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We've discussed the legacy entertainment industry's bizarre infatuation with the idea that if they just "educate" people better, they'll magically stop gravitating to infringing content. This strategy has never worked, because it completely misdiagnoses the issue. Piracy has never been an education issue. It's been a service issue. Yet, year after year, the legacy entertainment industry wastes money on ever more ridiculous campaigns, each time thinking that shocking or scaring individuals will somehow get them to stop infringing. None of these campaigns has ever made even the slightest dent in anything, other than as fodder for parody. And, now, TorrentFreak alerts us to the latest "anti-piracy" ad campaign, dreamed up by the folks at Leo Burnett, apparently on behalf of Virgin Radio. Apparently, someone thought that if they featured famous dead musicians, who had lifelong struggles with depression or self-image, that this would somehow convince people to not infringe any more, because "if you knew what went into it, you wouldn't steal it." Almost nothing in this campaign makes sense, nor does it seem likely to work. First of all, most people who are getting access to infringing music don't think they're "stealing" it in the first place, so the tag line is nonsensical. Second, choosing super successful musicians, even those with very serious personal demons, isn't likely to generate that much sympathy concerning "Oh, they didn't make more money from the music that made them super rich and famous already."

The best way to combat speech you find offensive is more speech. Despite it being the best way to handle these situations, it's also the least-used option. And, in legislators' hands, "more speech" is rarely on the table. But "more law" almost always is.

We've been covering stories here about studies and claims linking real-world violence and video games for about as long as I've been a reader/writer. An even cursory review of our own record can only lead a reader to conclude that such links are, at best, nebulous, and are perhaps less likely than likely to exist. When coupled with some recent and fascinating revelations about just how easy it is to get a study to say exactly what you want it to say, and to get that study published and reported in supposedly reputable arenas, we're left with the troubling impression that such studies linking violence and gaming are more back-patting endeavors than they are true intellectual efforts.

Discussions about copyright reform in Australia are now entering their fourth year, and the longer they go on, the worse the proposals become. That's in part because there has been a change of government in the interim, and the present Attorney-General, George Brandis, has made it clear he's firmly on the side of copyright companies, and indifferent to the Australian public's concerns or needs in a digital world. One big problem for him and his maximalist friends is that a key recommendation of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC), in its extremely detailed and rigorous analysis of the state of copyright in Australia, was to introduce a new fair use provision. This is absolute anathema for the copyright companies, which seem to hold that the law should only ever be changed in their favor, imposing a kind of copyright ratchet that prevents the public from gaining any substantial new rights. Simply dropping the fair use idea would be too obvious, so a way needs to be found to kill it off without causing an outcry against the Australian government's blatant favoritism. As ZDNet reports, maybe Brandis has found what he is looking for:

When a theater chain announced plans to bring TSA-style security to the movies with bag and purse searches, it sounded stupid. But to Johan it sounded suspicious, leading to our most insightful comment this week:

Five Years Ago Throughout these posts we've seen lots of snippets of the history of the Pirate Bay, and this week in 2010 we looked at a presentation by Peter Sunde that tells the whole story. Meanwhile, BitTorrent was beginning to directly promote creators who embrace alternative distribution, the porn industry was once again leading the way by embracing piracy and monetizing experiences, and the Kids In The Hall admitted to pirating their own show because it's so hard to get legally. Amidst all this, a popular graph was going around suggesting that the web was dying because of its dwindling share of overall traffic, with P2P and video on the rise — but the absolute numbers told a different story. Industry groups were negotiating net neutrality (again), and the recording industry saw this as an opportunity to link copyright infringement to child pornography (again). John Mellencamp was calling the internet an "atomic bomb" for music while U2's manager was focusing on anonymous blogging as the core problem. Grooveshark was still going strong, but Universal Music pushed Apple into pulling it from the app store, while we pointed to a chart that nicely illustrated the utter insanity of music licensing. Ten Years Ago Five years before that, we were pointing out that the industry has to let go of DRM before it kills mobile music, and that exclusive mobile content deals don't make any sense. We took a look at just how the DMCA came to be, and were happy to see someone finally fighting back against a RIAA lawsuit. In the world of TV, executives were finally starting to realize that they had to embrace new technologies; in the world of movies, some theaters were trying to offer a better experience while others were blaming their slumps on the simple problem of bad movies; in the video game world people were freaking out as usual about violence while we pointed out that games actually suck for indoctrination; and in the newspaper world, it wasn't exactly shocking to learn that the growth was happening online. But by far the most hyped medium was a relatively "new" one: podcasting. Also this week in 2005, Google piqued a little bit of interest with the purchase of a small, secretive startup called "Android" that wouldn't tell anyone what it was working on beyond "mobile software". We expressed doubts that this meant Google would be developing a mobile OS, as some had surmised, and suggested that it was probably something to do with location-aware search and advertising. Little did we know... Fifteen Years Ago A lot of people were expressing doubts about Amazon recently in 2000, and this week the company hit back with numbers to show it's not worried. Annother huge name at the time, RealNetworks, was rolling out a new business model that sounded a lot like premium cable. And who knew what the future would hold for these two companies...? Digital marketing was all about targeting kids this week in 2000. They were, after all, way more likely than teens to click banner ads, and schools were such a great place for advertising to a captive audience. But why stop there? The Internet Underground Music Archive offered a prize to parents who would name their baby IUMA, and it didn't take long to find the first winner. In the world of futuristic tech (some of which remains futuristic) we saw looks at quantum computing and neural networks, surgery conducted with the aid of robots, and far out musings about controlling the weather with satellites and microwaves. One-Hundred And Four Years Ago With the onslaught of people who insist on calling infringement "theft", it's easy to forget that there's also such a thing as real art theft. Perhaps the most high-profile example happened on August 21st, 1911, when the Mona Lisa was stolen by a Louvre employee who believed it should be returned to its native Italy. It wouldn't be found for two years. Amusingly, this instance of real stealing had an effect not unlike the "stealing" that oh-so-terribly happens online: it led to a massive increase in the Mona Lisa's popularity. Prior to the theft, the painting wasn't really known outside the art world, but international reporting of the theft and recovery (notwithstanding a significant public-attention detour after the sinking of the Titanic in between) is what turned it into the world's most famous work of art.

By now, you've probably heard that there's a giant robot fight coming in the near future: a US team has challenged a Japanese team to a brawl, and the challenge was accepted on the condition that it includes hand-to-hand fighting. Clearly America isn't going to back down because of this requirement, but that means Megabots Inc. needs to upgrade its Mk.II bot — and they're turning to the crowd for help. The Good Three words: giant robot fight. Picture BattleBots (it's back!) but way, way bigger and with the drivers inside the robots. Do you need more than that? Well, the specifics are pretty cool: Mk.II is already a formidable robot, but designed mostly to look awesome and deliver long-range attacks. The team has an overall $1.5-million plan to do a significant overhaul and get the Mk.II ready to take on the Japanese bot — and they're seeking the first $500,000 on Kickstarter. That'll cover new armor, melee weapons, a higher top speed, and the necessary hydraulics and power systems to keep all that operational. If they can break through the target and hit some stretch goals, things start to get even more interesting: at $750k they'll begin designing and testing modular weapons to find the best armament; at $1-million they'll begin working with the winners of a DARPA challenge to give the currently-top-heavy Mk.II advanced balancing capabilities (like the videos of self-balancing DARPA robots that get creepier every day); at $1.25-milion they'll bring in NASA safety experts to make sure the driver is completely protected (should this maybe be... higher priority?); and at $1.5-million they'll apply the icing to the cake in the form of a Hollywood-grade paint job. Even if you don't care who wins this fight, you probably want to see it happen. The Bad ...And if you do care who wins this fight (and are rooting for the US) then you should probably back this project, because at the moment there's plenty of reason to believe that the Mk.II might have bitten off more than it can chew. Its opponent — the Kuratas by Suidobashi Heavy Industry — is an extremely impressive machine. The Mk.II might be a bit heavier-duty, but the Kuratas is far more maneuverable and features some pretty advanced targeting and piloting systems. It's pretty clear why the Japanese team wanted a hand-to-hand combat component: the Kuratas hasn't been seen sporting any particularly heavy firepower (while the US bot, unsurprisingly, has) but it's not hard to picture it taking out the Mk.II up close by trumping it on manoeuvrability and balance — because, like so many robot competitions over the years, there's a good chance this one will end somewhat-disappointingly with one of the bots unceremoniously falling over. $1.5-million worth of upgrades will go a long way towards ensuring this is a fair and intense fight. The Empowering Of course, as much fun as it will be to see these robots in action, the real dream for many will be to drive one — and that's absolutely a possibility. Starting at $1000, all the tiers offer the chance to pilot the Mk.II — with higher prices bringing in the chance to try out its guns and fists. At the top tier of $10,000, you get to join the pit crew and get the inside view of the entire match including watching on-site assembly of the bot — and since all five spots were snatched up far more quickly than expected, the team has added another round of five, and three of those have already been claimed.

It's amazing the kind of trouble that Carl Malamud ends up in thanks to people not understanding copyright law. The latest is that he was alerted to the fact that YouTube had taken down a video that he had uploaded, due to a copyright claim from WGBH, a public television station in Boston. The video had nothing to do with WGBH at all. It's called "Energy -- The American Experience" and was created by the US Dept. of Energy in 1974 and is quite clearly in the public domain as a government creation (and in case you're doubting it, the federal government itself lists the video as "cleared for TV."

Under Armour, the clothing brand built on the idea that my belly fat should be clung to by a shirt while I shoot hoops in my backyard, has built up quite a reputation for itself as a trademark bully. To go along with the fun story of its battle against Ass Armor, Under Armour is notorious for trademarking roughly all the things when it comes to sportswear and equipment, and has always had a liberal idea of just how much control the law allows it to have over the use of the word "armor." Most times, very little public attention is whipped up. But now they're picking a fight with God.

Billions of people around the world eat rice. So if rice can be made to be more healthy, the benefits could be globally significant. Sure, there are plenty of folks trying to genetically engineer better rice (eg. Golden Rice), but if you don't like GMOs for whatever reason, you're not out of luck. There are a few things that might help improve rice without messing around with rice DNA.

We recently covered the complete absurdity that is the Santa Ana police union's legal battle to clear cops caught misbehaving (to put it lightly…) during a raid on a pot dispensary. The cops in question tore cameras out of the wall, disabled the surveillance system and then, when they thought they were "safe," made disparaging comments about a disabled woman, ate presumably pot-laced edibles, played a few rounds of darts and generally behaved like any group of miscreants would if they felt they were unobserved.

You may remember the bizarre story we had a couple of months ago of how the city of Inglewood, California was suing a critic for copyright infringement. The critic, Joseph Teixeira, does not like Inglewood mayor James Butts. So he takes video (that the city posted online itself) of city council meetings, and adds commentary mocking the mayor. And that, the city claims, is copyright infringement. Not only that, but Inglewood spent $50,000 on a big time lawyer to try to silence Teixeira by abusing copyright law.

The government seems to have lost interest in finding anyone to hang for Snowden's all-access tour of the NSA's internal servers -- access that greatly aided in his absconding with a number of documents revealing the surprising extent of the agency's surveillance programs. It certainly still wants to hang Snowden -- literally, if some legislators get their way.

We just wrote about a FOIA request where the government said there were no responsive documents, even though it had already released the very responsive document. It appears that this kind of thing is a common problem in the government -- and it doesn't seem to get solved until you sue the government. Here are two examples.

As you may have heard, yesterday there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the fact that Spotify changed its privacy policy in a way that people are calling creepy and eerie. And there's a ton of chatter on Twitter from people insisting that they'll never use Spotify again because of this. The specific changes that have people up in arms sure do sound creepy at first glance. The key problems are that Spotify's new privacy policy says that it "may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files" and that it "may also collect information about your location based on, for example, your phone’s GPS location or other forms of locating mobile devices (e.g., Bluetooth). We may also collect sensor data (e.g., data about the speed of your movements, such as whether you are running, walking, or in transit)." There's some other stuff about how it may share information with third party services.

People have been wondering for more than two years how it was possible that Team Prenda was still allowed to practice law. With both John Steele and Paul Hansmeier having moved on to shaking down small businesses by abusing the ADA, while still getting regularly smacked around in court, it seemed amazing that they were still practicing law. After all, it was in May of 2013 that Judge Otis Wright referred Team Prenda to their associated state bars (along with the feds and the IRS). And nothing seemed to be happening -- though, as Ken White noted, long ago, the wheels of justice "turn slowly, but make no mistake, the wheels turn."

Play your music anywhere with great sound to boot with 60% off of the Sound Step Lightning 2 Bluetooth Speaker. You can choose to play your tunes via Bluetooth, audio jack plug, a Lightning dock for iPhones or with the Soudfreaq radio app. The speaker has a dedicated sub-woofer and a USB port for charging your device while it plays. You can control everything from your device or directly on the speaker, or with a handy remote control. At around 3 pounds, this little speaker can pack a big sonic punch at your bbqs, tailgates, around the house and more.

A few years back, we did a deep dive into the actual numbers for how the entertainment industry had been faring in the post-Napster era, and found that, contrary to the doom and gloom stories the legacy entertainment industry has been stating, the sky was rising, not falling. Since then, we've continued to release updated versions of our Sky is Rising reports, which continue to show the same basic thing: more creative output than ever before in history, more people creating content than ever before in history, more people making money as content creators than ever before in history and more money being spent on content than ever before in history. In other words, the whole idea that the internet and file sharing somehow killed the entertainment industry is complete bunk.

We've written a few times now about the leak of data from Ashley Madison, the "dating site for people who want to cheat on their spouses," mostly discussing the company's bizarre infatuation with abusing copyright law to try to take down anyone posting content from the leak. We haven't taken part in any of the stories about naming and shaming individuals who have been found in the database (or just where they might work). As a lot of people have been noting (thankfully) in their stories, for no clear reason, Avid Life Media (the company that owns Ashley Madison) doesn't do email verification. That means anyone can create an account using anyone else's email address. In fact, last month, reporter Farai Chideya noted that someone had created an account using her email.

Thanks to a string of theater-related tragedies, going to the theater is about to become as enjoyable as going to the airport.

We knew this day was coming. Ever since the EU decided something called the "right to be forgotten" existed, and that Google (mainly) would be tasked with the "forgetting," the descent into an Inception-esque state of forgetting about forgetting about the forgotten was the illogical next step forward.

A far-too-common story of alleged copyright infringement by a corporation comes to an unexpected resolution. Photographer Art Dragulis took a photo of a rather rustic Maryland scene and uploaded it to Flickr. (from the filing)

The DOJ has released its inaugural report on use of subpoenas to obtain information from "media sources." This is part of former Attorney General Eric Holder's nod to transparency -- a nod he gave shortly before leaving office. We'll have to watch this space in 2016 to see if it will actually become an "annual" report. (And if it is, we'll also have to watch this space to see if Reason and Popehat are considered by the DOJ to be "media sources" after tangling with both over the discussion of federal judges and woodchippers.)

We've mentioned some interesting ways to rest in peace before -- turning your body into diamonds or sending your ashes into orbit. It may be a bit morbid, but some space fans really want to get off this planet even after they've died. If you want to leave this world (after death), you can get a ticket on more than one kind of spacecraft headed off beyond the Earth.

Back in April of this year, Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser sided with the city's law enforcement against transparency and accountability. The mayor promised to outfit officers with body cams in the wake of several, high-profile police-involved shootings. But two weeks after this promise in her State of the District speech, Bowser tucked a provision into a budget bill that would exempt the footage from public records requests.

Back in April, USA Today had a detailed report on a massive DEA phone records surveillance program that pre-dated 9/11 (and the NSA's similar phone records mass collection). The DOJ put an end to the DEA's program after the Snowden revelations when it realized that the government's own defense of why the NSA program was legal would conflict with the DEA program. Specifically, it kept trotting out "terorrism" and "national security" but that didn't apply to the DEA's program, which was actually used much more widely than the NSA's (according to the report, the DEA searched the database as many times in a day as the NSA did in a year). However, a day after this report, Human Rights Watch, represented by the EFF, sued the DEA over the program -- citing both the First and Fourth Amendment as being violated.

Asset forfeiture finally found its way into the mainstream after years of coverage by media outsiders. The sudden increase in negative attention brought about some needed reform efforts. The DOJ issued new guidelines on civil asset forfeiture, as did the IRS, which announced it would no longer pursue seizure of funds under "structuring" statutes unless there was evidence the money came from criminal sources.

We're starting a new feature here at Techdirt, in which each week we'll promote a book -- either new or old -- that we think our audience really might enjoy reading. For a while now, we've had an Amazon widget over in the right-hand column, and all of the books we discuss here will be added to that widget, if they're not there already. And, yes, if you buy via our link to Amazon, we'll get a cut of that, so you'd be supporting Techdirt in addition to getting great and thought-provoking books to read.

Last month, we wrote about attempts by the Indian government to make Aadhaar, the country's identity number system, mandatory. This was despite repeated rulings by the Indian Supreme Court that it should not be compulsory for government schemes. Last month, another application was made to the court, asking it once more to forbid the Indian government from requiring the Aadhaar card and a unique 12-digit identification number for its services. During the case, India's Attorney-General, Mukul Rohatgi, made the following remarkable assertion, reported here by Hindustan Times:

Here at Techdirt, we've had a great deal of fun at the expense of the TSA and the agency's wonderful brand of security theater masquerading as actual airport security. Yes, the government putting on a kind of clinic in the simultaneous overreach into civil liberties for false security and the kind of wasteful government spending that makes the conservative talkshow hosts of the world dip back into the Oxy has been an ongoing source of entertainment. But the TSA can take the same kind of heart that thousands of purported UFO abductees do: you are not alone.

Keep your knowledge current and learn some new skills with $39 for a one-year subscription to SitePoint Premium. You can learn the basics of coding languages and frameworks, how to integrate WordPress, project management and more. With over 130 hours of courses, 80+ ebooks and new material added often, SitePoint offers something of interest for web professionals.

Earlier, I wrote about how I sent two FOIA requests over the bogus gag order that Assistant US Attorney Niketh Velamoor obtained to silence Reason.com about the bogus subpoena he sent to identify some rowdy commenters. The two FOIA requests were for: (1) the original application for the gag order and (2) any DOJ guidelines on when to apply for a gag order.

Sometimes you have to wonder if the various political candidates are trying to lose the knowledgeable techie vote. Chris Christie has been strongly pro-surveillance, and it's not hard to guess where he would come down on the whole "backdooring encryption" debate. However, few of the other candidates have been directly asked about that -- though that may be changing. Jeb Bush has now stated that he's against encryption, because, apparently it harms America.

As you may remember, earlier this summer, we (and many others) wrote about the ridiculous situation whereby Assistant US Attorney Niketh Velamoor not only sought a bogus subpoena for information on some hyperbolic commenters on the site Reason.com, but also obtained a gag order. At the time, I noted that I had sent in FOIA requests to the DOJ for Velamoor's initial application for the gag order as well as for the DOJ's guidelines on requesting a gag order. It turned out that Paul Levy, from Public Citizen, did the same -- though he (wisely, apparently) made his request directly to Velamoor, rather than to the DOJ's FOIA office. From that, Levy received a copy of the gag order application, which we wrote about last month.

We've long discussed how game downloadable content (DLC) can be done right, but more often than not it's done very, very wrong. On the positive side you have CD Projekt Red, who recently decided to offer two free pieces of DLC for The Witcher 3 every week for months, helping to build a positive relationship with fans while keeping the game consistently in the public (and media's) eye. More often than not however you have efforts like Bungie's recent flubs with Destiny, or Ubisoft's pretty but incredibly shitty DLC approach to Assasin's Creed, Unity.

It's been a while since we last checked in on PRS, a collection group in the UK that generally goes around acting as a kind of collection of prosthetic assbags for the musical artists it purports to represent. Actions like demanding money from a grocery store employee who happened to sing a song at work, demanding money from a woman who played some music for her horses, and demanding payment from small businesses it calls up on the off chance it might hear some music being played far off in the background are all taken under the theory that PRS has the best interests of the musical artists at heart. The problem with this theory is two-fold. First, it appears that, for a collection society, PRS is very terrible at collecting money, seeing as it has come to light that it doesn't have enough money for a copyright tribunal hearing over licensing with a television station. Second, in order to support that legal effort, PRS has decided to do what it always decides to do: slurp just a little bit more money away from the artists it represents.

The space right above our planet's atmosphere is cluttered with human technology and space junk, and it's getting more crowded up there all the time. Sure, the vastness of the universe is practically infinite, but there are only a few Lagrange points, and artificial satellites have started to run into traffic problems -- including intentional satellite destruction that might not be quite innocuous. Wars over outer space might become a real thing in the not so distant future, if it's not happening already.

The presumed illegality of filming police is a law enforcement mental disorder. Far too many officers believe they have the right to perform their public service unobserved. Officers continue to take cameras from bystanders who happen to catch them behaving badly. Abby Phillip at the Washington Post details another apparent act of police misconduct that resulted in more misconduct as officers attempted to shut the recording down.

Just recently, we noted that a court in Australia, clearly understanding the issues with copyright trolling, had blocked Voltage Pictures/Dallas Buyers Club from pushing out questionable "settlement" letters (i.e., shakedown letters) to subscribers -- and required a huge bond if the organization wanted to move forward. It appears that some US courts may be thinking along similar lines in an effort to stop copyright trolls from abusing the judicial system as a way to shake people down for money in a practice known as "speculative invoicing" (i.e., pay up or we sue you).

So just a few hours ago, we were mocking the company behind the "dating site for cheating on your spouse" site Ashley Madison for abusing the DMCA in the false belief it would somehow stop the full leak of the data. And... now that the full leak of data has actually happened, apparently the geniuses at Avid Life Media (said parent company) are still abusing the DCMA to try to get those horses back in the barnyard. From Vice's Motherboard's Joseph Cox:

As we've noted, AT&T and Verizon are working hard to dump all of the DSL customers they're too cheap to upgrade to fiber, so they can focus on much more profitable (read: capped) wireless broadband service. A company by the name of Frontier Communications is doing the lion's share of the acquisitions, recently acquiring all of AT&T's customers in Connecticut, as well as all of Verizon's fixed-line broadband customers in California, Texas, and Florida. Unfortunately for these acquired users, Frontier is exhibiting the kind of steep, sustained incompetence that should probably be making these customers very nervous.

Cameras have come a long way in a few short years: the cameras have gotten smaller and lighter, people are more concerned about ISO than megapixels, etc. However, you still need to zoom and choose what to focus on for that perfect shot. Until.... A light field camera like the $79.99 First Generation Lytro 16GB Camera takes away the need to choose your focus and perspective. With a microlens array, the Lytro takes in more information about the light coming from all distances in the picture. Download the photos and with the Lytro app, you can refocus shots, view them in "3D" or change the perspective. The 16GB camera stores up to 750 photos, and it weighs under 1 pound for easy portability.

When it comes to the nexus between competition and regulation, competition is all too often cursed with fair-weather friends. For today's example, we'll take a trip down the copyright regulation rabbit hole. It begins with a Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) proceeding for setting webcaster rates under a statutory license in Section 114 of the Copyright Act. The process, called "Web IV" because it is the fourth such proceeding under this section of the Copyright Act,was announced late last year and should conclude by the end of 2015. By mid-December, non-interactive webcasters like Pandora and iHeartMedia will know how much they must pay to stream (or "publicly perform") recorded music to listeners from 2016-2020. These statutory license rates, part of a complex multi-tiered system that, as we've noted in the past, legally requires discrimination against new technologies, are set for 5-year periods and are paid to an entity called SoundExchange. SoundExchange is designated to collect royalties under the statutory license for certain uses of sound recordings, including Internet radio play of music. (Perhaps you're thinking, "wait, I thought radio stations didn't pay royalties to play records on the air?" You would be right: traditional terrestrial radio does not pay royalties for playing sound recordings – which has historically been defended with the argument that radio play provides valuable promotion for sound recording owners. But in another example of copyright law discriminating against new entrants, while conventional terrestrial radio is not compelled to pay for the public performance of sound recordings, Internet radio must pay to do the same, under Section 106(6) of the Copyright Act.) The rate Internet radio services pay is supposed to represent what a "willing buyer" would pay a "willing seller." During the round of rate setting that governed 2006-2010, however, the CRB announced a fairly punitive "willing buyer/willing seller" rate, which was so high that it exceeded some webcasters' total revenues. The risk that the Internet radio industry would collapse led Congress to enact the 2008 and 2009 Webcaster Settlement Acts, under which most non-interactive music licensees directly negotiated settlements with SoundExchange for that time period. An important wrinkle to this legislative action, however, was that Congress also directed that these settlements could not be used as benchmarks for future rates – which includes the current rate setting proceeding. So, why is this relevant? It matters because in the current Web IV rate setting proceeding, SoundExchange has argued that recent deals struck in the free market by non-interactive webcasters should not be used as the benchmarks for non-interactive rates. Those deals include an arrangement between Pandora and the collection of indie labels known as Merlin. The terms of that deal were lower than the existing statutory rate, and encouraged Merlin music to be played more (and thereby the music of major labels to be played less). At the time, rights-holders openly criticized Merlin for entering in the deal, noting that it could become a benchmark, and might result in prices coming down. It was a peculiar moment: despite all the cheerleading of moving toward a free market in music licensing of willing buyers and willing sellers, Merlin came under fire for actually being a willing seller at the best price it thought it could get. SoundExchange previous said it was seeking "rates that reflect a fair market value for recorded music… based heavily on evidence of other deals that exist in the marketplace". Now, however, it argues that an analogous free-market deal with Merlin should be ignored, because it was in some way influenced and thereby tainted by settlements reached 6-7 years ago. This situation illustrates an issue larger than webcaster rate setting: there is cognitive dissonance about what it means to have free-market transactions in lieu of statutory licenses. In parts of the music industry, there is hostility to the statutory licenses. While statutory (or "compulsory") licenses help overcome the enormous transaction costs of licensing millions of works from millions of rights-holders, they don't allow rightsholders to say "no" to all uses. These statutory licenses, it is sometimes argued, are unfaithful to the notion of copyrights being property rights. Such transactions would be better handled in the free market, the argument goes, and so statutory licenses should be repealed. Nevertheless, the free market enthusiasm disappears when a free-market deal was actually reached outside the statutory license. To the dismay of other licensors, Merlin's competitive price was *lower* than the statutory rate, and suddenly the free market doesn't look so hot. Hence, Merlin was criticized and now efforts are being made to expunge Merlin's deal from the record. There are numerous transactions cost-related reasons why — absent better copyright ownership records — it is impossible to have a completely free market in music licensing at present. Still, insofar as anyone is going to champion competition as an alternative to statutory licenses, that means accepting prices that may be below statutory rates. If "free market" means rates can only be higher than statutory rates, then we don't have a free market; we have a price floor. Or, stated otherwise: we're not really talking about "willing buyers and willing sellers" if we're only going to entertain market-based deals that come in above the statutory rate. Officially, "In re Determination of Royalty Rates and Terms for Ephemeral Recording and Digital Performance of Sound Recordings." The CRB only sets rates for "non-interactive digital music services"; interactive services like Spotify, which are "interactive" because users can determine themselves which music is delivered, fall outside the statutory license. The rationale for this is that Congress directed in Section 114(f)(5)(C) that Webcaster Settlement Act (WSA) agreements shall not "be admissible as evidence or otherwise taken into account" in a rate settlement proceeding. Because SoundExchange contends the Merlin agreement resembles the 2008-09 settlements, considering the Merlin rate would be "taking into account" a WSA agreement.Instead, SoundExchange contends that the benchmarks for non-interactive rates should be deals between interactiveservices like Spotify. When all the relevant apples are inadmissible, we're left referring to oranges. In econ-speak, we would say that statutory or compulsory licenses resemble a liability rule more than a property rule. Reposted from the Disruptive Competition Project

As you may have heard... a couple weeks ago during an onstage performance, rocker Lenny Kravitz had something of a wardrobe malfunction (potentially NSFW link), in which his pants split open and he exposed himself to the audience. This has resulted in lots of discussion about a variety of topics, including from the person who is taking credit for the piercing we now all know Kravitz has.

We've been discussing the concept of "fair use" and how ridiculous it is that the USTR seems to be ignoring it. Back in 2012 there was great fanfare out of the USTR, when they said, for the very first time, they'd be including "limitations and exceptions" in the TPP proposal. "Limitations and exceptions" being a misleading euphemism for fair use (and some other related concepts all focused on the public's rights). However, as we noted soon after, the leaked text showed that while it was true that this would be the first such agreement that included such a concept, it only did so by limiting the ability of countries to implement a full fair use regime.

A question that is almost always ignored when crafting legislation is "How will this new law be abused?" In the case of Spain's horrific Gag Law (officially [and hilariously] known as the "Citizen Security Law"), the answer is, "As much as possible."

Last month, you may recall, the news broke that the "dating site for people who want to cheat on their spouse," Ashley Madison, had its systems hacked, and all its data leaked. For rather obvious reasons, this had a lot of people rather worried about what would be revealed. However, the company insisted that there was no problem at all, because it had used the DMCA to take down all leaked copies. We pointed out how ridiculous this was on multiple levels. First, that's not what the DMCA is for, and as embarrassing as this was for Ashley Madison's parent company Avid Life Media, it does not hold the copyright in such data. Second, the idea that this would actually stop the data from reaching the public was ludicrous.

And away we go. Techdirt (myself specifically) has been talking for some time about the impending expansion of major sports streaming options as the cord-cutting trend has continued. It only makes sense: leagues and marketers will go where the audience is. The most recent trend started slowly with the FCC voting to end its blackout rule. That decision was important for streaming, because one of the dumbest ideas that migrated over from broadcast and cable television was the idea that local blackouts of broadcasts and streams were in any way a good idea. Even as the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB all have incrementally increased streaming options, those efforts have continued to be hampered by local blackout restrictions.

It used to be only the people wearing tinfoil hats that were worried about satellites flying above us all the time. However, satellite technology is getting cheaper and easier to access, and more satellites are looking down at us than are looking at the stars. No one should be worried about a bunch of Helicarriers targeting everyone just yet, but we're making progress towards a sky filled with some pretty advanced technology.