COPYCENSE

Happy Thanksgiving, and here’s to the free flow of day-after-Thanksgiving sales information, lest your favorite retailer abuse the Copyright Act by threatening or filing bogus DMCA takedown notices that preempt the online distribution of factual information.

Article of the Week

Greg Sandoval. Prince: The Artist Who Formerly Liked the Internet. News.com. Nov. 13, 2007. A superb article on Prince’s sudden and alarming attempts to control every bit of information about him available on the Web. Prince’s behavior has led to (or is connected to) several legal skirmishes, including the infamous EFF-sponsored Lenz v. Universal litigation, in which a mother is suing a record company after the label asked YouTube to remove a video of the plaintiff’s children dancing to the artist’s 1984 hit “Let’s Go Crazy.” This bizarre behavior comes after Prince freely gave away in the U.K. millions of copies of his most recent album, and after a period in which Prince was one of the artists most likely to search for new business models through the Web.

Prince’s tactics are even more bizarre when one considers he is one of the artists most likely to benefit from a return to a music industry in which artists earn money through performance rather than album sales. He already has a headlining live show in Las Vegas (at a club he owns, mind you) for which tickets are more than $100 apiece. And anyone who has been listening to Prince long enough knows that the shows always are better than the recorded performances. (Hello, the Super Bowl? In the rain?) Prince will make his money, and should have enough to manage a soup-to-nuts operation for distributing his content. So in the end, this all is peculiar … and oh so typically Prince. Categories: Film & Video; Music; Visual Art.

Quote of the Week

Food banks are a dominant institution in this country, and they assert their power at the local and state levels by commanding the attention of people of good will who want to address hunger. Their ability to attract volunteers and to raise money approaches that of major hospitals and universities. While none of this is inherently wrong, it does distract the public and policymakers from the task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States. …

We know hunger’s cause — poverty. We know its solution — end poverty. Let this Thanksgiving remind us of that task.

Mark Winne. When Handouts Keep Coming, the Food Line Never Ends. WashingtonPost.com. Nov. 18, 2007.

Clippings

Nate Anderson. Overly-Broad Copyright Law Has Made USA a “Nation of Infringers.” Ars Technica. Nov. 19, 2007. Highlights an interesting paper from University of Utah law professor John Tehranian, which argues “three key trends bear close observation. First, copyright law is increasingly relevant to the daily life of the average American. Second, this
growing pertinence has precipitated a heightened public consciousness over copyright issues. Finally, these two facts have magnified the vast disparity between copyright law and copyright norms and, as a result, have highlighted the need for
reform.” Ars, itself, ask two important (somewhat rhetorical) questions: “What better way could there be to create a nation of constant lawbreakers than to instill in that nation a contempt for its own laws? And what better way to instill contempt than to hand out rights so broad that most Americans simply find them absurd?” Categories: Bundle of Rights; Research.

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