Walled Culture the book, three years on
Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) was launched just over three years ago. A few weeks afterwards, I talked with journalist and editor Maria Bustillos about…
Academic research finds economic, technical and operational harms from Italy’s Piracy Shield
Walled Culture first wrote about Piracy Shield, Italy’s automated system for tackling alleged copyright infringement in the streaming sector, two years ago. Since then, we have written about…
Italy is losing its mind because of copyright: it just made its awful Piracy Shield even worse
Walled Culture has been writing about Italy’s Piracy Shield system for a year now. It was clear from early on that its approach of blocking Internet addresses (IP…
How private equity has used copyright to cannibalise the past at the expense of the future
Walled Culture has been warning about the financialisation and securitisation of music for two years now. Those obscure but important developments mean that the owners of copyrights are…
Brown noise spam is another reason why music streaming payments need a radical overhaul
There’s an interesting story on Wired about “functional music” – things like white noise and brown noise – which is widely available on music streaming platforms. These kind…
How to redeem big, bad music streaming so that it serves artists, fans – and local communities
Music streaming services are great – for listeners, who gain access to huge quantities of music, even if they don’t end up owning any of it. But it’s…
V Live, the largest archive of K-pop live streams, will soon be V Dead: what happens to all that culture?
When people speak of culture, and preserving it, they usually mean the works of recognised artistic giants like Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Charlie Chaplin, and Miles Davis. They…
Twitch mutes top videogame streamer because of claim he used someone’s copyright siren sound effect
Alongside death and taxes, one of life’s great certainties is a constant flow of absurd copyright claims. Here’s one from the world of live videogame streaming on the…
Amazon’s doubly amazing achievement in becoming the backbone of Hollywood
Back in March, Walled Culture reported on Amazon’s acquisition of MGM, and how it was a logical move for the company given that it is seeking to establish…
How “merit-based monetisation” works for game streaming, where copyright fails
An interesting development in the digital world has been the continuing rise of gaming as a hugely popular activity, and a hugely profitable industry. Flowing from that rise…
Creators everywhere are struggling, copyright is failing them: time to find something better
The Guardian has an interesting feature looking at how Australian artists from working-class backgrounds face greater obstacles to succeeding than those from other social classes do. It contains…
Universal Music Group boss took home £230 million last year: is that really fair?
Last year, Walled Culture reported on the highly-successful Universal Music Group (UMG) IPO on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange, which valued the company at €45 billion (over $50 billion). The…
Recorded music is thriving everywhere: so why keep pushing for yet more bad copyright laws?
Walled Culture has noted various signs that the recorded music industry is thriving, particularly the streaming sector. That state of affairs has now been confirmed officially by the…
Time for the copyright world to stop attacking the Internet’s infrastructure
Despite the impossibility of stopping people making copies of digital material, the copyright industry continues to launch ever-more extreme legal actions against outside parties in a desperate attempt…
First financialisation, now securitisation: copyright music industry moves further away from artists
I’ve written a couple of times about a worrying new trend: music copyrights becoming completely divorced from the original creativity that lies behind them, thanks to the increasing…
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…