Demand That Congress Actually Debate FISA Amendments Act

from the about-time dept

We've pointed out that the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act (along with its secret interpretation), look likely to get renewed before the end of the year. Senator Wyden is willing to drop his hold, but if he doesn't get certain amendments in, he wants to limit the length of the extension to a short period for the sake of having a debate. Of course, that's the same thing that happened almost exactly one year ago.

Techdirt has joined a number of organizations, including EFF, Free Press, the ACLU, the American Library Association and many, many more in asking the Senate to actually debate the issue. The folks at EFF have set up a tool to help anyone reach out to their own Senators on the subject as well.

We write to share our concern about the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act and the dwindling time remaining to have a meaningful debate and amendment process before your target adjournment at the end of next week. We ask that you contact your party leadership and let them know that you expect ample time for floor debate, privacy and transparency amendments, and possible conference with the House on ultimate legislation.

The FISA Amendments Act is a sweeping authority that allows the government to collect international communications without a warrant, even if an American in the US is on one end. After four and a half years, there is no information publicly available describing how many Americans are caught up in this surveillance program or what is done with the information once collected. There also hasn’t been a single minute of Senate floor time scheduled for debating the merits of this program or to considering amendments that would increase transparency of this program and insert basic privacy protections for our sensitive information in preparation for this reauthorization.

Is it really that ridiculous to think that the open debate we've been promised for years should be had before we reauthorize these tools? Is it really ridiculous to think that the NSA and other intelligence officials should be required to publicly reveal such basic things as how many Americans have had records swept up by intelligence agencies under these loose rules?

Filed Under: congress, debate, fisa amendments act, privacy

Negotiations Continue Over Extension Of Feds Ability To Spy On Americans; But No Debate On The Issues

from the of-course-not dept

With the end of the year approaching, Senator Ron Wyden has admitted that he's willing to drop the hold on the renewal for the FISA Amendments Act in exchange for allowing some key amendments to be voted on. As summarized by David Kravetz at Wired:

Wyden said he would lift his hold in exchange for a Senate floor vote on an amendment requiring the government to account for how many times Americans’ communications have been accepted, and another amendment prohibiting U.S. spy agencies from reviewing the communications of Americans ensnared in the program.

If that doesn’t go over, he’d lift the hold so the Senate could vote on brief extension of the act so his amendments and others could be fully debated next year.

“I’m willing to go along with a short-term extension as long as we have a chance in the early future, in 2013, to have a debate,” Wyden said.

Of course, we've seen this before. Just last year we had a "short-term extension" on these things for the sake of debate, but the "debate" never came. Instead, everyone waits until now, when the rules are about to expire, and then demand that it be renewed, sans debate, or else "terrorism!" The whole process is really kind of unfortunate. There should have been a debate years ago, before the FISA Amendments Act was rushed into law. But, unfortunately, actually considering the implications of these laws -- and how they're used and interpreted -- just doesn't seem to be a major issue for Congress.

Filed Under: debate, fisa, fisa amendments act, hold, negotiations, ron wyden

The Band's Ex-Manager Accuses Reddit Of Profiting From Piracy In Debate With Co-Founder

from the um,-ok dept

Here's an interesting one. Fast Company had professor Jonathan Taplin, director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and the former tour manager for The Band debate Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of Reddit, Hipmunk* and Breadpig. The debate is definitely worth watching, but I'm disappointed with many of Taplin's claims. He starts out by going for the emotional, talking about how The Band -- whose drummer Levon Helm passed away the day after the debate -- had members who were no longer making $150,000 to $200,000 per year, as they had been able to do up until about 2002. As Alexis notes in response, there are all sorts of useful business models to help them make money -- and he's even offered to help them make money. And, indeed, the story of Helm is quite tragic, but at the same time, most people when they are no longer working tend not to make as much money as they did in the past. Copyright was never supposed to be a pension for retired musicians, so it seems odd to argue that it isn't doing that. That was never the intention.
Frankly, what bugs me most about Taplin's argument is that he continually takes things totally out of context. For example, he cites the familiar numbers about the "music industry" going from $20 billion to $6 billion. Yet he ignores that the overall music industry grew because other parts of the industry grew at a much faster rate. More ridiculous? He claims (totally incorrectly) that Chris Anderson believes that "everything should be free." Either he didn't read Chris Anderson's book, or he's purposely distorting the book, which focuses nearly all of its attention on how to get paid for content. In fact, most of the book is about ways in which a "freemium" model works -- where you have some stuff free, and other things paid. Why Taplin would then claim the book is that "everything should be free" is beyond me. To have a university professor so misrepresent Chris's book is ridiculous. He owes a major apology to Anderson.

Bizarrely, Taplin then claims that Reddit makes money off of piracy. Say what?! At this point I think he's just making things up.

He also completely misrepresents Google having to give the government $500 million concerning advertisements from unlicensed online pharmacies. Taplin calls them "phony drug ads," which is also inaccurate. In many cases the drugs were legit -- but the licensing of the pharmacies to deliver those drugs to the US was in question (some, in fact, appear to have been perfectly legit Canadian pharmacies). He then claims that if Google made $500 million on fake drugs ads they must be making more on "illegal pirate ads." I'm curious: who exactly is buying "illegal pirate ads"?

From there, he tosses in the whole controversy over Backpage.com -- which has nothing to do with copyright, and he falsely smears them as providing a service for pimping "young ladies" -- leaving out the fact that (a) a court has already cleared the company and (b) this has nothing to do with copyright.

Taplin seems to be throwing together a bouillabaisse of arguments without understanding any of them, and thus misrepresenting nearly everything.

Alexis does a great job with his intro, first pointing out how movie box office revenue has increased, and then pointing out how innovation is the key here, and that industries can innovate their way forward, and points to Kickstarter's success as an example of how that's already beginning. Taplin, playing the old curmudgeon, insists this is all crazy. He mocks the movie stat because it ignores the collapse of DVDs. Of course if folks like Taplin had their way, there would be no home video market, because they tried to make it illegal back in the 1970s and 1980s (an inconvenient fact he seems to have forgotten). He also mocks Kickstarter because it won't fund Martin Scorcese's latest film. This is typical of someone who doesn't seem to understand the the innovator's dilemma. It's kind of shocking, frankly, that someone in charge of a so-called innovation lab doesn't understand how innovation works.


In the second part of the debate, Taplin goes full on elitist, mocking those people who use Kickstarter to fund a piddly $50,000 movie, because apparently, to him, those movies don't count. And yes, earlier in the debate, he was talking about how he was really concerned about the up and comers. He also seems to think that the only movies that matter are the movies that score big distribution deals. He's internally inconsistent and doesn't even seem to realize it. He goes on to mock the idea that musicians can make money other than through record sales. Except, he assumes (incorrectly) that the only way to make money is concert sales, and then says that some acts just can't get enough people to see them live. Um, duh. But that's always been true. Most musicians never sold enough music to make a living either, but we don't pass a law to change that. Taplin seems to be complaining that not all musicians or movie makers are rich. I didn't realize that was an issue.

Taplin then comes up with his "solution." It's to have every ISP charge users $2 to $3/month which would go into a giant global pool that would be distributed to copyright holders. Immediately, someone in the comments points out that doesn't fix bad contracts. It's even worse than that. First, the entertainment industry would insist that $2 to $3 is way too low. Hell, most music services alone get $10 or so per month. And really what Taplin is doing is to create a giant bureaucracy that won't effectively help small artists. He talks about ASCAP as the model for this. I wonder what he has to say about the fact that ASCAP takes money from up-and-coming artists and gives it to the largest acts.

Both videos are worth watching. The whole thing is only about 25 minutes, and I think Alexis more than holds his own, though it would have been nice if there was a little more time to hit back on many of Taplin's claims.

* Corrected after learning that Alexis didn't found Hipmunk -- just joined pre-launch.

Filed Under: alexis ohanian, debate, jonathan taplin, levon helm, the band
Companies: kickstarter, reddit

Crowd Cheers Loudly As All Four GOP Candidates Say No To SOPA/PIPA

from the national-issue dept

It really was just a few weeks ago that a Hollywood lobbyist laughed at me (literally) when I suggested that SOPA/PIPA might become a national issue during the Presidential campaign. As he noted, copyright issues just aren't interesting outside of a small group of people. My, how things have changed. After this week's protests made front pages and top stories everywhere, it's not all that surprising that the candidates at the latest GOP debate were asked their opinion of the bills... and all four came out against them. Of course, this seems to fit with the new GOP positioning that they're the anti-SOPA/PIPA party (so sorry Lamar Smith...). Mediaite has the video: And here's a transcript of what each candidate said:

Gingrich: "You are asking a conservative about the economic interests of Hollywood? I am weighing it and thinking fondly of the many left wing people that I am so eager to protect. On the other hand, you have so many people that are technologically advanced such as Google and You Tube and Facebook that say this is totally going to mess up the Internet. The bill in its current form is written really badly and leads to a range of censorship that is totally unacceptable. I believe in freedom and think that we have a patent office, copyright law and if a company believes it has generally been infringed upon it has the right to sue. But the idea that we have the government start preemptively start censoring the Internet and corporations' economic interest is exactly the wrong thing to do."

Romney: "The law as written is far too expansive, far too intrusive and far too threatening of freedom of speech and information carried across the Internet. It would have a depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in America. I care deeply about intellectual content going across the Internet and if we can find a way to very narrowly go after those people who are pirating especially those offshore. But a very broad law that gives the government the power to start saying who can pass what to whom, I say no and I am standing for freedom."

Paul: "I am one of the first Republicans to oppose this law and so glad that sentiment has mellowed up here as Republicans have been on the wrong side of this issue and this is a good example on why its good to have someone who can look at civil liberties ... freedom and the constitution bring people together."

Santorum: "I do not support this law and believe it goes too far. But I will not agree with everyone that there isn't something that should be done to protect the intellectual content of people. The internet is not a free zone where anyone can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people. Particularly when we are talking about entities off shore. The idea that the government has no role to protect the intellectual property of this company, that's not right. The idea that anything goes on the Internet? Who has that idea. Property rights should be respected."

Santorum's answer is the weakest, obviously -- and isn't too surprising. Just recently he made a statement that was about how online activity should be regulated.

But, really the most interesting part of what happened was not the candidates answering the question, but the audience's response. When John King asked the question and gave a brief explanation of SOPA/PIPA... he also mentioned that CNN's parent company, Time Warner, supported the bill... and the crowd booed loudly. When the candidates -- particularly Gingrich and Paul -- made their claims, the crowd cheered loudly.

The people who are still brushing off the whole protest as "an internet thing" or (even more ridiculous) "a Google thing," still don't seem to realize. Pretty much the entire public has turned against these kinds of bills.

Filed Under: copyright, debate, gop, internet, mitt romney, newt gingrich, pipa, protect ip, republicans, rick santorum, ron paul, sopa

Debate Time: Ubisoft Says DRM Is Needed, Valve Says No It Isn't.

from the don't-hate-your-fans dept

It's not every day you get two diametrically opposed views on DRM from two high profile companies in the video game industry, yet that is what happened recently.

While both were speaking to different gaming news sites, their conversations have an almost debate-like feel. So I think we will let the two execs duke it out on the debate floor. In one corner we have Martin Edmonson of Ubisoft Reflections speaking to Eurogamer. In the other corner, we have Gabe Newell of Valve speaking to Kotaku (thanks to Matt for being the first of many to send this in).

We will let Martin have the opening statement:

You have to do something.

It's just, simply, PC piracy is at the most incredible rates. This game cost a huge amount of money to develop, and it has to be, quite rightly - quite morally correctly - protected.

If there was very little trouble with piracy then we wouldn't need it.

Gabe shoots back:

We're a broken record on this. This belief that you increase your monetization by making your game worth less through aggressive digital rights management is totally backwards . It's a service issue, not a technology issue. Piracy is just not an issue for us.

Martin responds:

DRM is not a decision taken by us as a developer at all. It's a purely a publisher decision. The publisher has every right to protect their investment.

It's difficult to get away from the fact that as a developer, as somebody who puts their blood, sweat and tears into this thing... And from the publisher's point of view, which invests tens and tens and tens of millions into a product - by the time you've got marketing, a hundred million - that piracy on the PC is utterly unbelievable.

Gabe shares a story of how Valve protected their investment, in Russia no less:

When we entered Russia everyone said, 'You can't make money in there. Everyone pirates.'

When people decide where to buy their games they look and they say, 'Jesus, the pirates provide a better service for us.'

The best way to fight piracy is to create a service that people need. I think (publishers with strict DRM) will sell less of their products and create more problems.

Ok, so it wasn't a long debate, but I think the point is clear. Ubisoft and many other developers and publishers are under the impression that those who pirate games are doing so just to get free games. Yet, Valve has learned that piracy is a symptom of a greater problem: unmet customer needs. It learned that Russians pirated games to get a better quality localization than what the publishers provided. It didn't respond by upping the DRM. It responded by providing high quality localization.

So rather than fight your fans and treat them like criminals, why not embrace them and provide them with the product they want? It's amazing that anyone needs a debate to figure that out.

Filed Under: debate, drm
Companies: ubisoft, valve

Debate On Software Patents Fails To Convince Silicon Valley That Patents Increase Innovation

from the not-a-surprise dept

Yesterday, I went to the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley for a lunchtime debate on software patents. It was one of those things where an official "motion" was put forth, and then people voted before and after to see if the debate changed anyone's mind. In this case, the motion was simple: "software patents encourage innovation." Arguing for the motion was Bob Zeidman, a consultant/writer who sells software for... analyzing intellectual property. Arguing against the motion was Edward Lee, a Berkeley CS professor. The audience, as is (unfortunately) typical at the Computer History Museum definitely skewed "older." I ended up at a table with some guys who worked at IBM many decades ago. There were also a fair number of patent lawyers in attendance.

There's this view outside of Silicon Valley that folks here love patents, but in my experience, most people don't seem to like patents at all. They get in the way of actually innovating -- as we've shown time and time again -- and the thing that Silicon Valley folks like more than just about anything else is building something cool. The idea that someone else can sue you for building something cool just seems incomprehensible.

Before the debate, the vote was already against the motion: 64 people voted for the motion (35.7%). 89 people voted against (49.7%). Another 26 didn't vote at all.

The debate itself struck me as rather tame. Niether side really made as strong an argument as they could. Obviously, given what I write about here, and the rather staggering evidence that's out there that the patent system tends to do a lot more harm than good, I was inclined to support Lee "against the motion." But even there, it felt like he could have made much stronger arguments. For the most part, he just repeated claims from James Bessen and Michael Meurer's book Patent Failure. It's an excellent book and completely worth reading, in large part because it cites dozens of studies to show how the costs of the patent system greatly outweigh its benefits. It's definitely a good starting point, but there's a lot more out there that let's you take their argument further, and I was a bit disappointed that Lee didn't do so (though the debate format is a tough one). For example, Lee repeated a few key claims from Patent Failure, such as the idea that patents don't work well as property, because the reason "property" works is because there are clear boundaries. But, with patents, the boundaries are (often intentionally) unclear, meaning more and more litigation. Good property rules should mean less litigation.

But all that presumes that property rights make sense around ideas. And there's a strong argument that they don't. I also would have liked at least some more discussion about the fact that so many patent lawsuits involve work that was independently invented. Lee mentioned it in passing, but it's a key point in this debate, and it wasn't highlighted nearly enough.

Lee did get in a few good one-liners, though, which the crowd appreciated. He noted that in Silicon Valley today, if you actually do something well, you're guaranteed to get sued for patent infringement. Separately, he argued that patents tend to encourage more patents, rather than innovation. The one point he "conceded" was that patents did seem to encourage "innovation" in one area: Zeidman's arena of writing software to analyze patents.

The one point he made that struck me as compelling and not discussed nearly enough was his response to the common claim that patents are all about "disclosure," and without patents everything would be kept as a trade secret. There are a bunch of good responses to this that we've discussed in the past, but he noted (1) that patents don't seem to disclose much that is useful to a software developer and (2) that the real purpose of "disclosure" is education, and there are better ways to educate software developers. I hadn't made that connection between disclosure and education before, and it's a good point.

As for Zeidman, not surprisingly, I found his arguments completely uncompelling. He kicked off with an attempt to play to the ego of the crowd, asking them how many had programmed stuff, and how many of those people felt that "just anyone could do that." He was a little surprised that some people said, yes, just about anyone could program what they programmed, and accused the audience of being too modest. But, really, this argument is a total non-starter. He used it to claim that creating software is a "creative skill." That's true, but it's meaningless. The patent system has nothing to do with encouraging creativity. And, more importantly, the very crux of this particular debate for many people is that software is already covered by copyright. And the whole "creative" part is the part that copyright covers. So what does that have to do with patents? I submitted that as a question, but the moderator didn't ask it. The whole argument made no sense in the framework of what was actually being debated.

The other thing that caught my attention was that Zeidman tried to brush off the argument of patent trolls suing the companies who actually innovate, by suggesting it's not really a big problem. He specifically stated that "less than 2%" of patent lawsuits involve patent trolls. That number struck me as ridiculously low, so I first asked folks on Twitter if that could be possible, and received back a few responses, including from Mark Lemley, who said the real number is between 25 and 40% depending on how you count. Separately, a few folks pointed me to a research paper by Colleen Chien, which suggests the number has been growing recently, and agrees with Lemley's basic range. For example, from 2006 to 2008, defendants sued by trolls represented 36% of all defendants sued.

After the event I went over to ask Zeidman about the 2% number, and he claimed that he actually thinks that estimate is too high. He mentioned that he cited the source in the Wall Street Journal, but the only citation I can find that seems to match is a claim that "roughly 2%" of patents end up in court. Perhaps he means that he used the 2% number from the Wall Street Journal somewhere else, but the fact that only 2% of patents end up in court (which seems ridiculously high, actually) has nothing to do with how frequently trolls are suing companies.

Anyway, after an hour-long debate, another vote was taken, and since a bunch of folks showed up in the middle, the numbers were higher across the board: 70 people were for the motion that software patents are good for innovation, 112 were against and 42 didn't vote. On a percentage basis, those supporting software patents dropped to 31.3% and those against rose marginally to 50%. Given the fact that there were a fair number of patent lawyers in attendance (one sitting at my table mocked the whole debate because no one defined software patents, and then argued that Professor Lee was probably a hypocrite, because while he contributed to open source software, he probably wanted to get paid for his book), and they seemed to be the most vocal in supporting software patents, it seems likely that of the actual developers in the audience, well more than 50% were against patents for software.

Filed Under: bob zeidman, debate, edward lee, innovation, patents, software

Fox News Tells AP Not To Use Clips From GOP Debate; AP Apparently Unfamiliar With Fair Use

from the no-surprise dept

The Associated Press has a history that suggests it doesn't like fair use, even though its reporters and staff rely on it constantly. Yet, perhaps the AP is finally putting its money where its mouth is and will no longer rely on fair use at all. As Tim Lee points out, in this video clip the AP put together of the GOP presidential candidates' debate, there is no footage of the actual debate shown, and the AP says (at about 28 seconds) that "Fox News Channel did not allow AP to select excerpts of the debate for use in this online video story." But, of course, short clips from debates are always used by competing news channels and they know that it's protected by fair use. There's so much that's bizarre about that single line in the story when you think about it. Why would AP ask permission in the first place? The whole point of fair use is that you don't need permission. Why would Fox deny the permission? Fox relies on fair use just as much as others do, and "denying" another news provider seems likely to come back and haunt them. Why didn't the AP use the video clips anyway and stand up for their basic fair use rights?

Filed Under: copyright, debate, fair use, fox news, gop
Companies: associated press, fox, news corp.

Senator Wyden Demands Debate Over Patriot Act

from the senator-wyden-hits-again dept

It's feeling like we should have a weekly section for "kudos to Senator Ron Wyden." Each week he seems to be the only major elected public official who seems to actually be fighting for the people, rather than for greater power for corporations and government. His latest is that he seems to be one of the few elected officials who are actually pushing for real debate about the "sunsetted" Patriot Act provisions. As you may recall, Congress has been rubber stamping extensions to the three provisions, which allow for very broad surveillance with very little oversight. Each time they extend the provisions, they claim there hasn't been enough time to debate the provisions, so we should just push it out again. But then no debate actually happens. It looks like Senator Wyden is looking to fix that:

[The Patriot Act] was written and passed six weeks after the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history. Congress wisely included sunset dates for the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions, so that they could be thoughtfully considered at a later time. After ten years, it is clearly time for that debate."

I'd argue it's well past the time for that debate, but that's a minor quibble. Wyden is also pushing for legislation that narrows the surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act and further protects our Fourth Amendment rights.

Filed Under: debate, patriot act, privacy, ron wyden

The Debate Over Copyright Gets Loud At Digital Music Forum

from the hide-ya-kids dept

I attended that excellent Digital Music Forum: East conference yesterday in Manhattan, where I appeared on stage to interview Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Electronics Association and the author of the (really excellent) new book The Comeback. It's really worth reading, and I think a ton of Techdirt readers would enjoy it, as it hits on a ton of points we regularly discuss, concerning innovation, policy and intellectual property. That discussion was fun, and Gary made some great points about trying to look towards the future, and avoiding mistakes like the recording industry suing its own customers.

However, the panel that was the most fascinating was later in the day with a panel called "Lawyers, Guns & Money," discussing questions around music file sharing and what should be done about it. The lineup of panelists included Rich Bengloff (who later told me that I should have the word "editor" stripped from my badge because it gave me too much credibility -- nice guy, that Rich) from A2IM (who represents independent music labels), Michael Petricone from the Consumer Electronics Association, Julie Samuels from the EFF, Mark Eisenberg who has worked at the major labels and is now a consultant, and Bryan Calhoun from SoundExchange. The whole thing was moderated by Jonathan Potter who certainly knows how to make a panel get... lively.

Not surprisingly, there was a fair amount of disagreement on some of the issues, with Bengloff doing the usual song and dance about "piracy" destroying the music industry. Julie Samuels, correctly, pointed out that Bengloff was being misleading, and it was the recording industry that was having trouble adapting, not the music industry. Bengloff insisted this wasn't true, and insisted (contrary to every single study we've seen) that every other aspect of the music business was in massive decline. Petricone then responded by bringing things around to a key point: copyright law was designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to act as an incentive to create content. And, if you look at the market today, you'd have to be delusional to say that the market is having any problem in that area whatsoever. More music is being created today than ever before. More people are spending more money on music and music related goods than ever before. There's a massive variety of music available today. Basically, the content space is absolutely thriving. So, arguing that there's a problem in the market seems misguided.

And this is the point where the panel went off the rails a bit. Suddenly, Bengloff decided it was time to directly attack Petricone (with a brief jab thrown at me for some reason). He pulled out some paper, showing that he came prepared specifically to try to do a character assassination on Petricone. What was the piece of paper? Apparently a petition to try to get an independent musician to become the new head of SoundExchange -- with Petricone's signature supporting the petition. Whether or not this particular musician was qualified to be the head of SoundExchange may be a fair question, but Bengloff effectively said that the very act of supporting an actual musician to be head of SoundExchange showed that he didn't care about musicians and he was just trying to help consumer electronics providers. If someone can explain the logic here, it went over my head. The suggestion that Petricone doesn't actually care about music or musicians was quickly debunked by other panelists, who point out that he's a massive supporter of musicians, and the whole attempt to paint Petricone as some anti-musician person just made A2IM and Bengloff look petty and focused on character attacks rather than the key issues at hand.

This resulted in a bit of a meltdown on the panel with people starting to scream back and forth at each other over various issues, and it took a bit of time to get the panel back under control, at which point it went back down the same old road, with one group claiming "woe is me, the industry is dying," while others pointed out that's simply not true and there are ways to adapt and change and succeed. Petricone pointed out -- as we were just discussing that it's silly to present the tech companies as being somehow "evil" in all of this, as their interests are very much aligned with the content creators' interests. This is the same frustration point we've reached before.

As the panel wound down Eisenberg tried to make a point about where the industry needed to go, saying "we all know that everybody needs to get paid, and the real question is how do we best bring that about." I have a problem with this statement, because no one needs to get paid. In a capitalist free market economy, the whole point is that it's your own responsibility to figure out how to get paid, and if the market shifts, you need to learn to shift with it or perish. That's the nature of innovation and creative destruction. When the automobile came along, no one said "but the horse buggy creators need to get paid!." The horse buggy creators figured out how to adapt, or they went out of business. The fact that we have so many people creating music today, and the various research shows musicians making more money than ever before in the past certainly suggests that musicians are adapting. As for the record labels? Well, some are adapting, but it still appears that many are not.

Finally, Julie Samuels pointed out that it took nearly 50 minutes into the panel before anyone mentioned the fans of music, and how to actually respond to what they want. This is another key observation that sort of highlighted the problem. The fans are the people that the industry needs to be paying attention to, listening to and engaging. Instead, they declared war on them. When that backfired, the industry declared war on the tech innovators -- the companies who were creating the infrastructure and tools to lead them through this. It's as if the recording industry can't help but to attack those it needs the most.

Either way, it was an entertaining panel to watch, if only for the screaming match in the middle. Still, I am hopeful that someday soon, we can have discussions on how to move forward and embrace opportunities, rather than fighting over how do we go back to a past that isn't coming back.

Filed Under: copyright, debate, julie samuels, michael petricone, rich bengloff
Companies: a2im, cea, eff