culture
Tories ask: Why BBC3, BBC4?
Is this the wrong question? Conservative culture front bencher Jeremy Hunt is asking what’s the point of BBC3 and BBC4? It’s a good time to ask the question.
Continue reading »Court Rejects IFPI Appeal For ISP To Block The Pirate Bay
In keeping with their new strategy of going after ISPs instead of end users, in March 2009 the IFPI, MPAA and several local movie studios began threatening Telenor, Norway’s largest ISP. Their demands were simple enough – stop your customers from accessing The Pirate Bay voluntarily or we will make you do it by force. Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus refused to comply and the entertainment groups made good on their promise and took the ISP to court.
Continue reading »Spain Approves Anti-P2P Law
Will allow judges to shutter websites accused of copyright infringement in as little as 4 days compared to the year it currently takes. The Spanish govt recently approved anti-piracy legislation that will allow a judge with the National Audience, the country’s federal court, to close or block websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement within 4 days as compared to the current year-long process. “The new judicial procedure has no legal loopholes,” says Spanish vice president Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega when announcing the measure.
Continue reading »EFF and Study Authors Refute PFFs ‘Junk Science’ Claims
The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) had some choice words expressed by a study on DMCA notices received by Google. While the posting was very pointed, the authors of the study Thomas Sydnor accused of being “junk science”, as well as the EFF, gave ZeroPaid a response to the many accusations made by the author of the blog posting The posting by Sydnor had plenty of accusations against a Chilling Effects study which was used by Google in New Zealand . It should be known that the PFF is known for being supporters of the RIAA, the MPAA and other organizations that represent a point of view that copyright should be more restrictive.
Continue reading »Nirvana Bassist: I Agree with Bono, Need to Fight P2P
Says “content needs to be worth something if anybody is going to care about it,” and that “free content will ultimately resemble, well, free content.” Last I week I mentioned how U2 frontman Bono had amazingly cited our fight against child pornography and China’s success in suppressing online dissent as examples that filtering content, specifically copyrighted material, is possible. Added to his rant was a criticism of ISPs whom he says have gotten rich from P2P, that they’re “swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.” UK ISP Talk Talk, that country’s largest broadband provider, later responded by calling Bono “seriously misguided.” It countered that not only does P2P “ incur some marginal cost due to the extra bandwidth required ,” but that it’s quite amazing that a comparison would be made between the “ need to protect minors from the evils of child pornography with the need to protect copyright owners.” Now Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, who readily admits that he’s “not up to speed on having ISPs regulate copyrighted material,” has written an article in the alternative newspaper Seattle Weekly defending Bono’s stance on illegal file-sharing. “Content needs to be worth something if anybody is going to care about it,” he writes.
Continue reading »