Olympic shenanigans

Obviously I don't care a jot if one set of capitalist annoy another set of capitalists by infringing their stupid copyrights. But this attempt amused me. Send in your examples of Olympic nonsense and I'll post them too.

Free Justin Bieber!

OK, you might not throng the streets in a mass protest calling for Justin Bieber's release. For me, his crimes against music call for eternity in an oubliette. But he's a great example of the iniquity of copyright law.

Amongst the many asinine and cynical applications of copyright (extending profiteering many lifetimes to benefit corporations rather than authors and artists; retarding the spread of academic ideas and wider culture…), the US is debating a plan to outlaw the performance of copyrighted work on electronic media. As the vast majority of electronic media are legally resident in the US, we'll all be caught.

So: no Justin Bieber, who caught the eye of music industry lizards by posting video of himself singing along to R'n'B tracks. No drunk phone video of you singing 'Happy Birthday' to your friend in the pub. No posting wedding reception footage of drunks bawling 'Too-Rye-Ay' en masse. The sentence is 5 years. Other offences include using copyrighted material in the background, or even accidentally including music, ring tones and jingles when you post footage taken in public.

Here are some criminals who will soon be in the cooler:



Most pleasingly, this poster calls himself 'PunkforChrist': we'll see how he, Josh, Danny, Ben, Bridget and Joe enjoy being Punks for Killer and his friends in Sing Sing.



There are no videos of me singing, and there never will be. I was in my school choir: three successful years of miming without ever being caught! It got me out of a lot of very boring classes and very painful rugby games, at the minor cost of faking both religious fervour and musical talent: the Catholic Milli Vanilli! The perfect crime!

More seriously: copyright laws are utterly outdated. I want artists to make a living from their music. Nobody would disagree with that. But major corporations are using copyright to squeeze out innovation. Your kids singing along to Lady Gaga using a hairbrush as a microphone won't snatch the food out of her mouth. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of our relationship to art: we don't steal it, we use it, alter it, admire it.

Media Corporations are just plain evil

I give you Viacom (via Boing Boing), who tried to sue Google (which owns Youtube) for $1bn+ for copyright infringement. Basically, they wanted Youtube to have lawyers check every single video uploaded before it went live, in case there was anything on there belonging to Viacom.

Viacom's unique interpretation of this statute held that online service providers should review all material before it went live. If they're right, you can kiss every message-board, Twitter-feed, photo-hosting service, and blogging platform goodbye -- even if it was worth someone's time to pay a lawyer $500/hour to look at Twitter and approve tweets before they went live, there just aren't enough lawyers in the universe to scratch the surface of these surfaces. 

YouTube alone gets over 29 hours' worth of video per minute.

Now, it's a bit naughty to put other people's work on Youtube, but they've already been paid, and nobody's making money from uploading their favourite Blackadder joke or pictures of their cats watching snooker.

Viacom itself was behaving rather oddly: while one set of Viacom employees was hunting down Viacom material posted on Youtube, another set of Viacom employees was being paid to upload Viacom material. Then a third set of Viacom employees would send threatening letters to Google about Viacom material posted by the other Viacom employees.

 Filings in the case reveal that Viacom paid dozens of marketing companies to clandestinely upload its videos to YouTube (sometimes "roughing them up" to make them look like pirate-chic leaks). Viacom uploaded so much of its content to YouTube that it actually lost track of which videos were "really" pirated, and which ones it had put there, and sent legal threats to Google over videos it had placed itself.

Youtube seemed to be very keen to act lawfully - sent a list of 100,000 infringing videos, they removed the material within a day. That's good going.

Meanwhile, Viacom's management team were getting rather arrogantly ahead of themselves:

Other filings reveal profanity-laced email exchanges between different Viacom execs debating who will get to run YouTube when Viacom destroys it with lawsuits, and execs who express their desire to sue YouTube because they can't afford to buy the company and can't replicate its success on their own.

The judge has told Viacom to piss off. Their new media reaction:

Viacom has vowed to appeal. 

How corporations work

I'm no defender of Youtube - it's another big media company - but they're involved in a stunning spat with Viacom at the moment. That company sued Youtube for hosting Viacom's material - while also employing up to 18 companies to post Viacom property disguised as fans to make their shows look cooler! It really is time for copyright law reform.

This is what Youtube had to say (via Boing Boing):

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself. 

Home taping is killing music

This was the slogan on many of my vinyl records - and obviously it's utterly untrue. I don't illegally download because I like the artwork and sound of records, but copyright is so skewed in favour of corporations that I have very little sympathy for record companies - though I do worry about the musicians.

Here's a childish but interesting take on it:



And here's a record groove - taken by an electron microscope with 1000x magnification (more here)

More news from the nineteenth-century

Morning all. How about another instalment from the 1858 edition of the Times?

First up, a beautiful bit of name-dropping from the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition:

CRYSTAL PALACE–Ceramic Court.–Under the direction of Thomas Battam, Esq., F.S.A.– The EXHIBITION of ENAMELS, Porcelain, and Pottery, now contains examples from the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Granville, Gen. the Hon E. Lygon, Baroness de Goldsmit, H. Danby Seymour, Esq., M. P., F. W. Fairholt, Esq., S. Addington, Esq., Dr. Sibson, F.R.S., J, Falcke, Esq., the Athenaeum, Stoke-upon-Trent, Messrs. Rittener and Saxby, Messrs. Hewitt, Madame Temple, &c., together with choice examples of the manufactures of Messrs. Minton, Copeland, Kerr and Burns. Ridgway and Co., Rose, Philips, &c., including the series of Ceramic works executed for the Art Union of London.

Health fads aren't restricted to our own times: the stupid and gullible rich have always been with us - no doubt Gillian McKeith and the Daily Mail would have given glowing endorsements for this detox treatment. The 'chronic diseases', I suspect, means syphilis.

DR. CAPLIN'S ELECTRO-CHYMICAL BATH ESTABLISHMENT, 9 York-place, Baker-street, Portman-square, for the extraction of mercury and other metallic or extraneous substances, and the treatment of chronic diseases. For the demonstration of this new system vide the second edition, price 1s., 8vo, of Dr. Caplin's Treatise on the Electro-Chymical Bath, and the Relation of Electricity to the Phenomena of Life, Health and Disease, Sold at the Authors Establishment.

Schoolboys have always lost their belongings:

MARGATE.–LOST, on board the Little Western, on Tuesday, July 27, a CARPET-BAG, containing

several articles of wearing apparel, belonging to a young gentleman on his way to school, and some

books with the name of "Herbert Radclyffe" in them. A REWARD will be given to any person returning

the bag to Mr. Dunn, packet-office, Margate.

That appalling vulture programme, Heir-hunters, has a long and dishonourable history too:

NEXT of KIN OFFICES, Doctors'-commons.–NEXT OF KIN WANTED, of many persons who died abroad,

for upwards of 80 years, leaving considerable property unclaimed, which may be recovered, and all

information obtained, through P. Mouillard and Co., Bell-yard, Doctors'-commons.

The world of commerce was bloody and unregulated - copyright was a relatively new idea and advertisers, then and now, were liars.

TO THE BOOKSELLING TRADE.–The COPYRIGHT of "NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND" reverted to Mr.

CHARLES READE on Monday last, Aug. 2, and is now his SOLE PROPERTY.–6, Bolton-row, Mayfair.

SEWING MACHINES.–Thomas v. Foxwell.– In consequence of the erroneous impression produced

by the advertisements which have been produced by Mr. Foxwell, Mr. THOMAS deems it necessary to

CAUTION the public that the verdict in the above action declared that Mr. Foxwell's machines

were an infringement upon his patent, and to state that there has been no decision that his patent is

void. The Court of Queen's Bench held the claim in Mr. Thomas's patent for the general arrangement

of his sewing machinery to be good, and the adverse decision referred to in Mr. Foxwell's advertisements

had reference to a subordinate claim only, which, with the permission of Her Majesty's Attorney-General,

has since been struck out of the specification. Proceedings will be taken against all parties continuing,

after this notice, to USE or SELL SEWING MACHINES made in violation of Mr. Thomas's patent, or

containing any material part of his invention.–Dated August 4.

WILSON and BRISTOWS, 1 Copthall-buildings,

Solicitors for Mr. Thomas.

Holidays and attraction tomorrow.