Lächerlich.

“That is, without copying, the sense of what is fashionable right now would be diminished, leading to a fractured fashion market. By amplifying and clarifying trends, copying also widens the market for the season’s current fashions.”

“The Ukrainian newspaper Kommersant reported (Google Translate) Monday that, according to an anonymous source within the Ukrainian Interior Ministry known only as “B,” the raid was timed with a particular political purpose in mind. First Vice Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky recently visited the United States, where he met with United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk to discuss various free-trade issues, including copyright protection.”

“Can musicians sit back and collect royalties and a share of the huge monopoly profits of yesteryear? Nope. But, those were the days of the golden handcuffs and the chosen few. The only artists who whine and complain now about those “good old” days are either

Old artists who came up in the old days and are wistful of the time when they only had to record an album every three years to earn 5 times what they earn now, or
Young artists who are too lazy to boot-strap things themselves and wish success was handed to them”

“The broadness of the law, and the vague and contradictory standards with which it has been applied in the UK should be exceptionally worrying to people — especially those in the UK. It is no longer safe to try to create a useful service to help people find entertainment content, because you may get raided, private companies may get your computers and you may end up in jail. London has been building itself up as a tech/startup hub of Europe, but with rulings like these, don’t be surprised to see entrepreneurs move elsewhere.”

“Legalized file sharing, shorter protection times for the commercial copyright monopoly, free sampling and a ban on DRM.

These are the main points of the proposal for copyright reform that the Pirate Party is advocating and which the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament adopted as its group position in September 2011.
This is a constructive alternative to the controversial ACTA agreement and to the criminalization of the entire generation of youths. This booklet explains why such a reform is both necessary and sustainable and will benefit both citizens and artists.”

“Perhaps more important, however, is that Google is also revealing the incredible deluge of takedown requests it receives in search, each of which it tries to check to make sure they’re legitimate. As it stands now, Google is processing over 250,000 such requests per week — which is more than they got in the entire year of 2009. For all of 2011, Google receive 3.3 million copyright takedowns for search… and here we are in just May of 2012, and they’re already processing over 1.2 million per month. And while we’ve heard reports from the usual Google haters that Google is slow to respond to takedowns, it says that its average turnaround time last week was 11 hours. Think about that for a second. It’s reviewing each one of these takedowns, getting 250,000 per week… and can still process them in less than 12 hours. That’s pretty impressive.”

Dirk von Gehlen über die Beastie Boys und die genehmigungspflichtige Kunst des Samplings.

“But what the Adweek article unfortunately left out was that the “list” GroupM came up with was a complete joke — listing all sorts of perfectly legitimate sites, like the Internet Archive, Vimeo and Soundcloud. Oh yeah, and a bunch of hip hop blogs… and 50Cent’s personal website. It’s great to declare that they won’t let ads show up on “rogue” sites, but it gets worrisome when they define “rogue” sites so broadly.”

“What’s amazing is that even when the costs are explicit, they barely enter the conversation. Take, for example, the predecessor to SOPA/PIPA: the ProIP Act, which passed in 2008. A report by the Congressional Budget Office showed that the cost of this bill, which is almost entirely focused on increased enforcement was $435 million. Yes, you read that right. Taxpayers have been on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars for the increased enforcement initiatives — like the spectacular flop known as Operation In Our Sites. Is this really a wise use of taxpayer resources?

Add to that, of course, the negative externalities created by such enforcement — such as the chilling effects of increased censorship, expensive court cases and other such efforts, and it’s kind of amazing that these costs never seem to even enter the public debate, even though many of them are a lot more real than the “costs” presented by the industry for “piracy.”“