Donda 2 or dongle 2.0? Why Kanye West’s $200 album + Stem Player combo is a smart move
Kanye West has just carried out a fascinating copyright experiment. That probably wasn’t his intention when he released his eleventh studio album Donda 2, but the launch has nonetheless provided some interesting insights regarding the music sector. As he revealed earlier, Donda 2 is not on “Apple Amazon Spotify or YouTube“. Instead, it is only …
Interview | Jennie Rose Halperin: A Tech-Positive Future for Libraries, Controlled Digital Lending & US CASE Act
Jennie Rose Halperin, is a facilitator, digital strategist, writer, and editor, who currently serves as the Executive Director of Library Futures: a nonprofit organization that champions equitable access to knowledge. Trained as a librarian, she has worked in content, web development, and digital services of all types, including at the Harvard Law Library, Creative Commons, …
Why add to Ukraine’s problems with an unnecessary implementation of a bad EU copyright law?
It would be something of an understatement to say that Ukraine is facing serious problems currently. Against that background, this news from the IPKat blog is rather surprising: While certain EU Member States are still to transpose Directive (EU) 2019/790 (Copyright [Digital Single Market] Directive), Ukraine, a non-EU country, has decided to implement certain provisions …
DRM on paper shows why anti-circumvention laws are copyright’s biggest blunder
Most people are familiar with the Dymo label printer in some form or another. Not an exciting product perhaps, but quite a useful one. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some bad news – Dymo is adding DRM to its label paper in the form of RFID chips: Dymo’s latest generation of desktop label printers use …
Podcast Highlights: Knocking Down Walls, Battles after SOPA, eLending, Excessive Terms & Unfit Rules
Check out this great compilation of key highlights from our Walled Culture podcast/vlog series, launched in September 2021. Our guests talk about knocking down the walls, the continuing battles after SOPA, e-Lending and libraries, and the damages of excessive terms and unfit copyright rules. Full line-up of the guests covered in the mashup below, and …
Little mermaid, long copyright, big absurdity
Many people are familiar with The Little Mermaid statue, perched on a rock by the waterside in Copenhagen, Denmark. What is less well-known is the absurd copyright maximalism it has given rise to. The latest manifestation concerns a cartoon depicting the statue as a zombie, and a photo of it with a facemask, reported here …
A bit is a bit is a bit: digital platforms begin to merge with digital producers
Last week Walled Culture wrote about Microsoft’s planned purchase of the video gaming company Activision. That’s been followed by some other news stories that may not involve such headline-grabbing acquisitions, but which do form part of the same larger trend. First, there’s the Joe Rogan kerfuffle at Spotify. Tim De Chant on Ars Technica explained …
Interview | Katherine Maher: The Monkey Selfie, Public Domain, Freedom of Panorama, the EU Copyright Directive, Remix Culture, & the 20th Century Black Hole
Katherine Maher, advocate for free and open societies, is the former CEO and Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Her background is in the field of information and communications technology, and she works at non-profits in the international sector, focusing on the use of technology enabling human rights and international developments. She reflects on the …
Beyond a game: Microsoft swallows up Activision, a further concentration of power in a few digital giants
This blog has written a couple times about YouTube‘s dominance in the video sector. Spotify may well create a similar leading position for itself in music streaming, while a mega-merger underway would shrink publishing‘s Big Five into the Big Four. A recent article in The Hollywood Reporter shows that a similar concentration of power is …
The top ten YouTubers collectively earned $300m in 2021: is that good or bad?
It’s always interesting to see hard figures about how much individuals earn online from their activities there. For example, Forbes published an article recently that looked at the top ten YouTubers. The income of the stars in this relatively new medium turns out to be comparable to that of those working in traditional ones like …
Thanks to copyright maximalism, video game masterpieces are likely to be lost forever
Video games are undoubtedly an art form, arguably the quintessential art form of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They combine graphics, video, music and interactive plotlines to produce a uniquely rich and complex creation only possible thanks to the widespread availability of powerful but low-cost systems like game consoles and personal computers. Clearly, …
Interview | Alex Sayf Cummings: Music Piracy, Alternative Remuneration Models, Blurred Lines, SOPA, and Out of Control Copyright Terms and Penalties
Alex Sayf Cummings is a historian of law, technology, labor, public policy, and American cities. A leading voice on pop culture and public history, she has published on a variety of topics, from music history to the information economy. Her teaching focuses on the history of media industries (such as music, publishing, broadcasting) and American …
How the financialisation of music could lead to demands for perpetual copyright
Back in October, this blog noted the huge amounts of money pouring into music copyrights, largely driven by the global rise of online streaming. Since then, that trend has continued, most notably with Bruce Springsteen’s sale of his recordings and songwriting catalogue to Sony, for a rumoured $550 million. As we pointed out in the …
Interview | Salvador Alcántar Morán: Mexican Copyright Unfit-for-purpose in the Digital age, the Public Domain as a Human Right, and the Need for a True Multistakeholder Approach and a Global Perspective on Copyright
Salvador Alcántar Morán is a lawyer, focused on digital copyright, educational technology and digital communications. He is the co-founder of Wikimedia Mexico and of Creative Commons Mexico. He was also manager of the General Direction of Digital Communications of the Mexico City Government. He talks about how the Mexican copyright framework is not adapted to …
Public Domain Day is here again: it should be an occasion for condemnation, not celebration
Once copyright’s walls come down, creative material enters the public domain. It is free for all to use, modify and build upon. It is part of the matrix from which future creativity springs. One of the best places to explore it and its importance is the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at …
Interview | Brewster Kahle: Libraries’ Role, 3 Internet Battles, Licensing Pains, the National Emergency Library, and the Internet Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending Efforts vs. the Publishers’ Lawsuit
Brewster Kahle is founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, one of the largest libraries in the world. Next to his mission to provide universal access to all knowledge, he is a passionate advocate for public Internet access, as well as a successful entrepreneur (Thinking Machines, Wide Area Information Server and Alexa Internet) and …