David Carr, New York Times; Heedlessly Hijacking Content:
"Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was not the only one who had a tough week at the office.
Last Monday, the word got out that Rolling Stone had a stunning piece about General McChrystal, in which he and his aides were critical of the White House. It’s the kind of scoop that thrills magazine editors, and no doubt they couldn’t wait to get their issue on the stands.
The problem was, nobody else could wait either. On Tuesday morning, a PDF of the piece the magazine had lovingly commissioned, edited, fact-checked, printed and distributed, was posted in its entirety on not one but two Web sites, for everyone to read without giving Rolling Stone a dime.
It was a clear violation of copyright and professional practice, and it amounted to taking money out of a competitor’s pocket. What crafty guerrilla site or bottom-feeder would do such a thing?
Turns out it was Time.com and Politico, both well-financed, reputable news media organizations, that blithely stepped over the line and took what was not theirs.
Both companies said that a frenzy involving a significant national issue was under way and that because Rolling Stone itself did not post the article on its site, they took matters into their own hands. Each said that when Rolling Stone protested, it was taken down, and that when the magazine put up the piece at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, their sites linked to that instead.
Content-makers had a rough week across the board. A federal judge granted summary judgment to Google, whose subsidiary, YouTube, had been sued by Viacom for $1 billion for copyright infringement. Judge Louis Stanton of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that even though thousands of clips of Viacom shows had been uploaded to the site, YouTube was shielded from damage claims because of “safe harbor” provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Google was busy elsewhere, filing an amicus brief in a New York case against an aggregator called Theflyonthewall.com, for its appropriation of proprietary bank research. Lawyers for Google, along with Twitter, asked a federal appeals court to reverse a decision upholding the so-called hot news doctrine, which gives the publishers of up-to-the-minute news the sole rights to that content. They called that doctrine obsolete.
News organizations, including The New York Times, The Associated Press, Gannett and others, filed a brief of their own in the case, suggesting that, “unless generalized free-riding on news originators’ efforts is restrained, originators will be unable to recover their costs of news gathering and publication, the incentive to engage in the news business will be threatened and the public will ultimately have fewer sources of original news.”
In the Rolling Stone case, it wasn’t tech companies arguing for the right to appropriate content, but content-makers themselves.
The magazine delivered an advance copy to The A.P. on Monday afternoon (many magazines try to promote coming articles that way) with some restrictions. When The A.P. article ran with some highlights and excerpts, other news outlets, including networks and major newspapers, asked for a copy. Politico and Time Inc. did not receive copies from Rolling Stone directly.
Some party, probably a news outlet seeking comment, gave copies to both the subject and the White House — a pretty naughty move in and of itself. And by some point on Tuesday morning, the Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings had become a piece of electronic samizdat, passed around and, eventually, published.
Several commentators suggested that Rolling Stone brought this on itself by not immediately publishing the McChrystal article on its own site (the magazine had planned to publish online but on its own schedule).
“That’s like saying, ‘She had it coming,’ ” Eric Bates, executive editor of Rolling Stone, said in an interview on Thursday. “The decision about when to publish our material is ours and ours alone. It was completely inappropriate.”
Reached by e-mail on a plane, Jim VandeHei, executive editor and a founder of Politico, suggested that the imperatives of the news cycle superseded questions of custody. “Our reporters got the article from sources with no restrictions,” he wrote. “It was being circulated and widely discussed among insiders, and our team felt readers should see what insiders were reading and reacting to. Rolling Stone raised a reasonable objection once they posted the story, so we quickly agreed to link to their URL.”
Time Inc. is in the print magazine business, and Ann Moore, its chief executive, has been a vigorous public defender of copyright. Last year, in an interview with The Telegraph of London, she said, “Who started this rumor that all information should be free, and why didn’t we challenge this when it first came out?”
The folks running Time.com apparently missed the memo, but they are now in receipt of its message.
“Time.com posted a PDF of the story to help separate rumor from fact at the moment this story of immense national interest was hitting fever pitch and the actual piece was not available,” a spokeswoman for Time wrote in an e-mail message. “We always had the intention of taking it down as soon as Rolling Stone made any element of the story publicly available, and we did. It was a mistake; if we had it do over again, we would only post a headline and an abstract.”
(A spokeswoman for Ms. Moore said Ms. Moore believed it was a mistake and that it would not happen again.)
Publishing a PDF of somebody else’s work is the exact opposite of fair use: these sites engaged in a replication of a static electronic document with no links to the publication that took the risk, commissioned the work and came up with a story that tilted the national conversation. The technical, legal term for what they did is, um, stealing.
Media organizations can file all the briefs they want about protecting their work product from free-riders and insurgent hordes of digital pilot fish, but once they break their own rules and start feeding on one another, the game is sort of over.
These were decisions made in the midst of a white-hot news cycle, and perhaps cooler heads will prevail the next time around. But if some of the biggest names in the business are not above cut-and-paste journalism when it suits their needs, how can they point a finger at others?
“This is not about our slow-footedness on the Web, but our right to publish on a schedule we chose. To me, this was really a transitional moment,” said Mr. Bates of Rolling Stone. “We’ve had fan sites that have published the text of some stories, but what these two big media organizations did was really off the charts. They took something that was in a prepublished form, sent out to other media organizations with specific restrictions, and just put it up.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/business/media/28carr.html?scp=1&sq=david%20carr%20rolling%20stone&st=cse
Monday, June 28, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups; Wired.com, 6/25/10
David Kravets, Wired.com; ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups:
"The association representing 380,000 composers, songwriters, lyricists and others associated with the music industry has begun a fund-raising campaign to stifle groups that support free culture and digital rights.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is urging the membership to donate money to battle the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and even Creative Commons.
In a letter sent to members this week, ASCAP said those groups and unnamed “technology companies” are “mobilizing to promote ‘Copyleft’ in order to undermine our ‘Copyright.’ ”
The letter continues, saying “the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.”
The fund-raising campaign came a day after Victoria Espinel, the nation’s copyright czar, outlined an intellectual-property enforcement plan that did not include a call to push internet service providers to adopt policies to cut service to repeat copyright scofflaws. Such a policy, referred to as “three strikes” or “graduated response,” was strongly backed by the motion picture and recording industries, and opposed by EFF and Public Knowledge.
Instead, Espinel said the nation’s “intellectual property-enforcement efforts should be focused on stopping those stealing the work of others, not those who are appropriately building upon it.”
The ASCAP, which also distributes royalties, said those groups are “influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.”
ASCAP did not return messages seeking comment.
ASCAP’s attack on EFF and Public Knowledge are farfetched. Those groups do not suggest music should be free, although they push for the liberalization of copyright law.
But the attack on Creative Commons is more laughable than ASCAP’s stance against EFF and Public Knowledge.
While lobby groups EFF and Public Knowledge advocate for liberal copyright laws, Creative Commons actually creates licenses to protect content creators.
The non-profit has issued various licenses to approximately 350 million pieces of content to writers, musicians, scholars and others. Flickr, for example, is filled with pictures licensed by Creative Commons.
The licenses allow the works in the public domain, with various rules regarding attribution, commercial use and remixing.
The group’s creative director, Eric Steuer, said nobody forces anybody to adopt the Creative Commons credo. “I think it’s false to claim that Creative Commons works to undermine copyright,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s an opt-in system.”
Following Wednesday’s fund-raising letter from Paul Williams, ASCAP’s president, Steuer said several ASCAP members who also use Creative Commons licenses have donated money to Creative Commons."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/ascap-assails-free-culture-digital-rights-groups/#ixzz0s13zbKVN"
"The association representing 380,000 composers, songwriters, lyricists and others associated with the music industry has begun a fund-raising campaign to stifle groups that support free culture and digital rights.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is urging the membership to donate money to battle the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and even Creative Commons.
In a letter sent to members this week, ASCAP said those groups and unnamed “technology companies” are “mobilizing to promote ‘Copyleft’ in order to undermine our ‘Copyright.’ ”
The letter continues, saying “the truth is these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.”
The fund-raising campaign came a day after Victoria Espinel, the nation’s copyright czar, outlined an intellectual-property enforcement plan that did not include a call to push internet service providers to adopt policies to cut service to repeat copyright scofflaws. Such a policy, referred to as “three strikes” or “graduated response,” was strongly backed by the motion picture and recording industries, and opposed by EFF and Public Knowledge.
Instead, Espinel said the nation’s “intellectual property-enforcement efforts should be focused on stopping those stealing the work of others, not those who are appropriately building upon it.”
The ASCAP, which also distributes royalties, said those groups are “influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.”
ASCAP did not return messages seeking comment.
ASCAP’s attack on EFF and Public Knowledge are farfetched. Those groups do not suggest music should be free, although they push for the liberalization of copyright law.
But the attack on Creative Commons is more laughable than ASCAP’s stance against EFF and Public Knowledge.
While lobby groups EFF and Public Knowledge advocate for liberal copyright laws, Creative Commons actually creates licenses to protect content creators.
The non-profit has issued various licenses to approximately 350 million pieces of content to writers, musicians, scholars and others. Flickr, for example, is filled with pictures licensed by Creative Commons.
The licenses allow the works in the public domain, with various rules regarding attribution, commercial use and remixing.
The group’s creative director, Eric Steuer, said nobody forces anybody to adopt the Creative Commons credo. “I think it’s false to claim that Creative Commons works to undermine copyright,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s an opt-in system.”
Following Wednesday’s fund-raising letter from Paul Williams, ASCAP’s president, Steuer said several ASCAP members who also use Creative Commons licenses have donated money to Creative Commons."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/ascap-assails-free-culture-digital-rights-groups/#ixzz0s13zbKVN"
In Documentary, Wall of Sound Meets Wall of Law; New York Times, 6/27/10
John Anderson, New York Times; In Documentary, Wall of Sound Meets Wall of Law:
"BETWEEN recording sessions here in 1973, John Lennon called Phil Spector and told him to come back down to the studio. “Someone’s ripped you off, Phil,” Mr. Lennon said. When Mr. Spector arrived, a projector had been set up, a film began to roll, several familiar drumbeats were heard and then, the wail of the Ronettes.
The song was “Be My Baby,” the movie was “Mean Streets,” and no one had told Mr. Spector anything about it.
“I said, ‘Who is this guy Skeezy?’ ” Mr. Spector recalls during “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” which opens Wednesday at the Film Forum in Manhattan. “I called my lawyers, I said, ‘Kill it!’ ” Martin Scorsese had used his music without permission, and “I never give permission for anything.”
Only Lennon’s intercession stopped Mr. Spector from seeking an injunction that could have pulled the movies out of theaters. They may not have known it at the time, but Mr. Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel came close to having their careers derailed by Mr. Spector — the creator of rock’s fabled “Wall of Sound,” the Svengali of the ’60s girl groups and the producer of the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”
The anecdote is perhaps the most startling contained in “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” a documentary by Vikram Jayanti, and not only because it’s being told by a man who, for 50 years, has avoided the news media like the plague. Built around interviews at Mr. Spector’s home during his first murder trial in 2007 — he was convicted in the shooting death of the actress Lana Clarkson after a second trial in 2009 — the film employs a greatest-hits collection of 21 Spector songs, played or performed in their entirety. And it does so without having obtained Mr. Spector’s written permission. Thus the film could become the latest flashpoint in the debate over what’s generally known as fair use, and copyright law. (Fair use refers to the right, under certain circumstances, like criticism, to use copyrighted material without permission. But the exact amount one can legally use remains a murky proposition.)
Mr. Jayanti, however, isn’t expecting any legal trouble, even though Mr. Spector twice sued his (former) friend and lawyer, Robert Shapiro, to reclaim a $1 million retainer and was appeased by Mr. Scorsese only when he promised to pay for future music use.
“Phil wanted the film made, he wanted the music given freely, he was cooperative about making it,” said Mr. Jayanti, who sat with Mr. Spector during most of the 2007 trial in Los Angeles.
Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Spector’s wife, Rachelle, said she hadn’t seen the film and didn’t think her husband had either. (He is serving 19 years to life at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran.) Mr. Jayanti disagrees. “Of course he’s seen the film,” he said. “We made sure he had a copy. We gave his lawyers copies of the film. And I don’t think if he looked at it in a rational state of mind, he’d have any problem with it. I think it does what he dreamed it would do.” Namely, to rewrite the lead of his obituary: from “convicted murderer” to “musical genius.”
Anthony Wall has produced the documentary program “Arena” for nearly 35 years, out of the BBC offices at Bush House, and it was Mr. Wall who asked Mr. Jayanti to direct the Spector film. They’d previously made “James Ellroy’s Feast of Death” together. Separately Mr. Jayanti has directed films like "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" and was an executive producer on “When We Were Kings.”
“Running a program like this, you have your particular heroes or favorites,” Mr. Wall said. “The Top 3 for me were always Dylan, the Beatles and Phil Spector. I thought it would be difficult to get any of them, but that we’d never get Phil, because he has so resolutely refused to even give a newspaper interview. He just doesn’t do it.” The weird thing, Mr. Wall said, was that he had so few expectations, adding, “When Vikram asked me one day whether I’d actually written to him to give him the chance to say no, I hadn’t.”
Mr. Jayanti overnighted a letter to Mr. Spector and got a positive response three days later. Mr. Wall and Mr. Jayanti went to the Spectors’ home in Alhambra, Calif. — where a sign outside reads “Phil Spector’s Pyrenees Castle” — and did two days of interviews. A planned five-day shoot was interrupted by Mr. Spector’s trial preparation; a subsequent gag order on Mr. Spector ended all communication between subject and director. But Mr. Jayanti decided he had everything he needed — except, perhaps, that signed release.
For safety’s sake BBC lawyers looked at a possible fair use defense and decided the film was defensible. “It was an exploratory process that we entered into quite innocently,” Mr. Wall said.
“But what we’re looking at, in terms of it possibly being a precedent, is the law bending to reflect what’s really going on,” he said, meaning the Internet, the global marketplace and disparate views of copyright. “What we need is a new rule book. What it’s about is control, whether the Internet can be controlled, and the way our lives are controlled. It’s been a long time, after all, since ‘Steamboat Willie.’ ”
Mr. Wall’s reference to Walt Disney’s original Mickey Mouse cartoon points up a nettlesome issue in the realm of United States copyright law: Each time the 1928 “Willie” has been poised to enter public domain, Congress has extended copyright protection. But the larger point for rights activists is whether a culture can survive without being able to feed upon itself.
“Can you imagine the original guy who told the story of King Lear?” Mr. Jayanti asked. “What if he had been able to block Shakespeare, who picked up a story that was simply in the air? I’m not saying I’m Shakespeare, or that Phil Spector is doing what Shakespeare did with King Lear, but if we don’t have the ability to harvest and process and sample our own culture, then I think the culture dries up.”
The fair use issue is close to the heart of Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media at American University, which has developed the Code of Best Practices in Fair-Use, a documentary-industry standard. “One of the things that is not O.K. is to use music as soundtrack, for ambience or aesthetic,” Dr. Aufderheide said. But Mr. Jayanti’s argument — that Mr. Spector’s records cannot be appreciated or assessed except in their entirety — “is a nonaesthetic, nonsoundtrack reason,” and is quite plausible, she said.
There’s another side to the issue of course. “Filmmakers pay for actors, they pay for film stock, they pay for electricity,” said Robert Clarida, a partner with Cowan, Liebowitz, Latman, who is representing the recording industry in the continuing file-sharing case Arista Records et al. v. LimeWire. “Why shouldn’t they pay for music?”
Mr. Clarida conceded the merits of fair use in some instances, but said the use of an entire work, like a song, has rarely held up and cited two relatively recent and disparate decisions, one involving Elvis Presley and the other a 1947 performance by the singer Lily Pons, used on the cable program “Classic Arts Showcase.”
Mr. Jayanti said he hopes any discussion of copyright issues doesn’t overwhelm his motivations in making the movie in the first place, namely the celebration of what Mr. Spector achieved before calamity struck, and his directorly obsession with “geniuses under duress.”
“I’ve always wanted to do two documentaries that can’t be done: Napoleon on St. Helena and the trial of Oscar Wilde,” he said. “With Phil, I got to do both.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/movies/27spector.html
"BETWEEN recording sessions here in 1973, John Lennon called Phil Spector and told him to come back down to the studio. “Someone’s ripped you off, Phil,” Mr. Lennon said. When Mr. Spector arrived, a projector had been set up, a film began to roll, several familiar drumbeats were heard and then, the wail of the Ronettes.
The song was “Be My Baby,” the movie was “Mean Streets,” and no one had told Mr. Spector anything about it.
“I said, ‘Who is this guy Skeezy?’ ” Mr. Spector recalls during “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” which opens Wednesday at the Film Forum in Manhattan. “I called my lawyers, I said, ‘Kill it!’ ” Martin Scorsese had used his music without permission, and “I never give permission for anything.”
Only Lennon’s intercession stopped Mr. Spector from seeking an injunction that could have pulled the movies out of theaters. They may not have known it at the time, but Mr. Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel came close to having their careers derailed by Mr. Spector — the creator of rock’s fabled “Wall of Sound,” the Svengali of the ’60s girl groups and the producer of the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”
The anecdote is perhaps the most startling contained in “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector,” a documentary by Vikram Jayanti, and not only because it’s being told by a man who, for 50 years, has avoided the news media like the plague. Built around interviews at Mr. Spector’s home during his first murder trial in 2007 — he was convicted in the shooting death of the actress Lana Clarkson after a second trial in 2009 — the film employs a greatest-hits collection of 21 Spector songs, played or performed in their entirety. And it does so without having obtained Mr. Spector’s written permission. Thus the film could become the latest flashpoint in the debate over what’s generally known as fair use, and copyright law. (Fair use refers to the right, under certain circumstances, like criticism, to use copyrighted material without permission. But the exact amount one can legally use remains a murky proposition.)
Mr. Jayanti, however, isn’t expecting any legal trouble, even though Mr. Spector twice sued his (former) friend and lawyer, Robert Shapiro, to reclaim a $1 million retainer and was appeased by Mr. Scorsese only when he promised to pay for future music use.
“Phil wanted the film made, he wanted the music given freely, he was cooperative about making it,” said Mr. Jayanti, who sat with Mr. Spector during most of the 2007 trial in Los Angeles.
Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Spector’s wife, Rachelle, said she hadn’t seen the film and didn’t think her husband had either. (He is serving 19 years to life at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran.) Mr. Jayanti disagrees. “Of course he’s seen the film,” he said. “We made sure he had a copy. We gave his lawyers copies of the film. And I don’t think if he looked at it in a rational state of mind, he’d have any problem with it. I think it does what he dreamed it would do.” Namely, to rewrite the lead of his obituary: from “convicted murderer” to “musical genius.”
Anthony Wall has produced the documentary program “Arena” for nearly 35 years, out of the BBC offices at Bush House, and it was Mr. Wall who asked Mr. Jayanti to direct the Spector film. They’d previously made “James Ellroy’s Feast of Death” together. Separately Mr. Jayanti has directed films like "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" and was an executive producer on “When We Were Kings.”
“Running a program like this, you have your particular heroes or favorites,” Mr. Wall said. “The Top 3 for me were always Dylan, the Beatles and Phil Spector. I thought it would be difficult to get any of them, but that we’d never get Phil, because he has so resolutely refused to even give a newspaper interview. He just doesn’t do it.” The weird thing, Mr. Wall said, was that he had so few expectations, adding, “When Vikram asked me one day whether I’d actually written to him to give him the chance to say no, I hadn’t.”
Mr. Jayanti overnighted a letter to Mr. Spector and got a positive response three days later. Mr. Wall and Mr. Jayanti went to the Spectors’ home in Alhambra, Calif. — where a sign outside reads “Phil Spector’s Pyrenees Castle” — and did two days of interviews. A planned five-day shoot was interrupted by Mr. Spector’s trial preparation; a subsequent gag order on Mr. Spector ended all communication between subject and director. But Mr. Jayanti decided he had everything he needed — except, perhaps, that signed release.
For safety’s sake BBC lawyers looked at a possible fair use defense and decided the film was defensible. “It was an exploratory process that we entered into quite innocently,” Mr. Wall said.
“But what we’re looking at, in terms of it possibly being a precedent, is the law bending to reflect what’s really going on,” he said, meaning the Internet, the global marketplace and disparate views of copyright. “What we need is a new rule book. What it’s about is control, whether the Internet can be controlled, and the way our lives are controlled. It’s been a long time, after all, since ‘Steamboat Willie.’ ”
Mr. Wall’s reference to Walt Disney’s original Mickey Mouse cartoon points up a nettlesome issue in the realm of United States copyright law: Each time the 1928 “Willie” has been poised to enter public domain, Congress has extended copyright protection. But the larger point for rights activists is whether a culture can survive without being able to feed upon itself.
“Can you imagine the original guy who told the story of King Lear?” Mr. Jayanti asked. “What if he had been able to block Shakespeare, who picked up a story that was simply in the air? I’m not saying I’m Shakespeare, or that Phil Spector is doing what Shakespeare did with King Lear, but if we don’t have the ability to harvest and process and sample our own culture, then I think the culture dries up.”
The fair use issue is close to the heart of Patricia Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media at American University, which has developed the Code of Best Practices in Fair-Use, a documentary-industry standard. “One of the things that is not O.K. is to use music as soundtrack, for ambience or aesthetic,” Dr. Aufderheide said. But Mr. Jayanti’s argument — that Mr. Spector’s records cannot be appreciated or assessed except in their entirety — “is a nonaesthetic, nonsoundtrack reason,” and is quite plausible, she said.
There’s another side to the issue of course. “Filmmakers pay for actors, they pay for film stock, they pay for electricity,” said Robert Clarida, a partner with Cowan, Liebowitz, Latman, who is representing the recording industry in the continuing file-sharing case Arista Records et al. v. LimeWire. “Why shouldn’t they pay for music?”
Mr. Clarida conceded the merits of fair use in some instances, but said the use of an entire work, like a song, has rarely held up and cited two relatively recent and disparate decisions, one involving Elvis Presley and the other a 1947 performance by the singer Lily Pons, used on the cable program “Classic Arts Showcase.”
Mr. Jayanti said he hopes any discussion of copyright issues doesn’t overwhelm his motivations in making the movie in the first place, namely the celebration of what Mr. Spector achieved before calamity struck, and his directorly obsession with “geniuses under duress.”
“I’ve always wanted to do two documentaries that can’t be done: Napoleon on St. Helena and the trial of Oscar Wilde,” he said. “With Phil, I got to do both.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/movies/27spector.html
You can't beat the sports TV pirates, so join them; (London) Guardian, 6/25/10
Seth Freedman, (London) Guardian; You can't beat the sports TV pirates, so join them:
"As millions sat glued to their television screens watching the epic Isner-Mahut tennis battle this week, countless others took the opportunity to watch the match illegally over the internet. Thanks to the proliferation of illicit websites offering live streaming of every major sporting event, huge amounts of broadcast revenue are being siphoned out of the world of sports – threatening the industry in the same way that Napster and Limewire decimated the music business.
I watched the final three games of Isner-Mahut via one such feed, and in terms of quality and timing there was no difference whatsoever from watching the game via a conventional, legal TV broadcaster. Gone are the days when low-resolution, high-interruption feeds were the only way to watch pirated sports games: today's technology makes watching ripped-off streams virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
Sport, like music and mainstream media beforehand, has a stark choice before its governing bodies. If they remain resolute in their determination to follow old-school methods of disseminating their product, they will quickly drown under the deluge of fraudsters and pirates all too eager to capitalise on their mistakes. On the other hand, if they realise that they have to adapt to financially survive, they need to move fast to prevent a potentially catastrophic loss of income.
In some quarters, sporting bodies are moving with the times. The Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket games are broadcast live and free via YouTube, effectively heading off at the pass any rogue broadcasters seeking to steal their feed for themselves. The IPL authorities have a guaranteed income from their YouTube deal and, with a dedicated millions-strong audience subscribing to their feed, advertisers know how many people they can reach via the stream and how much each commercial slot is worth.
Likewise, this year's Wimbledon can be watched via pay-per-view on the tournament's official website, although given that this requires significant payment from the consumer, pirate sites still have the upper hand over the organiser's package. The choice between paying $9.99 (£6.50) for a "day pass" to online Wimbledon or a simple Google search for live, free tennis-streaming is not a hard one for most casual viewers to make, given that they get the exact same product with either option.
The malignant symptoms present themselves even more prevalently in the realm of top-tier football. The English Premier League and the Spanish Primera Division are two of the most heavily pirated leagues in the world, and despite the best efforts of regulators the problem is only getting worse with every passing year. Match highlights have been all but lost to copyright infringement, with uploads made by the thousand on YouTube and its peers, and touted on dedicated, legal sites such as 101greatgoals. Live games are increasingly going the same way, thanks to the authorities' refusal to accept that they can't beat the free-view pirates and should therefore join them instead.
Gambling companies have been quick to realise the potential draw of live feeds on their sites, especially in the realm of horse and dog racing, but also in slower-paced, more popular sports such as football and tennis. Betfair and Bet365 offer live broadcasts to punters with active betting accounts, easily reaping back in gambling revenue the outlay made to buy broadcasting rights.
Yet with all the signs pointing to a brave new world of online broadcasting, the industry dinosaurs continue plodding along the road to extinction. Premier League enforcers boast of their success in shutting down a handful of illegal feeds, but most online sports piracy goes unpunished. With mobile phones providing yet another alternative to television in the race for audiences, there is even more pressure on rights owners to be proactive rather than simply shut the stable door behind the bolting horse.
On anecdotal evidence alone, it is clear that there is a serious problem at the heart of the sports industry's broadcasting policies. In Tel Aviv, my peers and I watch football in bars with illegal satellites or via pirated internet feeds on laptops hooked up to plasma screens. No one bothers paying for dedicated sports packages when the alternatives are so free and easy, just as huge amounts of people illegally download films and TV series rather than spend money on DVDs.
The route chosen by the dogged likes of Rupert Murdoch in demanding money for access to his newspapers and sports packages is doomed to fail as long as there are equally determined rogue operators prepared to keep coming up with illegal alternatives. On the strength of this week's illegal tennis feed, the pirates have the upper hand; if the industry is to emulate Isner rather than Mahut, their style of play needs to change fast to redress the balance."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/25/tv-sports-pirates-premier-league
"As millions sat glued to their television screens watching the epic Isner-Mahut tennis battle this week, countless others took the opportunity to watch the match illegally over the internet. Thanks to the proliferation of illicit websites offering live streaming of every major sporting event, huge amounts of broadcast revenue are being siphoned out of the world of sports – threatening the industry in the same way that Napster and Limewire decimated the music business.
I watched the final three games of Isner-Mahut via one such feed, and in terms of quality and timing there was no difference whatsoever from watching the game via a conventional, legal TV broadcaster. Gone are the days when low-resolution, high-interruption feeds were the only way to watch pirated sports games: today's technology makes watching ripped-off streams virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
Sport, like music and mainstream media beforehand, has a stark choice before its governing bodies. If they remain resolute in their determination to follow old-school methods of disseminating their product, they will quickly drown under the deluge of fraudsters and pirates all too eager to capitalise on their mistakes. On the other hand, if they realise that they have to adapt to financially survive, they need to move fast to prevent a potentially catastrophic loss of income.
In some quarters, sporting bodies are moving with the times. The Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket games are broadcast live and free via YouTube, effectively heading off at the pass any rogue broadcasters seeking to steal their feed for themselves. The IPL authorities have a guaranteed income from their YouTube deal and, with a dedicated millions-strong audience subscribing to their feed, advertisers know how many people they can reach via the stream and how much each commercial slot is worth.
Likewise, this year's Wimbledon can be watched via pay-per-view on the tournament's official website, although given that this requires significant payment from the consumer, pirate sites still have the upper hand over the organiser's package. The choice between paying $9.99 (£6.50) for a "day pass" to online Wimbledon or a simple Google search for live, free tennis-streaming is not a hard one for most casual viewers to make, given that they get the exact same product with either option.
The malignant symptoms present themselves even more prevalently in the realm of top-tier football. The English Premier League and the Spanish Primera Division are two of the most heavily pirated leagues in the world, and despite the best efforts of regulators the problem is only getting worse with every passing year. Match highlights have been all but lost to copyright infringement, with uploads made by the thousand on YouTube and its peers, and touted on dedicated, legal sites such as 101greatgoals. Live games are increasingly going the same way, thanks to the authorities' refusal to accept that they can't beat the free-view pirates and should therefore join them instead.
Gambling companies have been quick to realise the potential draw of live feeds on their sites, especially in the realm of horse and dog racing, but also in slower-paced, more popular sports such as football and tennis. Betfair and Bet365 offer live broadcasts to punters with active betting accounts, easily reaping back in gambling revenue the outlay made to buy broadcasting rights.
Yet with all the signs pointing to a brave new world of online broadcasting, the industry dinosaurs continue plodding along the road to extinction. Premier League enforcers boast of their success in shutting down a handful of illegal feeds, but most online sports piracy goes unpunished. With mobile phones providing yet another alternative to television in the race for audiences, there is even more pressure on rights owners to be proactive rather than simply shut the stable door behind the bolting horse.
On anecdotal evidence alone, it is clear that there is a serious problem at the heart of the sports industry's broadcasting policies. In Tel Aviv, my peers and I watch football in bars with illegal satellites or via pirated internet feeds on laptops hooked up to plasma screens. No one bothers paying for dedicated sports packages when the alternatives are so free and easy, just as huge amounts of people illegally download films and TV series rather than spend money on DVDs.
The route chosen by the dogged likes of Rupert Murdoch in demanding money for access to his newspapers and sports packages is doomed to fail as long as there are equally determined rogue operators prepared to keep coming up with illegal alternatives. On the strength of this week's illegal tennis feed, the pirates have the upper hand; if the industry is to emulate Isner rather than Mahut, their style of play needs to change fast to redress the balance."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/25/tv-sports-pirates-premier-league
Friday, June 25, 2010
New US IP Enforcement Plan May Have International Impact; Intellectual Property Watch, 6/23/10
Liza Porteus Viana, Intellectual Property Watch; New US IP Enforcement Plan May Have International Impact:
"The Obama administration’s release of its national intellectual property strategy yesterday was welcomed by many groups representing businesses and intellectual property holders who said it could serve as an example to other countries.
The strategy encompasses 33 enforcement strategy action items that fall within six categories of focus for the United States: (1) leading by example; (2) increasing transparency; (3) ensuring efficiency and coordination; (4) enforcing our rights internationally; (5) securing our supply chain; and (6) building a data-driven government.
“Combating counterfeiting and piracy requires a robust federal response,” says the introduction of the report, which was released by President Obama’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator (IPEC), Victoria Espinel, who was joined by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Attorney General Eric Holder, Vice President Joe Biden, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “Our status as a global innovation leader is compromised by those countries who fail to enforce the rule of law or international agreements, or who adopt policies that disadvantage American industries.”
“I say to those who are suffering from infringement: ‘Help is on the way,’” Espinel said during a press conference releasing the report.
Watch a video of the press conference here.
Biden said a comprehensive approach thus far has been lacking in this country, further alluding to the fact that up until now, there has been no proper cracking down on piracy at the federal level.
“Piracy hurts. It hurts our economy,” as well as citizens’ health and safety, he added, taking a hardline position. “Whether we’re talking about fake drugs that hurt instead of help the patient or knockoff car tires that fall apart at 65 miles per hour that cause injury or death, counterfeits kill. Counterfeits kill. There’s a reason why they’re counterfeit – they don’t know how to do it in the first place. It also, to state the obvious, stifles creativity.”
He continued: “Piracy is theft – clean and simple. It’s smash and grab. … Intellectual property is no different.”
While acknowledging the need to control IP infringement, public interest groups, academics and some US trading partners have continually raised concern that overly strong or unbalanced protection measures can also stifle creativity and innovation as well by limiting access to ideas and knowledge...
Mark Esper, executive vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center, said this strategy may cause others to ponder similar plans. The instalment of Espinel as the IPEC may also hammer home the idea that the United States is taking IP enforcement seriously, he added. As of January 2007, 23 countries and/or regions had intellectual property strategies included in WIPO’s IP and New Technologies Database.
“Those two go hand in glove,” Esper told Intellectual Property Watch. Other countries may conclude that “they, too, will need somebody at the top of their government focused solely on IP and creativity.” He said the European Union is pondering the idea of such an official.
The Chamber commended the administration, specifically, for acknowledging the increasingly sophisticated problem of internet piracy. Biden also called on the private sector to do more to combat this type of theft.
“I am encouraged to see they have taken on the issue area growing the most quickly, the one that will be the most difficult to get under control,” Esper added.
Biden also specifically applauded search engines like Yahoo, Google and Bing, which in recent weeks took steps to stop selling advertising to illegal internet pharmacies.
Applause and comments also came from other groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America, Copyright Alliance, Progress & Freedom Foundation, National Association of Manufacturers and American Apparel & Footwear Association, as well as lawmakers such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who was the lead author of the 2008 legislation creating Espinel’s post. Leahy said he will discuss the plan with Espinel at the Judiciary Committee’s IPEC oversight hearing today."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/23/new-us-ip-enforcement-plan-may-have-international-impact/
"The Obama administration’s release of its national intellectual property strategy yesterday was welcomed by many groups representing businesses and intellectual property holders who said it could serve as an example to other countries.
The strategy encompasses 33 enforcement strategy action items that fall within six categories of focus for the United States: (1) leading by example; (2) increasing transparency; (3) ensuring efficiency and coordination; (4) enforcing our rights internationally; (5) securing our supply chain; and (6) building a data-driven government.
“Combating counterfeiting and piracy requires a robust federal response,” says the introduction of the report, which was released by President Obama’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator (IPEC), Victoria Espinel, who was joined by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Attorney General Eric Holder, Vice President Joe Biden, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “Our status as a global innovation leader is compromised by those countries who fail to enforce the rule of law or international agreements, or who adopt policies that disadvantage American industries.”
“I say to those who are suffering from infringement: ‘Help is on the way,’” Espinel said during a press conference releasing the report.
Watch a video of the press conference here.
Biden said a comprehensive approach thus far has been lacking in this country, further alluding to the fact that up until now, there has been no proper cracking down on piracy at the federal level.
“Piracy hurts. It hurts our economy,” as well as citizens’ health and safety, he added, taking a hardline position. “Whether we’re talking about fake drugs that hurt instead of help the patient or knockoff car tires that fall apart at 65 miles per hour that cause injury or death, counterfeits kill. Counterfeits kill. There’s a reason why they’re counterfeit – they don’t know how to do it in the first place. It also, to state the obvious, stifles creativity.”
He continued: “Piracy is theft – clean and simple. It’s smash and grab. … Intellectual property is no different.”
While acknowledging the need to control IP infringement, public interest groups, academics and some US trading partners have continually raised concern that overly strong or unbalanced protection measures can also stifle creativity and innovation as well by limiting access to ideas and knowledge...
Mark Esper, executive vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center, said this strategy may cause others to ponder similar plans. The instalment of Espinel as the IPEC may also hammer home the idea that the United States is taking IP enforcement seriously, he added. As of January 2007, 23 countries and/or regions had intellectual property strategies included in WIPO’s IP and New Technologies Database.
“Those two go hand in glove,” Esper told Intellectual Property Watch. Other countries may conclude that “they, too, will need somebody at the top of their government focused solely on IP and creativity.” He said the European Union is pondering the idea of such an official.
The Chamber commended the administration, specifically, for acknowledging the increasingly sophisticated problem of internet piracy. Biden also called on the private sector to do more to combat this type of theft.
“I am encouraged to see they have taken on the issue area growing the most quickly, the one that will be the most difficult to get under control,” Esper added.
Biden also specifically applauded search engines like Yahoo, Google and Bing, which in recent weeks took steps to stop selling advertising to illegal internet pharmacies.
Applause and comments also came from other groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America, Copyright Alliance, Progress & Freedom Foundation, National Association of Manufacturers and American Apparel & Footwear Association, as well as lawmakers such as Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who was the lead author of the 2008 legislation creating Espinel’s post. Leahy said he will discuss the plan with Espinel at the Judiciary Committee’s IPEC oversight hearing today."
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/23/new-us-ip-enforcement-plan-may-have-international-impact/
Feds won't get involved in "three strikes," website blocking; ArsTechnica.com, 6/22/10
Matthew Lasar, ArsTechnica.com; Feds won't get involved in "three strikes," website blocking:
"For months, we've been nervously awaiting new White House intellectual property "czar" Victoria A. Espinel's Joint Strategic Plan, and the White House published it (PDF) this morning. But the document turned out to be fairly innocuous; fair use even gets a few mentions. Rightsholders who hoped the federal government would start running "three strikes" Internet copyright tribunals or start ordering ISPs to block websites were disappointed."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/ip-boss-calls-for-transparency-in-copyright-enforcement.ars
"For months, we've been nervously awaiting new White House intellectual property "czar" Victoria A. Espinel's Joint Strategic Plan, and the White House published it (PDF) this morning. But the document turned out to be fairly innocuous; fair use even gets a few mentions. Rightsholders who hoped the federal government would start running "three strikes" Internet copyright tribunals or start ordering ISPs to block websites were disappointed."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/ip-boss-calls-for-transparency-in-copyright-enforcement.ars
US goes after movie pirates in Estonia, counterfeiters in Tanzania; ArsTechnica.com, 6/24/10
Matthew Lasar, ArsTechnica.com; US goes after movie pirates in Estonia, counterfeiters in Tanzania:
"As we've reported, the White House released its Joint Strategic Plan for intellectual property enforcement this week, courtesy of its new "IP Czar," Victoria Espinel. Vice President Joe Biden was at the press conference to grab the sound bite crown:
"Look, we used to avoid saying this in this town... Piracy is theft," Biden declared. "Clean and simple. It's nothing but theft."
But the report itself shuns the limelight—as well as recommendations like government-mandated website blocking and three strikes rules, we're happy to note. Instead it cautiously urges the government to avoid buying counterfeit items, and to be more transparent in its IP enforcement policies.
All this got us wondering, though: what's the government already doing about this stuff? Turns out the US was all over the world in the last year, spending tax dollars on IP enforcement in all sorts of ways."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/meet-uncle-sams-global-ip-enforcement-team.ars
"As we've reported, the White House released its Joint Strategic Plan for intellectual property enforcement this week, courtesy of its new "IP Czar," Victoria Espinel. Vice President Joe Biden was at the press conference to grab the sound bite crown:
"Look, we used to avoid saying this in this town... Piracy is theft," Biden declared. "Clean and simple. It's nothing but theft."
But the report itself shuns the limelight—as well as recommendations like government-mandated website blocking and three strikes rules, we're happy to note. Instead it cautiously urges the government to avoid buying counterfeit items, and to be more transparent in its IP enforcement policies.
All this got us wondering, though: what's the government already doing about this stuff? Turns out the US was all over the world in the last year, spending tax dollars on IP enforcement in all sorts of ways."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/meet-uncle-sams-global-ip-enforcement-team.ars
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)