Rick Carnes, Eddie Schwartz and Fair Trade Music Project Speaks Out for Silenced Songwriters–Please sign the petition! — The songwriters have spoken out to raise awareness of other songwriters arrested and imprisoned throughout the world for the messages they have conveyed. “Freedom of expression is the life blood of all creators. There is a disturbing trend in many parts of the world to snuff out political opposition by denying songwriters the ability to express themselves through their songs. This is why the Fair Trade Music Project adopted protection of free speech as one of its five principles. Without basic freedom of expression it’s not just music that suffers… people suffer as well,†said Carnes.
The Small Businesses Behind the Big (and Small) Screen — To celebrate the 50th year of National Small Business Week, Creative America takes a look at just a few of the 95,000 businesses that support film and television in the U.S. Roughly 80% of these businesses are small businesses, employing fewer than 10 people.
Where Patton Oswalt is Right and Wrong about Plagiarism — Jonathan Bailey takes a look at the comedian’s recent remarks about plagiarism. “In short, even if you are naturally talented, it’s a lot of work to be a creative. Many people, however, won’t see it that way. This impacts how they interact with your work in many different ways, including making it easier to justify infringement, plagiarism and other activities.”
Fear and Loathing of Silicon Valley — “The fallacy of the tech industry is that we think our ‘change the world/connect the world’ intentions are enough, or at least that they should shield us from reproach, much like our gated communities of Ubers, Airbnbs, and TaskRabbits. We revel in our massive concentration of wealth, private-public transportation, private tech-heavy schools, and the underlying ideology that the government is stupid. We are exempt.”
Pandora’s Boxing: Too Many Punches have Left it Vulnerable to a Knockout — The Internet radio service has seemingly been on a path to squander its goodwill at every turn since the introduction last fall of the Internet Radio Fairness Act, which asked Congress to dramatically cut royalties recording artists get under the compulsory license. Mark Rogowsky takes a look at Pandora’s troubles over at Forbes, while also noting, “The company’s problem, then, is that its bad at making money not that it pays too much.”
Study Finds That Wealthier People Steal More Music… — Even though we’re constantly told that piracy results from people who can’t afford legal options.
Technical review of draft legislation on copyright exceptions — The UK Intellectual Property Office today released a set of proposed copyright exceptions to solicit public comment. The technical review is a part of that country’s copyright reform process, which began with the publication of Digital Opportunity — commonly known as the “Hargreaves Report” — in November 2010. This set of exceptions include amendments to educational exceptions; expanding exceptions for research, libraries, and archives to include sound recordings, films, and broadcasts; and a new exception “to copy the work as part of a technological process of analysis and synthesis of the content of the work for the sole purpose of noncommercial research.”