Katla McGlynn, HuffingtonPost.com; The Most Ridiculous Bootleg DVD Covers Of All Time (PHOTOS):
"You've seen them being sold on blankets on the streets of New York, on shelves in other countries, or even in your friend's living room: bootleg DVDs. Whether actually bootleg or just in foreign packaging, these DVD and VHS covers all have one thing in common and that is extreme misinformation. Take a look at that "Battlestar Galactica" DVD for example. Not only do they call it a "tween comedy" but they actually Photoshopped in the U.S.S. Enterprise from "Star Trek" on the front. On the front. Of the DVD. That they sell. It's a crazy world out there people, so next time you buy a movie or DVD of your favorite TV show, make sure you're buying the real thing."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/the-most-ridiculous-bootl_n_676490.html
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Pat Conroy and the e-book future; Associated Press via YahooNews.com, 8/10/10
Hillel Italie, Associated Press via YahooNews.com; Pat Conroy and the e-book future:
"Conroy is a good example of the divided state of electronic books. With standard contracts now including digital rights, e-editions of his recent works — from "South of Broad" to a memoir out this fall, "My Reading Life" — are handled by Random House, Inc., which also releases the bound versions. Meanwhile, rights to his older books have shifted among outside companies."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100810/ap_en_ot/us_books_pat_conroy
"Conroy is a good example of the divided state of electronic books. With standard contracts now including digital rights, e-editions of his recent works — from "South of Broad" to a memoir out this fall, "My Reading Life" — are handled by Random House, Inc., which also releases the bound versions. Meanwhile, rights to his older books have shifted among outside companies."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100810/ap_en_ot/us_books_pat_conroy
Monday, August 9, 2010
Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published; PC World, 8/6/10
Joab Jackson, PC World; Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published:
"For those who have ever wondered how many different books are out there in the world, Google has an answer for you: 129,864,880, according to Leonid Taycher, a Google software engineer who works on the Google Books project.
Estimating the number of books in the world is more than an exercise in curiosity for the search giant: It also provides a roadmap of some of the work still left to be done in meeting the company's ambitious goal of organizing all the world's information...
As of June, the company has scanned 12 million books, according to a presentation given by Google Books engineering manager Jon Orwant at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston. These books have been written in about 480 languages (including 3 books in the Star Trek-originated Klingon language) .
The company plans to complete the scanning of existing books within a decade. The resulting virtual collection will consist of four billion pages and two trillion words, Orwant said.
About 20 percent of the world's books are in the public domain, Orwant explained. About 10 to 15 percent of these books are in print. The remaining books -- the vast majority of all titles -- are still under copyright but out of print. Google is in the process of borrowing copies of these books in order to digitize them, from about 40 large libraries worldwide.
It's this act of scanning in books that are out-of-print but still covered by copyright that has been met with some resistance by the publishing industry.
The company is now waiting for a judgement from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, on whether it can scan these books. "
http://www.pcworld.com/article/202803/google_129_million_different_books_have_been_published.html
"For those who have ever wondered how many different books are out there in the world, Google has an answer for you: 129,864,880, according to Leonid Taycher, a Google software engineer who works on the Google Books project.
Estimating the number of books in the world is more than an exercise in curiosity for the search giant: It also provides a roadmap of some of the work still left to be done in meeting the company's ambitious goal of organizing all the world's information...
As of June, the company has scanned 12 million books, according to a presentation given by Google Books engineering manager Jon Orwant at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston. These books have been written in about 480 languages (including 3 books in the Star Trek-originated Klingon language) .
The company plans to complete the scanning of existing books within a decade. The resulting virtual collection will consist of four billion pages and two trillion words, Orwant said.
About 20 percent of the world's books are in the public domain, Orwant explained. About 10 to 15 percent of these books are in print. The remaining books -- the vast majority of all titles -- are still under copyright but out of print. Google is in the process of borrowing copies of these books in order to digitize them, from about 40 large libraries worldwide.
It's this act of scanning in books that are out-of-print but still covered by copyright that has been met with some resistance by the publishing industry.
The company is now waiting for a judgement from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, on whether it can scan these books. "
http://www.pcworld.com/article/202803/google_129_million_different_books_have_been_published.html
Sunday Times faces £150,000-plus payout over Jimi Hendrix CD; (London) Guardian, 8/6/10
Josh Halliday, (London) Guardian; Sunday Times faces £150,000-plus payout over Jimi Hendrix CD: US companies linked with musician's estate win ruling that paper did not obtain proper copyright clearance for giveaway disc:
"High court judge Sir William Blackburne last Friday ruled that the Sunday Times covermount had delayed by a year the receipt of $5.8m in earnings to Experience Hendrix and Last Experience from the Hendrix concert film. He ordered Times Newspapers to pay damages equivalent to one year's interest on that sum.
The exact damages figure is still being worked out by the two sides' legal teams, but MediaGuardian.co.uk understands it will be just over $250,000."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/06/sunday-times-jimi-hendrix-cd
"High court judge Sir William Blackburne last Friday ruled that the Sunday Times covermount had delayed by a year the receipt of $5.8m in earnings to Experience Hendrix and Last Experience from the Hendrix concert film. He ordered Times Newspapers to pay damages equivalent to one year's interest on that sum.
The exact damages figure is still being worked out by the two sides' legal teams, but MediaGuardian.co.uk understands it will be just over $250,000."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/06/sunday-times-jimi-hendrix-cd
The Music-Copyright Enforcers; New York Times, 8/8/10
John Bowe, New York Times; The Music-Copyright Enforcers:
"Baker, 30, is a licensing executive with Broadcast Music Incorporated, otherwise known as BMI. The firm is a P.R.O., or performing rights organization; P.R.O.’s license the music of the songwriters and music publishers they represent, collecting royalties whenever that music is played in a public setting. Which means that if you buy a CD by, say, Ryan Adams, or download one of his songs from iTunes, and play it at your family reunion, even if 500 people come, you owe nothing. But if you play it at a restaurant you own, then you must pay for the right to harness Adams’s creativity to earn money for yourself. Which leaves you with three choices: you can track down Ryan Adams, make a deal with him and pay him directly; you can pay a licensing fee to the P.R.O. that represents him — in this case, BMI; or you can ignore the issue altogether and hope not to get caught.
P.R.O.’s like BMI spend much of their energy negotiating licenses with the biggest users of music — radio stations, TV and cable networks, film studios, streaming Internet music sites and so on. But a significant portion of BMI’s business is to “educate” and charge — by phone and in person — the hundreds of thousands of businesses across America that don’t know or don’t care to know that they have to pay for the music they use. Besides the more obvious locales like bars and nightclubs, the list of such venues includes: funeral parlors, grocery stores, sports arenas, fitness centers, retirement homes — tens of thousands of businesses, playing a collective many billions of songs per year.
Most Americans have no problem with BMI charging for its music — except when they do. As Richard Conlon, a vice president at BMI in charge of new media, put it: “A few years back, we had Penn, Schoen and Berland, Hillary’s pollster guys, do a study. The idea was, go and find out what Americans really think about copyright. Do songwriters deserve to be paid? Absolutely! The numbers were enormously favorable — like, 85 percent. The poll asked, ‘If there was a party that wasn’t compensating songwriters, do you think that would be wrong?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes!’ So then, everything’s fine, right? Wrong. Because when it came time to ask people to part with their shekels, it was like: ‘Eww. You want me to pay?’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08music-t.html
"Baker, 30, is a licensing executive with Broadcast Music Incorporated, otherwise known as BMI. The firm is a P.R.O., or performing rights organization; P.R.O.’s license the music of the songwriters and music publishers they represent, collecting royalties whenever that music is played in a public setting. Which means that if you buy a CD by, say, Ryan Adams, or download one of his songs from iTunes, and play it at your family reunion, even if 500 people come, you owe nothing. But if you play it at a restaurant you own, then you must pay for the right to harness Adams’s creativity to earn money for yourself. Which leaves you with three choices: you can track down Ryan Adams, make a deal with him and pay him directly; you can pay a licensing fee to the P.R.O. that represents him — in this case, BMI; or you can ignore the issue altogether and hope not to get caught.
P.R.O.’s like BMI spend much of their energy negotiating licenses with the biggest users of music — radio stations, TV and cable networks, film studios, streaming Internet music sites and so on. But a significant portion of BMI’s business is to “educate” and charge — by phone and in person — the hundreds of thousands of businesses across America that don’t know or don’t care to know that they have to pay for the music they use. Besides the more obvious locales like bars and nightclubs, the list of such venues includes: funeral parlors, grocery stores, sports arenas, fitness centers, retirement homes — tens of thousands of businesses, playing a collective many billions of songs per year.
Most Americans have no problem with BMI charging for its music — except when they do. As Richard Conlon, a vice president at BMI in charge of new media, put it: “A few years back, we had Penn, Schoen and Berland, Hillary’s pollster guys, do a study. The idea was, go and find out what Americans really think about copyright. Do songwriters deserve to be paid? Absolutely! The numbers were enormously favorable — like, 85 percent. The poll asked, ‘If there was a party that wasn’t compensating songwriters, do you think that would be wrong?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes!’ So then, everything’s fine, right? Wrong. Because when it came time to ask people to part with their shekels, it was like: ‘Eww. You want me to pay?’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08music-t.html
Saturday, August 7, 2010
How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks; New York Times, 8/3/10
Tara Siegel Bernard, New York Times; How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks:
"The cost of buying the textbooks can easily add up to $1,000 a year or more.
Thankfully, federal rules that went into effect in July may help ease the pain. Publishers can no longer bundle their textbooks with accompanying materials like workbooks, and they must reveal their prices to professors when making a sales pitch. Colleges, meanwhile, are now required to provide students with a list of assigned textbooks during course registration, which allows for more time for shopping before classes begin.
That’s especially important now because there are an increasing number of ways to save on books if you buy or rent them online. This Times article from last year provides a lot of helpful information. But we also spoke with Nicole Allen, textbook advocate at the Student Public Interest Research Groups, for some more tips.."
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/how-to-find-cheaper-college-textbooks/?src=me&ref=homepage
"The cost of buying the textbooks can easily add up to $1,000 a year or more.
Thankfully, federal rules that went into effect in July may help ease the pain. Publishers can no longer bundle their textbooks with accompanying materials like workbooks, and they must reveal their prices to professors when making a sales pitch. Colleges, meanwhile, are now required to provide students with a list of assigned textbooks during course registration, which allows for more time for shopping before classes begin.
That’s especially important now because there are an increasing number of ways to save on books if you buy or rent them online. This Times article from last year provides a lot of helpful information. But we also spoke with Nicole Allen, textbook advocate at the Student Public Interest Research Groups, for some more tips.."
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/how-to-find-cheaper-college-textbooks/?src=me&ref=homepage
Friday, August 6, 2010
Schumer Bill Seeks to Protect Fashion Design; New York Times, 8/5/10
Cathy Horyn, New York Times; Schumer Bill Seeks to Protect Fashion Design:
"The American fashion industry has been pushing hard over the last four years for copyright protection for its designs. A bill in the House of Representative died in committee after clothing makers argued that protection against knock-offs would only encourage frivolous lawsuits from people claiming they had the idea first. Today, after a year of negotiations, Senator Charles E. Schumer introduced a bill that seemed to satisfy the different sides of the fashion industry — and may provide some protection, too.
The bill, the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, has the support of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), whose individual members represent the creative core of the industry, and the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), which represents more than 700 manufacturers and suppliers and by its estimate accounts for about 75 percent of the industry’s business. The AAFA had argued that the House bill was too broad and would expose its members to lawsuits."
http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/schumer-bill-seeks-to-protect-fashion-design/?scp=3&sq=copyright&st=cse
"The American fashion industry has been pushing hard over the last four years for copyright protection for its designs. A bill in the House of Representative died in committee after clothing makers argued that protection against knock-offs would only encourage frivolous lawsuits from people claiming they had the idea first. Today, after a year of negotiations, Senator Charles E. Schumer introduced a bill that seemed to satisfy the different sides of the fashion industry — and may provide some protection, too.
The bill, the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, has the support of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), whose individual members represent the creative core of the industry, and the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), which represents more than 700 manufacturers and suppliers and by its estimate accounts for about 75 percent of the industry’s business. The AAFA had argued that the House bill was too broad and would expose its members to lawsuits."
http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/schumer-bill-seeks-to-protect-fashion-design/?scp=3&sq=copyright&st=cse
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)