Manifestieren.
Im vergangenen April, auf der Republica 2009, habe ich Stefan Niggemeier nach der gnadenlos langweiligen Blogger vs. Journalismus-Diskussion zwischen zwei Radiointerviews zum Thema noch gefragt, ob es ihn nicht langweile, seit Jahren mit den gleichen Leuten immer die gleichen Dinge zu diskutieren. Er meinte schlicht – “ja”. Aber er begreift diese Diskussionen wohl auch als [...]
read onSo art can still be subversive…
This is probably the coolest copyright non-infringement performance anyone has come up with yet. Disabling bureaucracies by DOS-style, yet form-based requests is probably not entirely new as a concept, but…
read onWhat Fuckery Is This?
Over at afoe, Alex has put it more eloquently than I would have.
read onTraurig, aber leider nicht vollkommen falsch…
Bettina Winsemann interviewt Walter M. Miller für Telepolis: “Das Urheberrecht ist der Schlüssel zur Vollbeschäftigung” Der vielfach gescholtene 2. Korb des neuen Urheberrechtes ist nach Meinung des Künstlers und Ökonoms Walter M. Miller nicht nur das “Beste, was es seit langem gab”, er wird auch die Arbeitslosigkeit endgültig beenden. Telepolis gab das medienscheue Genie eines [...]
read onRichter und Realität
Ein Richter am Amtsgericht in Meschede stellte ein strafrechtliches Urheberrechtsverfahren angesichts verbleibender zivilrechtlicher Ansprüche gegen den Angeklagten gegen Zahlung von 2300 Euro Geldbuße ein. Laut heise online soll sich der Richter folgendermaßen zum Thema geäußert haben: [E]s [gebe] beim Thema “Raubkopie” ein nicht besonders großes Unrechtsbewusstsein in der Bevölkerung. “Wenn man wahllos eine Durchsuchung machen [...]
read onZweiter Korb der Urheberrechtsnovelle
Wie sich ja schon während der vergangenen zweieinhalb Jahre im Laufe der Ausarbeitung des zweiten Korbes zur Änderung des deutschen Urheberrechts abgezeichnete, hat die Bundesregierung mit dem heute vom Bundeskabinett beschlossenen Gesetzentwurf verpaßt, ein der Gesamtproblematik angemessenes Gesetz zu verabschieden. Die Bundesregierung sich zumindest in einem ersten Schritt der von der “Inhalteindustrie” vertretenen Sichtweise angeschlossen, [...]
read onI’ve been saying *THAT* since 1999…
I’ve been saying this for years – the most likely explanation for the ongoing copyright war is the socialised concept of (intellectual) property in most politicians’ minds – it will take another generation and, liekely, as Volker Grassmuck argues below, a copyright induced knowledge-lock-up disaster until people will realise what has been done. The occasional [...]
read onNew Pricing model for food!
Via netzpolitik.org comes another data point proving the extent to which the right concepts in the wrong hands can create disastrous results: copyrights running wild – should there be a copyright on cooking recipes? I’m sure the next step will be the inclusion of some kind of DRM into a BigMac tying the food license [...]
read onDigitally Scared.
I’ve just put up a longer post about the EU’s Intellectual Property Right Enforcement Directive over at fistful. So in case you’re interested, click here to read.
read onBlogs are really different.
To those who haven’t yet had the opportunity to read about Loic LeMeur’s efforts in bringing together the loose ends of the Germanic blogosphere, I say – do so. When I went to meet him and some other bloggers I had never seen or even heard of before, I was not too sure what to [...]
read onThey’ll get the pricing wrong.
For at least five years. If you search my blog you will find that I have repeatedly said that all attempts to sell musical downloads will suffer from problematic price policy. Apple’s new itunes download service is no exception. True, it is probably closer than anything previously seen to actually enhancing the user experience with [...]
read onThey take no chances.
If this report by Telepolis is right, then Hillary Rose, the former chief RIAA lobbyist, is currently rewriting the copyright laws of Iraq. Just in case the Iraqi ideas about intellectual property rights should differ from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Actually, the journalist Gregory Palast is not unjustifiedly wondering whether the combination of [...]
read onDe-Merging Patriotism
Last year, Michael Wolf, a director in McKinsey�s New York office, published an article in the WSJ (here via McKinseyQuarterly) explaing that market forces – especially a sluggish advertising market and the general trend to digital distribution – would continue to pressure media companies to merge into ever larger entities. Mr Wolf’s article was triggered [...]
read onDigital timeshifting.
Update Please note that the legal situation regarding file sharing in Germany has changed since and is likely to change again. Now that , a US court has denied the forced closure of P2P services like KaZaa (from heise online), as they are also used for legitimate purposes, look forward to intensified attempts to target [...]
read onChampagne Blogging
this is my first attempt at live-blogging, so give me some credit here… i am writing this on a public terminal in the museum fuer kommunikation in frankfurt, typing with only one hand, as i am holding a glass of champagne in the other. it is the “long night of museums” here and on of [...]
read onThe Other War
One of the real problems of the Iraq induced congestion of the media is that there is so much more important stuff going on that no body hears about – well, at least, that a lot less people hear about than should hear about it. One of the big issues which currently receive a lot [...]
read onThe Future Of The Music Industry. It’s so simple.
Sometimes it really does take ages for people to understand things have changed (and sometimes I have to include myself here). The Music Business will be a wonderful case study to illustrated the argument – in ten years. Right now, the industry is still struggling to come to terms with its new economics. Yesterday Wired [...]
read onThe widening perception-realtiy gap.
I was just about to tell you about the following press statement by Forrester Research – eloquently titled “Downloads Did Not Cause The Music Slump, But They Can Cure It” – concerning their understanding of the whining record industry’s situation when I went to the kitchen to get some coffee. While waiting for the coffee [...]
read onThey’ll fuck up the pricing for at least five years!
This article in the Economist – about virtual Christman shopping and AOL TimeWarner’s hopes to get their by creating a new e-commerce platform – prompts me to tell you three things: Firstly, my spacebar justbroke for no obvious reason (but being sick of being hit several thousand times a day). Secondly, AOLTW is a tad [...]
read onThomas Stein, President of BMG Europe:
Downloading copyrighted mp3 files for private purposes is legal in Germany
For all those not familiar with German copyright law, the codified German equivalent of the US principle of “fair use” of copyrighted material is §53 UrhG. In general the clause states that copies (in this case of songs) for personal use are legal. Standing jurisdiction upholds the right of everyone to give away 7 copies [...]
read onThe secret war. Frontline news.
This week, the Economist has published a little article about a new technology allowing the electronic recognition and identification of music. It’s well worth reading, although the article does not hint at the enormous importance of this technology (which is still being developed, to be clear about this). You will probably remember that the music [...]
read onIn a nutshell: The differences between property and intellectual property.
From Brad DeLong’s Semi Daily Journal – David Weinberger said something very reasonable about intellectual property: All contending parties agree, I believe, that (1) the goal is to build a marketplace that encourages innovation and (2) that the way to do that is to let the market reward innovation. Unfortunately, to spread the value of [...]
read onThe Secret War. Today: Eldred vs. Ashcroft.
When Paul Krugman stated in his NY Times op-ed column back in February that, in his opinion, in ten years people will regard the Enron induced confidence crisis in American capitalism as a much bigger problem than September 11, 2001 and the ensuing war on terror, the public outrage was immediate. I am not sure [...]
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