Heritage Minister James Moore ignited a wasp’s nest of angry responses when he labelled those oposed to copyright reform “radical extremists”. Most of the response comes from those who do not wish to be hindered in how they choose to use digital media they have purchased.
However, no one seems to have an alternate solution for how the creators of digital media can be ensured that they get compensated for creating. Everyone wants unfettered access to what is created, and unfortunately in this day and age, piracy has pretty much killed my ability to make a living creating music.
Digital locks will not prevent this, but what other model is there that today’s consumer would support that would ensure that I can get paid for what I produce?
Should I work at Tim Horton’s, and in my spare time, produce music for everyone to have access to for free?
From NielsenWire (June 15-10)
The popularity of social media is undeniable – three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites. This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes. For the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, after the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% over last year. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/social-media-accounts-for-22-percent-of-time-online/
David Pakman, former CEO of eMusic, and now a venture capitalist, in an interview with Philip Leigh:
“David believes that the recorded music business has reached yet another mutation point. Over the past decade worldwide revenues dropped from $40 billion to about $17 billion. Furthermore, unless the industry begins to proceed along a new evolutionary path he predicts the declines will continue for another five years before bottoming-out at perhaps $7 billion.”
http://insidedigitalmedia.com/musics-next-evolution/
Philip Leigh: Inside Digital Media, Posted by Phil Leigh on June 17, 2010
Rochester, New York telephone subscribers reacted to the following message from the Bell System 124 years ago in 1886. “Unlimited telephone use leads to unnecessary occupation of our wires and to much borrowing of telephones by parties who are not subscribers. This encumbers the system with unnecessary and illegitimate calls resulting in greatly impaired service.”
When Bell switched Rochester to metered rates, nearly everybody in the city quit subscribing.
The Globe and Mail reported today that wireless carriers, especially in the US are beginning to feel the demand for bandwidth, and that Canada will soon experience the same demand. Carriers are responding by putting caps on their unlimited plans, and slowing down bandwidth to those users who exceed 5 Gbytes a month, which is the equivalent to 2 full length Hollywood movie downloads.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/the-wireless-data-crunch/article1590031/
The Canadian government has tabled legislation that when passed will provide modern copyright protection in line with the rest of the world.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tories-unveil-tougher-copyright-bill/article1589815/
From Billboard.biz: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i0179550940df36d10ad3bbee9882464f
— A new copyright bill was introduced in Canada on Wednesday. IP lawyer Barry Sookman hailed the bill’s allowance to create mash-ups from copyrighted material and said the bill, if passed, “would probably be the most copyright-user-friendly bill anywhere in the world.” That provision for user-generated content would allow people to create mash-ups if not for commercial gain, the source is mentioned and if the new work does not have a “substantial adverse effect” on the existing copyright. The bill includes tough penalties for circumventing digital locks and would allow for format of songs for personal use. New fair use provisions in the bill include education, parody and satire. Record labels and movie studios may not like that the proposed bill says ISPs cannot be held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers. However, the bill does formalize the system by which content owners send infringement notices to ISP customers. In addition, the bill creates a new civil liability category for businesses that enable piracy.
The MUSIC and New Digital Media REPORT 