulness) should be appointed. The fact is that […]
When you look at the ask on damages in the lawsuits against services like Spotify, it’s typical to see certain types of damages listed. One I have never seen is what we’ve long discussed on MTP: non-display uses of recordings, lyrics and artist names. After all, as The Economist tells us “The world’s most […]
Senators Thom Tillis and Mike Lee want to know if Google is cooking the search results to favor YouTube.
The U.S. Congress has finally gotten around to examining the monopoly power of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. We will no doubt hear many stories of how these companies promote or restrict competition, exploit slave labor in China, run sweatshops in the U.S. and of course control the media message for political candidates. We will […]
Pick up the phone and call Senator Ron Wyden at the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Tell him to take his hold off of S. 1273. And then ask your senators to support S. 1273 the CASE Act.
A performance metric one hears from the digerati is the term “conversion rate.” “Conversion rate” for a streaming service usually means the rate at which users of an ad-supported free service are “converted” to paying users. That motivation is usually because they are so fed up with the advertising they are willing to pay. […]
If Congress wants to fix the DMCA, Congress needs to fix Google’s scam operations, too.
[Editor Charlie sez: This post is a version of Chris Castle’s comment in the current Copyright Office rulemaking on the transparency of the MLC and originally appeared on The Trichordist.] By Chris Castle Just when you think you understand Title I of the Music Modernization Act, another toad runs out from under a rock. My nickname […]
MTP readers will no doubt have been following the absurd “National Emergency Library” scam that anti-artist activist Brewster Kahle is pushing to the great satisfaction of the BrewBros. BrewBros based the “National Emergency Library” on a “superpower” interpretation of fair use (no, that’s really what they said) that is yet another example of a very […]
[This post first appeared on ArtistRightsWatch] If you’ve ever seen the classic musical The Music Man, you will remember the stereotypical character of “Marian the Librarian” who was romanced by the grifter Harold Hill. When it comes to the Internet Archive, we’re way past Marian but we have a whole new character in the role of […]
