Family Holloway

A high school competition recently launched by a number of Recording Industry lobby groups calls on high school students to come up with new promotional ideas for a campaign about “Respecting Creativity” . Mark Rickerby has written an excellent response to the competition here , questioning it’s bias and suggesting ways in which the competition might instead encourage critical thinking around an incredibly complex debate: “it is utterly unacceptable that students are being encouraged to plainly regurgitate corporate opinion to gain NCEA credits when they could be learning to think critically for themselves.”

Rickerby explains,

“If students proceed step by step through these questions as the teaching guide suggests, they are led to the conclusion that there is a single coherent argument that is ‘factual’ and ‘correct’ in this situation. Unfortunately it isn’t quite that simple.”

“In actual fact, the entire body of orthodoxy relating to intellectual property is disputed in many different ways by many different organizations, and it is utterly wrong-headed to encourage discussion based on shallow common sense hand-waving without researching the history of copyright law and why it exists, let alone ignoring popular alternatives to copyright, and the influence of these alternatives on the possibilities for creative work.”

“It may not be immediately clear to students that the ideals being promoted by lovemusic.co.nz are representative of music industry lobby groups and corporate interests who are sponsoring such competitions in order to have their agenda brought into the classroom in a ‘friendly’ and easily digestible format.”

Under the guise of lovemusic.co.nz the Phonographic Performances NZ and Recording Industry lobby group friends are seeking fresh ideas from the youth on how to spin their piracy propaganda for World IP Day. The competition website states that judges “will be looking for cutting edge designs that communicate clear messages and appeal to the target audience… Winning entries will be used in the promotion of World IP 2010.”

Rickerby continues: “Teachers must be encouraged to present this topic in a critical way that focuses on controversy, providing resources and links for students to understand both sides of the story. Focusing on the idea of respecting creativity is a distraction from the real question of who is trying to benefit from this creativity. It is disingenuous and patronizing to treat students as if they are incapable of considering the dispute in neutral terms and forming their own value judgements.”

And we agree. Letters of disappointment may be directed to the sponsors of this competition: the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Education, and the Copyright Council of NZ.

Read the full post at Mark Rickerby’s site .

(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)

This is a quick reminder that the CFF are holding a workshop on Copyright tomorrow morning, Friday 26 June, at the Aotearoa Digital Arts Symposium 2009, in Wellington. Come along!
–
Introduction to Copyright in NZ, 10am – 1pm, Friday 26 June, Victoria University School of Design, 139 Vivian Street, Wellington

Join Bronwyn Holloway-Smith for an introduction to the weird, wonderful, and confusing world of copyright: its history, how it works in NZ and internationally, how it is changing, and what this means for artists, educators, and other producers and users of copyrighted works. This workshop will dispel some of the myths surrounding copyright in NZ and facilitate discussion in the eternal hope of finding that elusive balance between public and private rights to that which is copyable.

The Symposium runs for the full weekend: Friday 26-Sunday 28 June
Cost: $50 (waged), $30 (unwaged) – includes Enjoy opening, screening, and the ‘ADA free lunch’.
For workshops alone the cost is $20 for a full day (two) or $15 for one.
This cost includes lunch and coffee.

For registration and more information visit http://symposium09.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/

It’s no new fact that some organisations that claim to represent artists don’t always accurately do so. In the US, one of the musicians who had a song illegally downloaded by Jammie Thomas-Rasset has sprung to her defence, horrified by the exorbitant penalty placed on her by the RIAA’s victory in court . Earlier this week Moby expressed outrage at the situation. Now, ars technica reports that “Jammie Thomas-Rasset was held liable to sharing 24 songs, including one by pop crooner Richard Marx. But the lawsuit wasn’t done in Marx’s name—this week, he called out the recording industry’s “greedy actions.”".

Marx states:

“As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music. I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels. These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets.

“So now we have a “judgment” in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I’m ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.”

More here and here .

Image sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RichardMarx-2008.jpg

Today Telecom launched New Zealands largest mobile music store but according to the NBR it’s unfortunately got Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM) that prevents you backing up your music, copying to your iPod. Music you buy is retained to your phone number, so it will survive changing handsets. This again raises the issue of what exactly you’re buying when you buy digital music. Last year Vodafone abandoned DRM from their stores citing that “will now have the freedom to download tracks from their favourite artists without any device restrictions allowing them to experience their music however they want it, wherever they are” and Apple iTunes have also gone DRM-free . Chris Keall at the NBR says he’s sticking with his iPod, and at the CFF we think we will too.

ComputerWorld report that UK government spokesman has now confirmed to what a recent report did not state explicitly: “We currently have no intention of legislating to terminate the accounts of persistent copyright offenders [...] We don’t consider this to be a proportionate response, especially given the importance of internet access in today’s society, where many services including banking, health and education are increasingly delivered online. Disconnection is even less fair in situations where a number of people in a household may share one broadband account.”

We have previously discussed why internet termination is a disproportionate punishment that harms many people for the actions of one:

One of the key issues with s92A was its potential to punish innocent people for the actions of others the s92A review expresses a preference for disconnection, saying that a “guiding principle” of the review is for the “process leading to account termination” to be clear. Fines would be much more appropriate.

There are many alternatives to disconnection, for example royalties or fines. Fines are more targeted than disconnection – punishing the guilty person, but not innocent people who happen to share the connection, and obviously this should be of concern to anyone with a shared internet connection. For artists, royalties or fines have the potential to include payment for copyright infringement, whereas indirect punishments that harm innocent people will simply reflect badly on artists.

Due to New Zealand’s geograpical isolation the internet is a vital tool for connecting to the rest of the world, and is also becoming more pervasive with vital services moving online such as parts of government, health care (records, scheduling) and social interaction tools (newspapers, phone, email, social networks). Disconnection may hinder people’s ability to pay bills, operate their business or do their job, access banking, education, insurance, etc. Due to this the internet is already a necessary service like other utilities such as the phone and postal systems. With internet use showing no signs of slowing, in future years disconnection will be seen as a shortsighted and increasingly unfair penalty. Last week France moved against disconnection and joined the majority of the European Union who are against this form of penalty. What will New Zealand do?

As we are once again facing the possibility of internet disconnection as the government’s chosen punishment for infringement, the CFF strongly recommend that this inventive penalty be ruled out.

The musician Moby has released a blog post calling for the RIAA to be disbanded for its jackpot $1.92 million win over Jammie Thomas. Although, as techdirt point out , he gets mixed up between suing and jury award, his general reaction to the situation is unmistakeable: “argh. what utter nonsense. this is how the record companies want to protect themselves? suing suburban moms for listening to music? charging $80,000 per song? punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. maybe the record companies have adopted the ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ approach to dealing with music fans. i don’t know, but ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ doesn’t seem like such a sustainable business model when it comes to consumer choice. how about a new model of ‘it’s better to be loved for helping artists make good records and giving consumers great records at reasonable prices’? i’m so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music. the riaa needs to be disbanded”. Groklaw points out that it’s likely that the fines will be taken to court as being unconstitutional .

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that ASCAP (equivalent to APRA) have filed a briefing in a court battle asserting that legally purchased ringtones could be up for “public performance” costs if your phone rings in a public place. “This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry’s bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?”

Dan Cohen over at GearDiary has noticed a strange thing about the Amazon Kindle . He wiped the device and tried to download his legally purchased books again only to told “Cannot be sent to selected device you’ve reached the maximum number of times you can download the book.”. He called customer service… “and that’s when I got the surprise. ‘How can I find out how many times I can download any given book?’ I asked. He replied, ‘I don’t think you can. That’s entirely up to the publisher and I don’t think we always know.’” The issue of what exactly you’re buying with digital material is going to be an increasingly complex, and DRM that prevents backups will inhibit use of paid content. The Kindle was recently criticised for reducing equality amongst disabled people by blocking access to accessibility features.

Michael Geist summarizes an important new study on file sharing from economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. The Harvard Business School working paper finds that given the increase in artistic production along with the greater public access conclude that ‘weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society.’ The authors point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for ‘complements’ such as concerts or author speaking tours increases.

Update (19/June/2009) A reader comments “So-called “weak” copyright enforcement still maintains the same balance of public vs. private rights. In practice “weak” enforcement is still about allowing more uses, and other than enforcement one could just directly alter copyright law to grant these. One would imagine that an equally valid conclusion could be in favour of increased Fair Use.” … good point.

See also: Slashdot coverage

Update (19 June 2009) See also Arstechnica.