The recording industry, RIAA and intellectual property

In a Daily Dish post titled, “Copyright and Incentives, Ctd.,” which covers a much more broad concept behind copyright, intellectual property, patents and trademark issues, a Dish reader provided a very succinct view of how and why the RIAA and music industry have gone completely wrong in battling their customer base over digital recordings:

The record companies’ problem is that technology — the internet on the distribution side and the laptop and other personal recording technologies on the creation side — has made the record company’s traditional role as financer and distributor of works increasingly irrelevant.  They are using the intellectual property laws to protect a distribution model that is largely outdated.

I’d say you could even argue the RIAA is abusing intellectual property laws and slowly killing itself and the entire existing recording industry in the process.

More on Google and China

Who’d a thunk I’d be doing two posts on Google and China today? First Google apologizes for a copyright breach issue in China (?!), and now the Mountain View company is threatening to pull out of China because of claims the Asian behemoth breached Google email accounts of human rights activists. Whatever else is going on here, I don’t see any changes to China’s overarching attitudes toward individual privacy or intellectual property — well, at least the intellectual property of non-Chinese citizens.

I understand Google wanting to do business with such a massive market, but it made serious concessions regarding censorship when it went into China so it can’t be all that shocked when China decides to just go out and do whatever it wants.

(Quick joke for Robot Chicken fans — Darth Vader: I’ve changed the terms of our deal. Pray I don’t change it further. Lando: Man, this deal keeps getting worse all the time.)

From the second link:

The company disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” Further investigation revealed that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists,” Google’s post said.

Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results” on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

Attention designers and artists

If you’ve never heard of you thought we wouldn’t notice … go check it out. It’s a blog where people post two designs — graphics, artwork, photo compositions, or whatever — and commenters discuss whether one is a rip off of the other, just derivative or maybe that the poster must have been high to even see a resemblance.

People post their own designs that end up as t-shirts at Hot Topic or whatever, sometimes people post things they’ve come across that are blatant rips, but they have no real dog in the fight other than noticing the theft.

At any rate it’s always a fun site to check out every once in a while. I’ve been visiting it off and on for quite some time.

From the “about” page on the blog:

Welcome to ‘you thought we wouldn’t notice’ a site dedicated to pointing out those things that give you that feeling of ‘haven’t I seen that somewhere before?”

This is a open blog so anyone can post anything, therefore we don’t have control over what is put up. We can only delete/edit it once it’s there, but would much rather leave it there with corrected information.
If anyone has any issues with any of the posts please email us on ytwwn [at] youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com

Anyone posting PLEASE check your sources.
These are some of the reasons you shouldn’t post here:

• It could be a commissioned work.
  
• It could be a tribute.
  
• Or it could be credited.
• It could be the same idea by different people

With the PRO-IP Anti-Piracy Law …

… not only did Bush sign a bad piece of legislation, he added to government bloat with yet another “czar.” Nice.

From the link:

U.S. President George W. Bush Monday signed into law a bill designed to increase protection of intellectual property (IP) such as software, films and music by raising penalties for infringement and creating a national “IP czar.”

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007, or PRO-IP Act, creates a high-ranking IP protection overseer, appointed by the Senate and reporting directly to the president. The position’s first appointee will likely come from the next U.S. administration. The U.S. Department of Justice will also form a new division dedicated to enforcing intellectual property protection.

Some public advocacy groups had opposed the bill, stating that its penalties were far too harsh and that it didn’t balance users’ rights and concerns over those of major software, media and pharmaceutical companies. “The bill only adds more imbalance to a copyright law that favors large media companies. At a time when the entire digital world is going to less restrictive distribution models, and when the courts are aghast at the outlandish damages being inflicted on consumers in copyright cases, this bill goes entirely in the wrong direction,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based digital rights group, after the passage of the Senate version of PRO-IP in late September.