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Data and the DMCA

biz+-+copyrightA group of 18 music industry organizations, representing songwriters, publishers and musicians, filed comments last week with the U.S. Copyright Office in response to the office’s congressionally ordered inquiry into the operation and effectiveness of Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, otherwise known as the “safe harbor” provisions of the law.

And to make a long filing short: they don’t think it’s working very well at all.

As discussed in a previous post here, people in the copyright industries have been pining for years for a do-over of the safe harbors and notice-and-takedown procedures, which they claim have amounted to a get-out-of-jail-free card for online infringement, and the music groups came prepared.

Their 70-page filing (including appendices) is chock full of colorful charts and graphs, footnoted legal arguments, and research findings, all purporting to demonstrate conclusively that the Section 512 bargain, which was intended to provide a limit on the liability of online technology providers for infringement by their uses while creating legal tools for copyright owners to get infringing content removed from the web, has been rendered null and void by advances in web technology and overly narrow interpretations of the law by the courts.

Audio Network chooses Vistex Music Maestro Software to Process and Manage Royalty Payments

audio-network-logoVistex, the leading provider of rights and royalties software solutions to the music, entertainment and licensing industries, today announced that Audio Network, the international music group, has chosen Vistex’s Counterpoint Suite to help administer their music rights and royalty payments to composers.

“It’s a testament to the value Music Maestro provides our customers when a company like Audio Network selects our flagship music publishing product. Music publishing is a vibrant business and as a Hot 100 company in 2015, Audio Network has proven what can be achieved in the music publishing sector, specifically in relation to music used within media”, said Phil Bird, Head of Sales, Vistex (UK). With Music Maestro in place, Audio Network will know that the management of their rights is optimised.” 

TuneCore Expands To Germany

Digital music distribution and publishing administration provider TuneCore launched its latest international edition on Wednesday (Apr. 6) with TuneCore Germany. The site will allow German-based artists to collect songwriter royalties, revenue from streaming services, digital download stores and sync licensing opportunities in their own currency and language.

German users will also have access to TuneCore’s customer support and its suite of artist support services including the YouTube Sound Recording Revenue collection service, LANDR and TuneCore Fan Reviews. “With the ever-changing nature of the music industry, we believe that transparency and durability are essential values for growing our company and enhancing our artist services,” said TuneCore CEO Scott Ackerman in a statement.

Source: Billboard

The Legality of Selling “Used” Digital Songs and Movies Headed to Appeals Court

For those who have amassed an extensive iTunes collection of songs and movies, is there any hope of reselling these works?

Back in 2011, a company called ReDigi attempted to give consumers just such a pipe dream. The idea was to take advantage of the “first sale” doctrine, which gives those who purchase copies of copyrighted work the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy notwithstanding the interests of the copyright holder. ReDigi provided cloud storage and a market for “used” songs bought off of iTunes. Naturally, the record industry wasn’t happy, which led to a lawsuit and a big ruling in April 2013.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Ascribe Enables Users to Track their Digital Content

For decades, copyright infringement and illicit use of digital content has become major issue for digital content providers.

Regardless of the efforts of search engines and government-backed organizations to penalize illegitimate users of copyright-reserved content, blogs, corporate websites, e-commerce shops, and media outlets have continued the use of copyright-reserved content, due to the lack of infrastructure to detect such illicit activities.

Blockchain-based digital content record platform Ascribe has launched a service called WhereOnTheNet to enable artists who ascribe their work on the blockchain to trace the pathway of their content on the web. By utilizing an intelligent and intuitive blockchain-based software, Ascribe’s WhereOnTheNet allows users to search sites which used their images with or without permission from the content provider.

Source: NewsBTC

Academic Publishing Is Having a Napster Moment. Again.

copyrightAcademic work is pirated for much the same reasons that music was in the early 2000s—not just because people prefer to get something for free, but because the industry’s distribution model is deeply broken. Academic publishing is dominated by for-profit companies including Reed Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Sage, and many university libraries, even at large research institutions, can’t afford the high subscription fees for all of the journals their faculty need.

Paying individually for articles is impractical when a researcher needs dozens or even hundreds of articles, which can cost up to $35 each, largely paid for with the personal funds of professors and students. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen my academic friends on Facebook FB 1.20% begging for someone with better library access to share a copy of an article they desperately need.

Source: Fortune

What Happens to the NFL’s Battle against GIFs when Thursday Night Football Streams Live on Twitter?

According to the press release, users won’t have to register in order to stream the game, but surely some portion of football fans will wind up signing up for an account. This may be a Hail Mary move for Twitter which needs to boost its flagging growth in user numbers. According to the NFL, Thursday Night Football’s TV broadcasts averaged 13 million viewers over the 16 games broadcast last year.

One thing that remains to be seen is how they’ll treat GIFs. I don’t mean that in a glib way. Sports GIFs after games are a huge social media phenomenon; after an amazing catch, touchdown, or buzzer-beating shot, short clips from the broadcast flood social media streams. And broadcasters and sports leagues have signaled they don’t like it, coming out aggressively against the use of their copyrighted material.

Last year the NFL, along with the NCAA and UFC, filed a number of DMCA requests to get GIFs and Vines of games taken down. Those requests led to the suspension of several Twitter accounts, including those of Gawker Media sports blog Deadspin and an SBNation account

Source: Fusion

Comcast Expands Digital Store Offering in a Content Licensing Agreement with The Walt Disney Studios

frozen-2Comcast today announced that it has entered into a content licensing agreement with The Walt Disney Studios to start offering a selection of digital library titles and new releases as they become available from Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney•Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, Disneynature and Touchstone Pictures via the Xfinity On Demand digital store. Effective immediately, customers can buy Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the latest blockbuster hit in the Star Wars franchise just released on Digital HD and SD directly from their TV or via the Xfinity TV website to enjoy the film at home or on the go.

Over the coming weeks, the complete selection of popular new releases and celebrated classic films from The Walt Disney Studios will be available for purchase contingent on license terms and can be stored in the cloud to watch anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Inside the ‘Digital Single Market’

Most of us feel frustrated when not being able to watch the newest television show or the most talked about film online. “Sorry, this content was blocked for your country” is a sentence that pops up on our screen far too often.

It feels a bit awkward that the majority of people can travel across European borders without too many problems, but that content apparently cannot. But change is upon us. In Brussels, the European Commission plans to ensure a free flow – so, no barriers – for content on the Internet. The policy initiative to this end is called the ‘Digital Single Market’.The issue is controversial. Whereas most television viewers and film fanatics love the sound of this, most companies in the industry do not. They fear detrimental effects on their business model. Most likely the European Commission will roll out plans in an adapted and more moderate manner.

Even if such a scenario were to take place, the impact of the United Kingdom, its citizens and its media industries remains to be seen. The possiblity of Brexit is looming and might result in UK citizens still seeing annoying pop up screens on their computer or tablet, preventing them watching content from other countries.

Source: openDemocracy

Bitcoin and Public Blockchains Will Power the Smart Contracts Revolution

As the study of ‘smart contracts’ went from strange academic curiosity to the cutting-edge of FinTech, most market observers are still wondering just how this revolution in value transfer works.

Smart contracts, for those who still don’t know, are small bits of code attached to an asset, which determines where and how the underlying asset will perform based on events in the network. The promise of financial instruments that are routed through the economy autonomously, and without need for intervention by a custodian, is immense.But exactly how does such a technology work? And what makes a smart contract different from similar solutions for financial logic that have been commonplace for decades in our modern banking system?

Source: CoinDesk

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