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The Aaron Swartz case was the latest example of government overreach around copyright. It's high time we brought some common sense to copyright enforcement and federal agencies stopped being the police force for institutional copyright holders.
Read my full commentary on FierceContentManagement.
Photo courtesy of CanStockPhoto.
Ah the stupidity of the record companies was on full display once again this week when the New York Times reported that Sony issued a very limited edition -- as in a 100 copies limited -- of early Bob Dylan songs strictly to maintain ownership of the recordings under new European copyright laws set to take effect next year.
They went so far as to call it the Copyright Extension Collection! Talk about cynical manipulation of the legal system to maintain your 20th Century idea of control over music.
The funny part is that they actually are making it available for download on BobDylan.com, but only for people who sign on from Germany and France. Everyone else including the US is shit out of luck.
Yet by issuing the collection in such a limited way, they are missing a golden opportunity to actually, you know, make money.
That's because there is a huge Dylan fan base out there who would be happy to buy a CD collection of his rare early works. They could distribute on vinyl, CD, DVD with films and interviews and online on iTunes, Google Play and elsewhere including BobDylan.com.
It's all so wonderfully simple, it's a wonder that there isn't a record company executive who isn't jumping on this idea. But they can't see beyond their own greed and desire to own and control the music--and the likely end result is that it will get boot legged and distributed on some pirate sites.
What is the point of owning the music people would buy, and leaving it in a vault somewhere? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever except perhaps in the warped mind of a big record company executive. It completely defies business logic to behave in this fashion.
Of course, when these collections do end up on Bit Torrent or Pirate Bay, the record companies will bitch and moan about how they are being cheated by the Internet.
How do these people ever make money? Oh that's right, they don't anymore -- and no wonder.
Photo Credit: currybet
Image by Nutloaf via Flickr
I read with more than a passing interest that Associated Press (AP) has renewed its deal with Google to host AP content. Curley you may recall, along with Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp, has been shouting from the roof tops for the last couple of years, screaming at the top his voice, to anyone that would listen, that Google was stealing his content.
Curely had also famously had trouble with linking, you know, that process by which we share content. I've gotten to the point where I won't link to AP content if I can avoid it because of his public position on the matter. Yet now Mr. Curley is willing to make his deal with the devil (as he sees it).
Who knows maybe it was a negotiating position and Curley never believed the crap he was spewing or maybe he and Murdoch really don't get the Internet. Whatever the reason, AP is back on Google and I really hope he shuts up about them now for the foreseeable future. Hard to complain about a company you're in bed with, yet Curley has managed to do just that.
