After Suing Fans Sharing Bootlegs, Prince Says No One Sues Fans, Bootlegs Are Great & People Should Share Music

from the say-what-now? dept

You may recall that just a couple weeks ago Prince sued 22 fans for using Facebook to link to bootleg live recordings of Prince shows. This was not the first time that Prince has sued or threatened his fans over things. There were all sorts of problems with the lawsuit, many of which we detailed, but apparently none of it mattered, because a couple days later, he dropped the lawsuit.

The BBC has a wide-ranging interview with Prince in which he talks about a bunch of things. The responses are all paraphrased because apparently Prince refuses to be recorded during interviews, but when asked about the lawsuit, this is his almost nonsensical response:

There was a story last week saying he was taking a $22m ... legal action against 22 internet users who allegedly posted copies of his live performances online. In response to that he simply said "Nobody sues their fans", before adding: "I have some bootlegs of Lianne [La Havas] but I wouldn't sell them. But fans sharing music with each other, that's cool."

Except, of course, he did sue his fans, and they weren't selling his music, but sharing it with each other. So, either his lawyers are just running off and doing their own thing or Prince has no idea what the lawsuit was about. Or both. Either way, the lawsuit was based on his copyrights, and he should take responsibility for it. If it was filed mistakenly, he should own up to it.

Separately, one cool thing that Prince is apparently trying to do is shows with very cheap tickets: around $10 each. We'll see if that actually happens, but it does remind me of when Louis CK worked to make his live shows more fan friendly, so it should be interesting to watch.

Filed Under: bootlegs, copyright, fans, lawsuits, links, prince

That Was Fast: Prince Has Already Filed To Dismiss Ridiculous Lawsuit Against 22 Fans

from the prince-world dept

Just a couple days ago, we wrote about the ridiculously laughable lawsuit that Prince had filed against 22 fans for merely linking to bootlegs. Beyond the stupidity of suing fans, suing over linking and suing over bootlegs, we pointed out a variety of legal problems with the lawsuit, including the fact that Prince's lawyer seemed confused about how copyright damages actually work, the nature of direct vs. indirect copyright infringement and a few other issues. So, perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising that it took just a few days for Prince's lawyers to file to dismiss the lawsuit. They're doing so without prejudice, which is standard, but does mean they could try to sue again at a later date, should Prince wake up at 3am in January in Minnesota and decide that, rather than needing a camel, he wants to sue some of his biggest fans all over again.

Filed Under: bootlegs, fans, linking, prince, prince world

59 Bootleg Beatles Tracks Released Officially -- For All The Wrong Reasons

from the perverse-incentives dept

Back in January, Sony released the 'Bob Dylan Copyright Collection Volume'. As its name shamelessly proclaims, that was purely to take advantage of an EU law to extend the copyright term on recordings from 50 to 70 years there. Copyright is supposed to offer an incentive to create new works, so extending it after they are written is clearly nonsensical. Similarly, the idea that musicians will suddenly be inspired to write more new songs because of the extra 20 years of protection that only kicks in 50 years from when the song is recorded is just silly.

Needless to say, Bob Dylan is not the only artist with tracks hidden away in the vaults of recording companies. Here's another rather high-profile example:

On Tuesday Apple [Records] will release the downloads of Beatles recordings which have long been bootlegged but never been made legally available. They include outtakes, demos and live BBC radio performances. A spokeswoman for Apple would only confirm that the 59 tracks are being released. As to the company's motivation: "No comment." Is it because of the copyright laws? "No comment."

One reason for that, says Beatles blogger Roger Stormo, is that the record company does not really want to release the material in the first place -- its hand is being forced. "The only reason why they are doing this is to retain the copyright of this material," he said.

As that makes clear, this previously unreleased material is not coming out because Apple Records is keen to serve avid Beatles fans around the world; it's not even to provide legal versions of tracks that have been bootlegged for years. It's simply so as to be able to assert control over some recordings of the Beatles's music for another 20 years.

Even though the Guardian article quoted above fails to comment on the fact, this is pretty outrageous. When the Beatles recorded the tracks, they made an implicit deal with the public. In return for a government-backed monopoly lasting 50 years, they would allow their music to enter the public domain at the end of that time. And yet, what has happened? Instead of being able to enjoy and use the tracks as part of the public domain, Europeans have been cheated, and told they must wait another 20 years, simply because the recording industry employed good lobbyists.

What's particularly galling is that the tracks weren't even available beforehand, and so presumably weren't earning any money for Apple Records; in other words, releasing them into the public domain would have resulted in no loss of revenue whatsoever. And yet the recording industry's obsession with control meant that Apple Records decided to punish the Beatles' fans anyway by extending the copyright on material it didn't want released.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: beatles, bootlegs, copyright, copyright extension
Companies: apple records

Rocker Creates App To Better The Bootleg Video Experience

from the connect-with-everyone dept

Techdirt has been writing about artists and bands enabling concert-goers' use of smart phone video since its article URLs still ended in numbers. But this has always been something of a gray area, where for every band that likes amateur films promoting them, there's another band (or copyright holder) who hates it.

Perhaps that's about to change. Business Week has a fascinating story of a new smart phone application being created by Joe Sumner, bassist for the rock band Fiction Plane, to sync multiple crowdsourced movies into a single experience. The idea came to him when his band was touring Lithuania and he noticed that there was a ton of amateur video of the previous night's concert up on YouTube. A ton as in 450 or so videos. And, rather than freak out about people being able to see the band for free on the video site, he created a company, Vylcone, to design an application that would empower and enable those same fans by creating something to link all that footage together and make something awesome.

"Its free program debuted in Apple’s (AAPL) App Store on July 18 and lets two or more people in close proximity shoot video with their iPhones, upload the clips, and view a movie automatically spliced together from different angles. To recognize that multiple users are filming the same scene, Vyclone tags each video with the location where it was shot using GPS. To synchronize the clips, it lines them up by the date and time they were shot, regardless of when they were uploaded. A simple-to-use video editor lets users play director, toggling from one angle to the next with the tap of a finger."

If you're feeling that tingling sensation in your naughty bits, don't worry, that's normal. As music moves through the digital age and bands recognize that the concert experience is where they need to really be making significant money, they and the music labels that will now want a piece of that action had better get on board concepts like Sumner's. Commenters often ask why people would continue to pay the rising costs of concert tickets; this is why.

Concerts have always had the draw of the social experience, but now you're talking about deepening the social aspect of a concert by encouraging fans to contribute to a crowdsourced concert movie. Something they will feel a part of. Something that will create a connection between the concert goer, the band, and other concert goers. And the app is (GASP!) free!

And it does look as though people in the entertainment business are paying attention:

"The startup is based in Los Angeles and London, and has 13 employees. Lassman is chief executive; Sumner, chief creative officer. They’ve raised $2.7 million from [Guy] Oseary and [Ashton] Kutcher’s fund A-Grade, along with movie studio DreamWorks, concert promoter Live Nation (LYV), and VC firm Thrive Capital."

Technology that helps artists connect with fans and gives fans a reason to buy (concert tickets, merch, etc.). Concerts may have just gotten more interesting.

Filed Under: bootlegs, connecting with fans, fiction plane, joe sumner, videos
Companies: vylcone

Once Again NY Expands 'Anti-Piracy' Laws Based On No Evidence

from the but-of-course dept

You may recall a few years ago that the MPAA totally made up numbers about how big a "problem" camcording was in New York (if you added up their percentages, it came out that significantly more than 100% of all worldwide camcorded movies came from NY and Canada). But, it's not like New York politicians pay attention to the actual facts. After all, we're talking about the same folks who basically took an NBC Universal propaganda video and pretended it was their own. So, of course, the "anti-camcording" law passed.

As always, however, stricter laws are never enough for the folks at the MPAA and the RIAA. When those laws fail to change anything, rather than realizing that maybe (just maybe) they should be helping their member studios & labels adapt to the changing times, they instead focus on ratcheting up the laws even more. So, the news that New York has "expanded" its anti-bootlegging law to now include other forms of storage, including hard drives, flash drives and memory cards, is not surprising. It seems that bootleggers in New York were actually changing with the times (while the labels were not), and had moved on from selling bootlegs on discs.

Still, I really have to wonder if the "bootleg" trade is as big a problem as the industry likes to make it out to be. Considering all of this stuff is available online, who's really walking down Canal Street buying a hard drive of bootleg music these days?

Filed Under: anti-piracy, bootlegs, new york

Shanghai 'Crackdown' On Bootleg Discs Just Moves Them Underground

from the well-that's-useful dept

For many years, we've pointed out the futility of the entertainment industry's constant focus on "shutting down" any source of unauthorized material. Every time they do so, the content sharing continues to grow -- it just moves further underground and makes it that much more difficult for the industry to actually use it to their own advantage. It appears this happens not just online, but offline as well. We've noted recently that China has been paying lip service to external pressures to "crack down" on infringement, often by using copyright and patent laws to go after foreign companies as well. But it appears to also be playing itself out in other ways.

The NY Times is covering how Chinese officials have been going around to DVD and CD shops that have lots of unauthorized bootlegs, and telling them that for the World Expo (which begins May 1), they need to stop selling that content so directly. It appears most of the shops all responded in nearly identical ways: cutting their stores in half by putting up a wall in the middle, then placing legitimate discs upfront, and putting all the bootlegs on the other side of the wall, with a "secret" doorway. The effort was so consistent that some accuse Chinese officials of suggesting this to store owners. Some stores readily admit that after the Expo ends, they'll tear down the wall and return to a single storefront.

Either way, it's quite similar to what we've seen online. You can "crackdown" all you want, and it never actually slows down the trade in unauthorized content. It just moves it further underground... or, perhaps, behind a (not so) secret wall.

Filed Under: bootlegs, cds, dvds, shanghai

Canadian Record Labels Get Indie Record Store Owner To Plead Guilty... For Getting Rare CDs

from the those-darn-pirates? dept

Reader Vincent Clement alerts us to yet another story of a copyright overreach up in Canada, this time involving the owner of a small independent record shop in Ottawa who was charged with copyright infringement and has pleaded guilty, rather than fight it. The details are a bit confusing, but it sounds like the police raided his shop, and took a bunch of CDs, claiming they violated copyright -- but reports suggest that these are mostly legal imports that simply haven't been packaged for sale in Canada. In some cases, the "infringing" CDs were actually CDs of a local band that the store owner himself helped finance. In other words, these are the sorts of CDs you can find in pretty much any independent record store, and are the sorts of things purchased by true fans and collectors who want to own everything they can get. These aren't the types of products that are "pirated" or bought by people looking to avoid supporting a band. It's the opposite. But, the Canadian record labels and police have now "cracked down." Hope this makes the US politicians claiming that Canada is a piracy haven happy.

Filed Under: bootlegs, canada, cds, copyright, imports, infringement, ottawa

The Grammy In Mathematics... Or Copyright Infringement?

from the you-decided dept

Slashdot points us to the absolutely fascinating story of how Woody Guthrie's daughter was able to restore the only recording of her father's live performance, that had been bootlegged using an old obsolete recording device. It took quite a bit of effort to restore the recording on an old wire-based device, and the effort got the mathematician who handled the restoration nominated for a Grammy, which he won. However, what struck me most about the story is that these days, people would be focused on how that simple act of recording would have been copyright infringement back when it occurred. Shouldn't we be happy that exactly that kind of infringement is now what allows us to hear Guthrie perform live? I'm sure Guthrie himself would agree. After all, he famously had a rather similar view of copyrights to many of us around here: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." Unfortunately, those who manage Guthrie's estate haven't always been so kind -- so it's nice to see they recognized this recording as a potential gem, rather than an unauthorized recording.

Filed Under: bootlegs, copyright, grammy, restoration, woody guthrie