Gerd Leonhard: TheEndOfControl

Copyright extension is the enemy of innovation -Times Online

This open letter is a very hard-hitting and on-the-money response to the planned extension of copyright terms: Copyright extension is the enemy of innovation -Times Online.

"The simple truth is that copyright extension benefits most those who already hold rights. It benefits incumbent holders of major back-catalogues, be they record companies, ageing rock stars or, increasingly, artists’ estates. It does nothing for innovation and creativity. The proposed Term Extension Directive undermines the credibility of the copyright system. It will further alienate a younger generation that, justifiably, fails to see a principled basis. Many of us sympathise with the financial difficulties that aspiring performers face. However, measures to benefit performers would look rather different. They would target unreasonably exploitative contracts during the existing term, and evaluate remuneration during the performer’s lifetime, not 95 years..."

Read my various comments comments on Copyright 2.0 here

AO TV | AlwaysOn: More Control over TV?

Good video: AO TV | AlwaysOn.

"Consumers have come to expect better control, filtering and discovery tools for TV programming. Micorvision, which now owns TV Guide, introduces its Interactive Program Guide, which allows various viewers using the same TV to set up separate profiles, enabling better control, content suggestions, and more targeted advertising.."

BPI: We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist

From the BBC's excellent coverage of VirginMedia's plan to enforce the bizarre 3-strikes+out plan presented by the French Olivennes commission (and now under consideration in the UK): "BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor told BBC News that the body was prepared to ... take ISPs to court. "There is a phenomenal amount of piracy out there and we believe that the idea that 95% of content on the net is free is not sustainable. We don't believe that society can allow the free consumption of content to persist"

Now here is the problem, Geoff (and I think you know this): a free society does not have the option of disallowing something that is easy to do and undertaken by a majority of the population IF there is a plausible alternative that could make it legal without harming either party, i.e. just because your economic model of selling copies is broken it does not mean the government should protect you by turning the Internet into a police-state. The solution is a LICENSE to everyone that cares to have it, everyone that wants to offer music, everyone that wants to add music to their offerings. A license that RADIO has had for almost 100 years.  Get on with it and make that happen rather than trying to enforce the unenforceable.

Note: on the subject of so-called piracy check out Matt Mason's book "The Pirates Dilemma"

Update: good comment from MillionMedia here

Magnaglobal: We already know everything so don't contact us

Just got this via Critical Distance chief Jonathan Marks.   Magnaglobal seems to have a very enlightened management - not only do the not accept any unsolicited ideas, they also think that their own people have already had every possible idea under the sun!  Wow. Cool. Success is yours, for sure.

"It is the policy of MAGNA and MAGNA Entertainment not to consider or accept unsolicited ideas, concepts, materials, information, proposals and the like. Any such unsolicited materials will be returned and/or deleted or destroyed, at our option. Our own people are constantly at work developing ideas, and as a result, we have found that ideas and other materials submitted by others have generally been used before or are otherwise familiar to our employees."

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Apple iPhone - the new walled garden ?

Techcrunchit has a good feature on this - food for thought, indeed:

"Geeks and enthusiasts.. lined up enthusiastically on Friday to purchase a device that is completely proprietary, controlled and wrapped in DRM. The irony was lost on some as they ran home, docked their new devices into a proprietary media player and downloaded closed source applications wrapped in DRM. I am referring to the new iPhone - and the new Apple iPhone SDK that allows developers to build ‘native’ applications. The announcement was greeted with a web-wide standing ovation, especially from the developer community. The same community who demand all from Microsoft, feel gifted and special when Apple give them an inch of rope. When Microsoft introduced DRM into Media Player it was bad bad bad - and it wasn’t even mandatory, it simply allowed content owners a way to distribute and sell content from anywhere. Apple has wrapped the iPhone SDK in enough licensing, security controls and right management that it would make the Microsoft Acive Desktop team blush. The phone and platform that is certain to soon take second spot behind Symbian in the smart phone market is also the most restricted and closed. Applications can only be installed from a single source, iTunes, and open source applications and distribution is near impossible. How do you install an iPhone application without iTunes..."

It is surely bizarre that we are willing to accept this from Apple but utterly reject it from everyone else. Thoughts, anyone?  Use the comment box below.

Clouds and Pirates: Darknets Rising (via Shelly Palmer)

Shelly has a good essay here: Clouds and Pirates: Darknets Rising | MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer.

"At the end of the day, P2P networks and strange or alien files are not going to cause any more economic hardship for the content industry than they are causing right now. However, good natured, good citizens using private storage clouds are going to be hugely hurtful. And, if good citizens can cause irreparable harm by paving the road to hell, imagine what bad natured, bad citizens will be able to accomplish with the same technology. Trust me, the computer network does not know the nature of its users..."

His list of virtual drop-boxes and sharing sites is useful, as well:

Drop.io (drop.io)
MailBigFile (mailbigfile.com)
MediaFire (mediafire.com)
MegaUpload (megaupload.com)
Pando (pando.com)
RapidShare (rapidshare.com)
SendSpace (sendspace.com)
YouSendIt (yousendit.com)
ZShare (zshare.com)

Privacy: Google says Trust is the basis of everything

This is the key mission for Google's Future: Maintain and curate TRUST.

Link: E-Commerce News: Privacy: Google Makes Room for Privacy.

And I think they'll do it, too!

"Google values our users' privacy first and foremost," wrote Marisa Meyer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience, on the company's Official Google Blog. "Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data"

Below is from a presentation I did 3 years ago, for the ABU, in Hanoi / Vietnam (on the Future of Radio)

EU musicians oppose Europe-wide online licensing (controling your works)

EU musicians oppose Europe-wide online licensing - Yahoo! News.

"On a fundamental scale, it's a human right that someone who writes a piece of work should have control of it," Gibb said in a statement, adding that a change could discourage newer songwriters from producing tomorrow's hits"

True enough - that would be nice. If it was still feasible. If this was still a disconnected and / or centrally controlled world. If permission-denied would actually mean it's not possible. If lack of license means no use. If refusal means maintaining control. If value is defined by having control.

The thing is, Berry: we don't live in this world anymore. Once we release something it's the users fka consumers that control it's use - and we urgently need to find a way of making what they already do legal. This illusion of total control is not going to generate benefits for creators and rights-holders.

My final comment

The Future of Social Media: Engage or be Tivo'ed (new slideshow on the Future of Advertising and Marketing) *Vote for me!

Slideshare just lauched a competition for the best presentation and naturally I am throwing my hat in ;).  Check out this new slideshow, below, and be sure to vote for me (use the button under the slideshow) - and spread the word.

A short summary: A broadband-enabled, always-on world of Digital Natives equipped with 4.5 Billion mobile devices is shaping up in our immediate future. As a result, newly emerging cultural practices now impact every single facet of media, from education to production to marketing, promotion and selling. Every creator, every brand, every advertiser now wants the attention of the "people formerly known as consumers" who themselves are increasingly interested in co-creation, too, using social networks to contribute music, video, images and texts. This presentation depicts some of the trends and arrives at the conclusion: Engage or be Tivo'ed!

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