Lessig on Remix culture

MP3 generation heading for a silent tomorrow

Saw this article about the iPod generation's future hearing problems. Hearing aids will cost thousands -- get custom earbuds: listen better, and protect your ears at the same time.

Lawrence Lessig's New Gig

The San Jose Mercury News offers this interview with the founder of Creative Commons. Lawrence Lessig remains as CEO, but he's started work on something new.

Creative Commons in the news

Google Earth is getting an audio layer. Bernie Krause has been recording the planet for 40 years. He has released part of the collection under a Creative Commons license, for listening on Google Earth.

Tim O'Reilly has published a lot of books... I've been buying them since the 80's. Now he's written a case study of sales vs. free downloads for one of his titles. The free downloads are under a Creative Commons license.

Larry Lessig says in this interview, that there are now over 100 million objects licensed under a Creative Commons license. He participated in a panel discussion at the recent "copyright summit" in Belgium.

Other items: Know your rights with this simple chart that explains copyrights. An open source film project has over 1000 members. The Creatives Commons license, applied to dance.

The Internet's new walls

American Internet radio webcasters can no longer offer connections to international listeners. Has anything like this happened before on the internet? I guess there's always been illegal data, but this seems big to me. I lost Pandora yesterday. Too bad too, according to this study 77% of music listening internet users, use the internet to discover new music. Obviously, it's not about getting artists more fans.

American soldiers in Iraq lost their radio too -- no more radio or YouTube for them... they say the soldiers are using too much bandwidth, there are also concerns about security. Now the Pentagon has a YouTube channel -- not sure how that works -- they have a channel, but American soldiers will have to go to an internet cafe to watch it.

Meanwhile, back home, webcasters got some breathing room... the new royalty rates are now due in July -- hopefully the deal makers and law makers can come up with a system that will keep the webcasters we've grown so fond of in business. More news about this here.

Save Net Radio, update

There has been a lot of coverage of the internet radio Day of Silence next week (May 8th), a protest against the new royalty rates. Those that don't turn the music off will be playing Public Service Announcements. NPR, ClearChannel, SomaFM, and Digitally Imported are the strangest group of bed fellows I've seen in awhile. But with 25% of radio listeners now tuning in to web simulcasts, you'd expect the big boys have a concern about this too. And the U.S. Congress has listened... it introduced bill HR 2060, "the Internet Radio Equality Act". As you can imagine, SoundExchange is not happy about this; their offer of special deals for selected webcasters fell on flat ears.

But it's not over until it's over. So don't forget to either call or email your representative in support of HR 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act.

Berklee Internet Radio Network

Finally, a post about internet radio that is not (entirely) about a recent copyright board decision. Berklee College of Music presents BIRN: four internet radio streams including one that features Berklee graduates, and another about what they listen to.

I spotted this item about BIRN on Wired's Listening Post. The Listening Post (RSS) has been coming up on my Google news alerts a lot lately.

Just in case you haven't yet, it's not too late to inform your members of congress about your views about the CRB decision. Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren explains that the higher rates won't mean more money for artists, and even with the royalty rates in place now, nobody is expected to retire to their yacht in the Caribbean anytime soon.

News Update

The Sansa Connect is the newest MP3 player on the block, featuring wifi, and the ability to download from Yahoo's music service, as well as stream internet radio.

Radio? What Radio? The copyright board didn't budge on it's decision to greatly increase royalty rates, and the future of net radio now hangs on an act of the U.S. Congress to restore the diversity we've become accustomed to. David DeJean wrote about the decision in Information Week... he also wrote a pretty good survey of Internet Radio sites recently. I wonder which ones will be able to afford the new royalty rates.

Meanwhile, over in the music download business, AnywhereCD, offered customers download only copies of CDs for sale. This was for customers who didn't want to take delivery of the physical CDs. Somebody balked, I read it was a record company. You can still get your CDs in MP3 download only, but AnywhereCD will store the physical CD, and destroy it after the auditing requirements are met. Read the whole story.

This weeks copyright and copyleft buzz

RIAA won a worst company in America contest. Halliburton came second: taxpayers are pouring billions down Halliburton's throat, but somehow RIAA is even worse than that. Meanwhile, RIAA says that students are settling piracy claims, but university of Nebraska wants RIAA to pay up for wasting it's time.

The Copyright Board decided to review the webcaster royalties decision.

The San Jose Mercury News profiled Brazil's Minster of Culture, Gilberto Gil, who happens to be performing in the Bay Area.

Gilberto Gil

Musician turned policy maker, Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Minister of Culture, promotes Creative Commons in an effort to free digitial culture. If there were more musicians working in politics, maybe there'd be less business men (and it is mostly men) working for laws that restrict music fans.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, a founder of the Creative Commons, explains the licensing system ... (this video from summer '06 -- but still timely)

Internet Radio Update

RJ Eskow chimed in about Patti Smith's dubious appointment to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, considering what Rock and Roll has become: A multi-billion dollar industry that sues music fans and wants to stamp out internet radio. There's been a lot of media attention to this, and NPR is stirring over the new internet radio royalty rates.

Meanwhile, Slacker is in the pipeline: a satelite/internet radio/media player mashup service aiming for a $7.50 per month subscription. All that for the price of voice mail. I know what I'd pick -- I never really enjoyed voice mail anyway.

The Music Wars

Fighting on at least four fronts right now: internet radio, file downloading, MP3 patents (hardware, software). And artists get less than a nickle of each dollar earned from downloads.

Too bad we can't just switch to OGG, that's half the battle right there. Meanwhile, the RIAA P2P Lawsuits website makes a good read -- check out the FAQ... RIAA still claims downloading kills CD sales. Right... as if they sell music we want to buy. I've noticed Amoeba has no trouble selling CDs.

Save Net Radio (dot org)

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, sounded the alarm about the new royalty rules for streamed internet radio, and encourages all those who care about this to email their elected representatives. Here's a discussion of the legal implications, and the cost implications.

Maybe the future of internet radio is people sharing links to artists websites like Blue Foundation and Xploding Plastix -- hours of great listening there, not to mention, cool flash-y websites to browse.

That's if the greed based record industry people get their way. Check out savenetradio.org, find resources there to take a stand. Consider telling your friends about their public service announcement:

PSA - Save Net Radio

The week in news

The RIAA has sent complaints about illegal downloading to 15,000 students at 25 schools. We didn't have illegal downloading when I was a student -- but we did have great independent radio. And thanks to the internet, I can listen to that radio anywhere I have an internet connection.

Not for long, if the RIAA and SoundExchange, have any say. They have bureaucratized internet music streaming so heavily, that this form of music enjoyment is also at risk: If you stream digital music, you must file 11 pieces of information about each track played with SoundExchange. For that effort a musician receives about a penny in royalty for every 12 tracks played. The catch is musicians can't claim until they have $10 in credit -- or, about 12,000 tracks played. There probably are some bands out there that can lay claim to $20 or $30 from all the independent radio stations out there, but isn't that the point of independent radio, to hear things you don't hear anywhere else?

DRM-free music sales continue to get buzz, and if this study has any merit, it appears illegal downloading has nothing to do with declining music CD sales after all. RIM (the blackberry people), known more for corporate email than music, have created more DRM-free music buzz... expect to hear the music on your blackberry soon.

But! Don't start hammering nails into the DRM coffin yet... Widevine, in a new twist on DRM, sees opportunity in their "device agnostic platform." The MP3 format itself may be at risk: Alcatel/Lucent have just won a copyright infringment case against Microsoft for the MP3 playing capability built into Windows XP and Vista. I expect that ruling might one day affect the little play button right here on earhead#101111.

Apple, the new Microsoft

I would never choose an iPod over my AAA battery, removable storage SanDisk MP3 player. And I suffer considerable indignation because artists make only a couple of pennies from a track sold at the iTunes Music Store, while the RIAA sues "illegal downloaders" $1000's for each of their lost pennies. So I was happily surprised to see Rolling Stone's opinion on Apple, the new evil empire. The comments make an entertaining read, as the Apple faithful leap to it's defense.

Music business challenge

RJ Eskow writes about Steve Jobs' recent proposal to consider selling DRM-free music, and suggests a new free market approach to develop artists... maybe something like sellaband.com, where bands raise money from fans who buy a share in ad revenues from the bands' music download sites.

Recent news in music

The RIAA was in the news again recently. A teenager has accused them of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats, and has counter-sued them for damaging his reputation, interfering with his school work, and for legal fees.

Prince performed at the Superbowl and made news for some questionable shadows cast onto a huge screen on the stage.

Worried about drivers operating cell phones while they drive? What about iPod users crossing the street? New York state is considering banning gadget use while crossing the street. Apparently three pedestrians have been killed in Brooklyn by listening to music. They obviously haven't read about my four laws of pedestrianism.

This Week in News

Gurdonark (co-proprieter of the Negative Sound Institute net label) is interviewed on bleepwatch.

A new music blog, blocsonic, releases a mix of music made to share, and explains the buzz about net labels exactly ... may net labels continue to proliferate.

The State of Connecticut will help one of it's residents defend herself in a music downloading lawsuit brought against her by the RIAA.

MIDEM is a big music business conference in France that just ended. In case you missed the considerable buzz about this, The New York Times reports that record companies are moving closer to selling DRM-free mp3s. FMQB had this summary of MIDEM.

The Government Against Music Fans

Ars technica published this article about my senator (Diane Feinstein) who is writing law to require internet audio streams to "protect" music with DRM. I'm disappointed that Diane thinks music fans are thieves, and that she thinks DRM can stop thieves. If you don't have time to read the ars technica story, at least consider sending email to your senator, and let them know what you think of this.