Decoding the “Declaration of Internet Freedom” — Daniel Castro has a funny take on the “Declaration of Internet Freedom” released this week. Also be sure to check out Elie Mystal’s take on Above the Law, ‘Declaration of Internet Freedom’ Contemplates No Rights or Freedoms Worth Declaring.
Low-budget knockoff movies benefit from Hollywood blockbusters — The LA Times has an interesting look at the growing business of “mockbusters.” The story is reminiscent of a recent Billboard article on the growing business of “knockoff” cover songs. A little too reminiscent, if you ask me…
Little Grey Cells #6… People don’t realise Facebook is all about monetising social graphs— A Q&A with Douglass Rushkoff, tech commentator and author of a new book on the importance of mastering the new digital world. “The user with no programming knowledge at all may as well be sitting in the back seat of the car, with curtains covering the windows – or video screens in place of the windows. He may be going to the best places in the best ways, or he may not. He has to trust his driver. I don’t trust the drivers of our software and websites any more than I trusted the people making game shows and commercials for TV. I’m sure they’re nice people, but I don’t believe they all have my best interests at heart.”
All your © are belong to us — In a two-part series, Bemuso looks at a recent troubling UK proposal for opt-in collective licensing (part 2 here). “Under this new law collection societies may license categories of content without the permission of creators. So if you fall into any category as a songwriter or record label they will license (i.e. own the rights to) your stuff unless you say no.”
BPI AGM: Taylor slams Google’s ‘stonewall refusal’ over search de-listing — Transcript of the BPI exec’s speech this week. Said Taylor, “If Google is clever enough to teach a computer to think – even if only about cats – it’s clever enough, when it has been told more 150,000 times that The Pirate Bay is illegal, to rank that site below Amazon and iTunes when consumers search for music.”
Techo-Utopians Part II – Culture — David Newhoff continues his insights into some of the shortcomings of techno-utopian arguments. “The techno-utopian seems to want to conflate information and entertainment when it is convenient to make idealistic statements like the one quoted in Part I — ‘Imagine all the world’s information and culture…’ and so on. And while I agree that information and culture are interdependent and intertwined, this does not mean, for instance, that one’s right to know what Congress does without a cost barrier also implies a right to download Coldplay to one’s iPod without a cost barrier.”
Masnick posts Castro and Mystal character assassination hit-pieces in 3… 2…
And his employer really goofed up on their refusal to delist: if Google had at least tried to play nice a few years back, they’d still be universally loved instead of being the bad guy in the bullseye.