Abby and Robbie discuss the reality of war: the pre-propaganda that has manufactured consent for the illegal occupations, video game warfare and cognitive dissonance in combat, the Marine urination scandal; Martin Luther King Jr. and historical revisionism minimizing how anti-imperialism was the main pillar of his philosophical platform; the CIA and the US covert war in Iran; SOPA, PIPA breakdown, the difference between copyright and fair use, the threat to net neutrality and websites like Media Roots under this overarching legislation.

Donald Tusk. Photo: Πρωθυπουργός της Ελλάδας, modified by PL Przemek (CC)

I made a definite decision to suspend the ratification process of ACTA – said Prime Minister Donald Tusk today. – It is not enough – a lawyer immediately commented Peter Waglowski (Vagla). – Signature of the international agreement itself is the “concreting” normative discussion in Poland.

Tusk admitted that during the consultation ws. ACTA represents the interests of the environment and point of view of Internet users were not adequately represented and consulted with organizations primarily associated with broadcasters and creators.

Tusk promises to open debate

– We need to make sure that ACTA is one hundred percent safe for the citizens – said the Prime Minister. – Until you explain yourself all the questions, so long will be suspended the ratification process of ACTA and can not be excluded that in the final will mean a lack of acceptance for this contract – he added.

Tusk announced that it will be examined by national law that may be changed. – This debate may revise the traditional perception of property rights. Today’s rules that the imbalances are holding developers and users have to be examined – he said. – I have no doubt that the Polish law regulations are more restrictive than those of the ACTA. We want to order in Poland was the most libertarian, of course, in the framework of international law, we will not be an island – he said…

[continues at TOKFM, translated by Google] ]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/poland-suspends-acta/feed/ 0 http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/anonymouss-black-march-media-survival-guide/ http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/anonymouss-black-march-media-survival-guide/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:39:24 +0000 ckn http://www.disinfo.com/?p=67559

"copyrighted media won't be allowed while internet is censored"

Anonymous and other various Internet freedom groups are calling on people to boycott the corporate media for the entire month of March 2012 in efforts to affect the bottom line of organizations calling for the imposition of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  ACTA will profoundly restrict the fundamental rights, freedom of expression and communication privacy of Internet users the world over.

For those of you who intend to participate in the boycott, there is plenty of public domain and Creative Commons licensed  media that, for now, is freely available for you to download and enjoy, enough for the entire month of March.

The following is by no means an exhaustive list of sources to help you remain entertained while participating in the Black March Boycotts.

Video

• Internet Archive: Moving Images
• Creative Commons Video Section
• OpenFlix
• The Open Video Project
• Public Domain Comedy Video
• Public Domain Torrents
• Public.Resource.org
• Wikipedia list of films in the Public Domain

Audio /…

"copyrighted media won't be allowed while internet is censored"

Anonymous and other various Internet freedom groups are calling on people to boycott the corporate media for the entire month of March 2012 in efforts to affect the bottom line of organizations calling for the imposition of The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.  ACTA will profoundly restrict the fundamental rights, freedom of expression and communication privacy of Internet users the world over.

For those of you who intend to participate in the boycott, there is plenty of public domain and Creative Commons licensed  media that, for now, is freely available for you to download and enjoy, enough for the entire month of March.

The following is by no means an exhaustive list of sources to help you remain entertained while participating in the Black March Boycotts.

Video

• Internet Archive: Moving Images
• Creative Commons Video Section
• OpenFlix
• The Open Video Project
• Public Domain Comedy Video
• Public Domain Torrents
• Public.Resource.org
• Wikipedia list of films in the Public Domain

Audio / Music / Sound

• Internet Archive: Audio
• Creative Commons Audio Section
• Free Music Archive
• Public Domain Sounds
• MusOpen
• LibriVox (Public Domain Audio Books)

Text / Books / Magazines / Literature

• Internet Archive:  Books & Text
• Project Guteberg
• Creative Commons Books Section
• Authorama
• Internet Public Library
• Feedbooks
• Baen Free Library
• Bartleby
• The University of Oxford Text Archive

Please dig in, re-view some classics and enjoy our open media heritage, while it remains free and open, and feel free to post your suggestions of Black March safe media.

]]>

An operation planned by a large international team of law enforcement working over the course of years and carried out with helicopters and machine guns in a military style raid. Taking refuge in a safe room, reportedly found “near a semi-automatic shotgun”, a larger than life villain is dragged out and taken into custody.

Photo: Andreas Bohnenstengel (CC)

No, the target is not a drug kingpin, nor a deposed dictator (hence the safe room – sewage drains are reserved final hiding places for deposed dictators and jihadist masterminds), not a banker responsible for tearing the world economy apart, nor a corrupt Western politician on the leash of said bankers.

Much hay has been made of Kim Dotcom’s expansive mansion, expensive toys and cheesy movie villain antics. For those wondering why Megaupload was the target this fact alone should make it clear. They needed someone who would not invoke sympathy, and in this respect, they chose well. A huge congratulations to our owners for selecting and directing a story in a manner that would qualify them to take the raw footage shot for a reality TV show and create a narrative. If spying on citizens and enforcing laws not yet passed loses its luster, they should have no problem getting a job with Wife Swap or Deadliest Catch.

The takedown of megaupload is framed in the mold of major drug busts to which we have become used when presented with such a laundry list. More ingeniusly, in a fresh new year following the annum of the birth of the Occupy movement, the preceding list brings to mind the lists of bonuses, net worth and ostentatious belongings of hedge fund managers and bank executives. Our master’s meme-schemers had all of us in their thoughts in the planning stages. If this is all a coincidence, why would the presence of a full-size inflatable replica of a Russian T-72 tank on Goldfinger’s, uh, I mean Mr. DotCom’s property be relevant to the story? What does the widespread discussion of his license plates with “POLICE,” “MAFIA,” “V,” “STONED,” “CEO,” “HACKER,” GOOD,” “EVIL,” and “GUILTY” tell us about what the law enforcement side of the story wants us to think? Like Joseph Kennedy, DotCom amassed what to the great majority of us is a vast fortune (a $200 million company isn’t enough to impress our owners) through insider trading, shady schemes and outright fraud before founding the “Mega Conspiracy”…

(Full article)

A few days ago we wrote about a new website that exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded on BitTorrent.

Armed with the IP-ranges of major Hollywood studios we decided to find out what they’ve been downloading. As expected, it didn’t take us long before we found BitTorrent ‘pirates’ at several leading entertainment industry companies. Yes, these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they’ve been caught sharing copyrighted material.

First up is Sony Pictures Entertainment. This single IP-address alone a wide variety of music and movies have been downloaded. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, as YouHaveDownloaded only tracks only a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads.

Another Hollywood studio where it’s not uncommon to download music, TV-shows and movies is NBC Universal. The employee(s) behind one of the IP-addresses at the Fort Lauderdale office in Florida downloaded the first season of ‘Game of Thrones,’ some trance music, a DVD of ‘Cowboys and Aliens’, and much more.

Anti-piracy rhetoric holds that online piracy is a devastating force on the U.S. economy, responsible for the theft of between $200 billion and $250 billion per year and the loss of 750,000 good American jobs. “These numbers seem truly dire: a $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010,” write the economists over at Freakonomics.

But those numbers are wrong, the authors say, citing a breakdown by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez.

In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”

More recently, the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) placed the number at $58 billion; but that reporter is methodologically flawed, Mr. Sanchez and tech journalist Tim Lee have deconstructed, and is guilty of double-counting with results that “swell the estimate of piracy losses considerably.”…

[continues at BetaBeat]

Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.”

The top court was ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods.

They claimed that re-copyrighting public works would breach the speech rights of those who are now using those works without needing a license. There are millions of decades-old works at issue. Some of the well-known ones include H.G. Wells’ Things to Come; Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the musical compositions of Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky.

Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

Yes. During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn’t to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it’s okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.

EFF (CC)

Is there still hope for freedom? Probably not, but at least we’ve got the next best thing: The Interwebs! From the Washington Monthly Political Animal blog by Steve Benen:

Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about.

At issue are two related bills: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, both of which are generated intense opposition from tech giants and First Amendment advocates. The first sign that the bills’ prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.

The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration’s chief technology officials officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” It added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.”

Until now, the Obama administration had not taken a position on the issue. The response was published yesterday as part of the online “We The People” petition initiative launched by the White House last year.

Though the administration did issue a formal veto threat, the White House’s opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form.

A few hours later, Congress shelved SOPA, putting off action on the bill indefinitely…

[continues at the Washington Monthly Political Animal blog]

Well now we know where he stands on SOPA, and what a great relationship he has with Google and other leading Internet companies…

Lucía Etxebarría. Photo: Xavier Thomas (http://photo75.online.fr)

Are things really so hopeless for writers? In Spain perhaps. Giles Tremlett reports for the Guardian (thanks to Mike for the tip):

An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.

“Given that I have today discovered that more illegal copies of my book have been downloaded than I have sold, I am announcing officially that I will not publish another book for a long time,” Lucía Etxebarria announced on her Facebook page.

Etxebarria told the Guardian that Spanish authors faced a difficult future as online piracy spreads from music and film to literature.

She pointed to Spain’s position at the top of the world rankings for per capita illegal downloads. “We come after China and Russia in the total number of illegal downloads but, obviously, there are a lot more of them so we win on a per capita measure,” she said.

“People are making millions out of online piracy by setting up in places like Belize, which is where the money goes,” Etxebarria said. “They are a powerful lobby and our government doesn’t dare legislate.”…

[continues in the Guardian]

The Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.

The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.

The entertainment industries have opposed all these technological inventions out of fear that their businesses would be crushed. This is not the right response according to the Swiss government, which favors the option of putting technology to good use instead of taking the repressive approach.

The government report further concludes that even in the current situation where piracy is rampant, the entertainment industries are not necessarily losing money.

The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don’t spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary.

The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn’t. And in the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from the sampling effect of file-sharing.

Time and time again folk rock legend Bob Dylan has blatantly borrowed for his lyrics. Christie’s auction house acknowledged in 2009 that a handwritten Dylan poem that was up for sale really consisted of words from a song by country crooner Hank Snow. Director Martin Scorsese showed in his 2005 documentary, “No Direction Home,” how Dylan stole the line “Go away from my window…” — the immortal opener of his 1964 song “It Ain’t Me, Babe” — from singer John Jacob Niles. Dylan also purloined text from Japanese writer Junichi Saga’s novel “Confessions of a Yakuza” for his 2001 album “Love and Theft.” And that’s not the only thing Dylan lifted from Asia.

Bob Dylan's "Opium," (2009) next to a photograph by Léon Busy, taken in Vietnam in 1915. Credits: Left: Gagosian Gallery / Right: © Musée Albert Kahn

For the current exhibition of Dylan’s paintings, “The Asia Series,” which runs from September 20 to October 22 at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue gallery, the artist painted 18 images — and some of these are copied from well-known photographs, the New York Times reports. Gagosian claims on its Web site that the show is “a visual reflection on his [Dylan's] travels in Japan, China, Vietnam, and Korea,” and the “people, street scenes, architecture, and landscapes” that he encountered there. But some digging on a discussion page at the Dylan fan site Expecting Rain, which furnished the evidence that prompted the New York Times article, reveals that no less than ten pieces in “The Asia Series” may in fact be a visual reflections of Dylan’s travels through online photo archives rather than of any personal journey…

[continues at ARTINFO]

Then again, what makes any Apple store “real” when the point is to use psychology to sell an intangible “brand”? And how can you tell a real Apple store from a fraudulent one? Paradoxically, real Apple stores never say “Apple store”. The Consumerist reports:

An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off.

None of the employee nametags had their names on it. They just said “staff.” And Apple never writes “Apple Store” on their signs, they just put up their logo. A 10-minute walk revealed two more such stores.

Last year’s rogue website legislation is back on the table, with a new name: the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011″—or (wink, wink) “PROTECT IP”. The draft language is available here.

The earlier bill, which failed to pass thanks largely to a hold on the legislation placed by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, would have given the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers targeted at websites “dedicated to infringing activities,” even where those websites were not based in the United States. Despite some salient differences (described below) in the new version, we are no less dismayed by this most recent incarnation than we were with last year’s draft.

First, the legislation now includes a private right of action for intellectual property owners. This means that IP owners as well as the government can seek injunctions against websites “dedicated to infringing activities” in addition to court orders against third parties providing services to those sites. (Notably, IP owners can also bring actions to enforce the court orders.) Consider whether Viacom would have bothered to bring a copyright infringement action against YouTube—with the attendant challenges of arguing around the DMCA safe harbors—had it had this cause of action in its arsenal. The act includes language that says it’s not intended to “enlarge or diminish” the DMCA’s safe harbor limitations on liability, but make no mistake: rights holders will argue that safe harbor qualification is simply immaterial if a site is deemed to be dedicated to infringement.

Second, the scope of the language has been expanded to include additional categories of third-party providers that can be subject to court orders. Under the new act, “interactive computer services” and “servers of sponsored links” can be required to cease linking to particular websites. We’d heard about a potential “search engine provision,” but these additions arguably go much further. An interactive computer service (the term, and its definition, are borrowed from the Communications Decency Act) could include not only Bing but also sites like Facebook, Twitter, and potentially any service or web page where a URL might turn up…

[continues at the Electronic Frontier Foundation site]

Talks on implementing a Europe-wide firewall to censor and block ‘illicit’ websites has caused concern among many Internet users in recent weeks, and today one of the targeted sites has joined the discussion. Quoting one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team is rallying the public to defend the free Internet and end the threat posed by the entertainment industries’ copyright lobby.

In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal.

To deal with illicit sites on the Internet, the group suggested the adoption of a China-like firewall to block websites deemed ‘inappropriate’. The controversial proposal immediately met resistance from various sides, including ISPs who would be tasked with maintaining the blocklist. The copyright lobby on the other hand welcomes the initiative which they’ve been suggesting for years.

One of the sites that has a fair share of experience with being blocked is The Pirate Bay. The popular BitTorrent site is currently censored in Ireland, Italy and Denmark, and almost lost its domain name to the U.S. Government last year.

Needless to say, they are not happy with the EU’s latest censorship proposal. In fact, today they declare war on the proponents of Internet censorship, most prominently the entertainment industry (MAFIAA) lobbyists.

For more information, see original article.

The cartoon — entitled “Happy Tree Friends” — features singing animals who demonstrate the difference between uploading an infringing video and creating original content. (”YouTube has decided the solution is to patronize those users,” jokes one technology blog.) “Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand the rules and continue to play by them,” YouTube said in Thursday’s announcement. And some users who complete the YouTube “Copyright School” can also have copyright strikes removed from their account.

But, the problem, of course, is that this stuff isn’t “free” to produce. In fact, the number of hidden costs involved with producing media are pretty amazing, especially when you consider time and effort as the primary resources that humans represent, when viewed within the capitalist myth. As a producer of independent media in quite a few formats – not to mention working inside companies that have been burdened and seriously threatened by this change of paradigm – I think I can say I’m pretty well acquainted with the terror that drives labels to do idiotic things like suing potential customers.

Though there  have been some recent signs of sanity in this ongoing battle, it continues to wage onward. For instance:

“Over 40,000 Does Dismissed In Copyright Troll Cases

These have been some eventful weeks in the world of copyright trolling. Thousands of unnamed “John Does” in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en masse.”

They want to frame piracy as criminal in the way that punching an old lady in the face and stealing her purse is criminal. But the sad fact is, it isn’t. Instead, it is the painful reality of what could be an amazing paradigm shift.

Oftentimes, growth hurts. And so many of these companies (and artists) want to curl into a ball into pretend nothing changed.

What I want to ponder – what I want all of us to ponder – is the conundrum facing both the producers of media and the companies that “support” them. We’ll also look at some of the ways that these companies have failed to sufficiently understand the problem they’re facing. (Full Article)

The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making “illegal streaming” of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.

In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix “deficiencies that could hinder enforcement” of intellectual property laws.

The report was prepared by Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator who received Senate confirmation in December 2009, and represents a broad tightening of many forms of intellectual property law including ones that deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and overseas royalties for copyright holders. (See CNET’s report last month previewing today’s white paper.)

Some of the highlights:

• The White House is concerned that “illegal streaming of content” may not be covered by criminal law, saying “questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works.” To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to “clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances.”

• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move “would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses.”

• Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s generally illegal to distribute hardware or software–such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France–that can “circumvent” copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to “inform rightholders,” “provide samples of such devices,” and assist “them in bringing civil actions.”

The term “fair use” does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that “foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts.” (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.)

The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010…

[continues at CNET]

Current US law extends copyright protections for 70 years from the date of the author’s death. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years).

There’s two Christmas classics — a 1935 version of A Christmas Carol and Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe — plus Orson Welles’ “The Stranger,” and four Alfred Hitchcock movies. And you can also watch William Shatner’s legendary anti-racism film for Roger Corman, several Vincent Price classics and the original “Night of the Living Dead.”

These aren’t video clips, but entire movies, including one about a bank robbery that stars Johnny Cash. And if you want something even more offbeat, try the 1970s TV movie “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” or — for Christmas — “Santa Conquers the Martians.”

Andrew Crossley's website after hackers targeted it

Thanks to Mark for sending us this story by Paul Kendall in the Telegraph. As the distributor of the film Rip: A Remix Manifesto, which takes a very liberal view of copyright, I want to hate Andrew Crossley as much as the correspondent whose opening line is the title of this post. On the other hand, we can’t pay our filmmakers nearly as much as we used to because of piracy. Where do you stand in this debate?

Andrew Crossley gets a lot of hate mail. Litigants contacting his central London legal practice regularly refer to him as ‘scum’. One particularly abusive email he received recently began: ‘Dear Andrew J Crossley. Are you f—ing stupid?’ before threatening to kill him.

When the young paralegals who work in his office pick up their phones they brace themselves for a tirade of abuse. On the internet, in forums dedicated to discussions of his work, Crossley is routinely castigated, derided, insulted and threatened, if not with murder then with grievous bodily harm or some other painful invasion of his personal space.

Why is this rather ordinary-looking man such a hate figure? Over the past 18 months Crossley has been waging a war, almost single-handedly, against copyright piracy.

Whereas more established organisations, such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft, have concentrated their fire on the most serious perpetrators, the organised gangs who sell illegal DVDs and use the profits to fund violent crime and drug smuggling, Crossley has targeted anyone who has ever illegally downloaded a song or film on their computer.

So far he has sent more than 27,000 letters, threatening court action and demanding, in compensation, anything from £250 to more than £1,000. Next year he’s planning to send out 80,000 letters. The campaign, which he took over from the firm Davenport Lyons, is unprecedented in Britain…

If you don’t already hate Crossley, maybe this will convince you (or not):

Julia and Paddy Dundon are two such people. Grandparents from Nottingham, they have owned a computer for seven years but Paddy, a former machine operator who was forced to take early retirement due to illness, has never used it and even struggles to work a mobile phone. Julia, a part-time auxiliary nurse on £13,000 a year, uses it for email, Facebook and ‘a little bit of shopping’.

But according to a letter they got from ACS: Law on September 15, they are guilty of illegally uploading three pornographic films – British Granny F— 2; British Granny F— 3; and British Granny F— 4 – and must pay a suggested £1,200 in compensation. The whole thing seems ridiculous.

‘At first I laughed,’ Julia says, speaking from her house in Sherwood. ‘I thought it was a joke but Paddy said: “Julia, it’s not a joke.”’

Their reply, explaining how preposterous the claim was, has been rejected by ACS: Law. But Julia – who has now contacted her MP and two peers who have spoken out against ACS: Law in Parliament – is adamant they won’t pay.

‘As far as I’m concerned he’s trying to scam people out of money,’ she says. ‘I’d take the money down there and burn it in front of him first before I’d give it to him.’…

[read the full story in the Telegraph]

Less than a month after South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were forced to apologize for lifting material for a spoof of Inception from the website CollegeHumor, the show is again facing accusations of content theft. The producers of the animated hit, including Viacom and Comedy Central, are being sued for allegedly ripping off a copyrighted music video for the viral phenomenon What What (In the Butt).

The video was produced by Brownmark Films based on a song by Samwell. Released in 2007, it became a massive hit and was featured on PerezHilton.com and VH1’s Best Week Ever, and has been downloaded over 33 million times on YouTube. According to the site, it’s one of the most watched music videos of all time…

U.S. copyright law allows people narrowly limited rights to use copyrighted works without permission under what is known as “fair use,” and parody is an established fair use. (For those interested in learning more about fair use exceptions to copyright, Standford University has a useful guide.) So what do you think? The original and the South Park parody are both shown below. Comments welcome!

Cory Doctorow, photographed by Jonathan Worth (CC)

Cory Doctorow delivers a fierce rant defending his beliefs and practices regarding the price of his creative works and his time, at Paid Content (love the irony of the site’s name!):

Last week, my fellow Guardian columnist Helienne Lindvall published a piece headlined The cost of free, in which she called it “ironic” that “advocates of free online content” (including me) “charge hefty fees to speak at events”.

Lindvall says she spoke to someone who approached an agency I once worked with to hire me for a lecture and was quoted $10,000-$20,000 (£6,300-£12,700) to speak at a college and $25,000 to speak at a conference. Lindvall goes on to talk about the fees commanded by other speakers, including Wired editor Chris Anderson, author of a book called “Free” (which I reviewed here in July 2009), Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and marketing expert Seth Godin. In Lindvall’s view, all of us are part of a united ideology that exhorts artists to give their work away for free, but we don’t practice what we preach because we charge so much for our time.

It’s unfortunate that Lindvall didn’t bother to check her facts. I haven’t been represented by the agency she referenced for several years, and in any event, no one has ever paid me $25,000 to appear at any event. Indeed, the vast majority of lectures I give are free (see here for the past six months’ talks and their associated fees – out of approximately 95 talks I’ve given in the past six months, only 11 were paid, and the highest paid of those was £300). Furthermore, I don’t use an agency for the majority of my bookings (mostly I book myself – I’ve only had one agency booking in the past two years). I’m not sure who the unfortunate conference organiser Lindvall spoke to was – Lindvall has not identified her source – but I’m astonished that this person managed to dig up the old agency, since it’s not in the first 400 Google results for “Cory Doctorow”.

It’s true that my stock response to for-profit conferences and corporate events is to ask for $15,000 on the grounds that almost no one will pay that much so I get to stay home with my family and my work; but if anyone will, I’d be crazy to turn it down. Even so, I find myself travelling more than I’d like to, and usually I’m doing so at a loss.

Why do I do this? Well, that’s the bit that Lindvall really got wrong.

You see, the real mistake Lindvall made was in saying that I tell artists to give their work away for free. I do no such thing.

The topic I leave my family and my desk to talk to people all over the world about is the risks to freedom arising from the failure of copyright giants to adapt to a world where it’s impossible to prevent copying. Because it is impossible. Despite 15 long years of the copyright wars, despite draconian laws and savage penalties, despite secret treaties and widespread censorship, despite millions spent on ill-advised copy-prevention tools, more copying takes place today than ever before.

As I’ve written here before, copying isn’t going to get harder, ever. Hard drives won’t magically get bulkier but hold fewer bits and cost more.

Networks won’t be harder to use. PCs won’t be slower. People won’t stop learning to type “Toy Story 3 bittorrent” into Google. Anyone who claims otherwise is selling something – generally some kind of unworkable magic anti-copying beans that they swear, this time, will really work.

So, assuming that copyright holders will never be able to stop or even slow down copying, what is to be done?

For me, the answer is simple: if I give away my ebooks under a Creative Commons licence that allows non-commercial sharing, I’ll attract readers who buy hard copies. It’s worked for me – I’ve had books on the New York Times bestseller list for the past two years.

What should other artists do? Well, I’m not really bothered…

[continues at Paid Content]

Hello friends. This weekend I discovered an entertaining and eye-opening pirate radio documentary online: Pirate Radio USA.

Given the post-Clinton legalization of media monopolies, the subject of pirate radio has once again become a hot-button topic. Pirate radio broadcasters use homemade technologies to take over radio frequencies, broadcasting without licenses, outside of FCC rules and regulations.

Pirate radio has become a form of civil disobedience. The various subjects of the documentary fight directly against the corporate media by simply “stealing” FM bandwidth to broadcast their radical, rocking messages. Of course, the irony is that the airwaves above the United States are owned exclusively by the public.

How can you steal what you already own?

More about the film at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

MusOpen has reached their fundraising goal for both the orchestra and a recording facility, and will now record the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. For every additional $1,000 raised, they’ve promised to add additional recordings.

Today the consumer group which publishes the magazine applauded the news of the disciplinary tribunal, “because we’ve received so many complaints from consumers who believe they been treated appallingly by this law firm.” The filesharing could’ve occurred over unsecure wireless connections, the group argues, and they added that the lawyer’s behavior was “both aggressive and bullying.”