#copyright (7 links)
- It Will Be Awesome if They Don't Screw it Up: 3D Printing... | Public Knowledge publicknowledge.org
This white paper, It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology, examines how intellectual property (IP) law impacts the rapidly maturing technology of 3D printing, and how incumbents who feel threatened by its growth might try to use IP law to stop it.
What should other artists do? Well, I'm not really bothered. The sad truth is that almost everything almost every artist tries to earn money will fail. This has nothing to do with the internet, of course. Consider the remarkable statement from Alanis Morissette's attorney at the Future of Music Conference: 97% of the artists signed to a major label before Napster earned $600 or less a year from it. And these were the lucky lotto winners, the tiny fraction of 1% who made it to a record deal. Almost every artist who sets out to earn a living from art won't get there (for me, it took 19 years before I could afford to quit my day job), whether or not they give away their work, sign to a label, or stick it through every letterbox in Zone 1.
The idea is similar to the notion of Free Software, and like with freeware, the word “free”refers to freedom, not price. Specifically, Free Music means that any individual has the freedom of copying, distributing, and modifying music for personal, noncommercial purposes. Free Music does not mean that record labels and musicians cannot charge for records, tapes, CDs, or files.
- » That Sony Meeting Song, by Toad songbytoad.com
"Columbia Records, part of Sony BMG, [...] invited [Winston's Zen] in to talk to them and suggested he bring along a couple of other bloggers and make something of a meeting out of it. So last Thursday [some MP3 bloggers] went along, the Sony people booked a table in a pub and we talked about stuff and drank ourselves into a stupour. And what did we achieve? Well honestly, I’d say not an awful lot, really." Worth reading despite that, though.
- BBC NEWS | Technology | YouTube to block UK music videos news.bbc.co.uk
Well done, everyone.
- THE FEATURED ARTISTS COALITION featuredartistscoalition.com
The Featured Artists' Coalition campaigns for the protection of performers' and musicians' rights. We want all artists to have more control of their music and a much fairer share of the profits it generates in the digital age.
- You like my poems? So pay for them | News | Guardian Unlimited Books books.guardian.co.uk
For those of us who make a little bit of money from royalties and permission fees [..] it's different. Free publicity has no value if all that happens is that even more people download your poems from the internet without paying for them.