People were probably still using their 20 free views during the 12 day period. It will be interesting to see what happens for the rest of the month.
Also, there is a sponsor (Lincoln?) giving people free accounts for the rest of the year. This indicates that there is a fair amount of sponsorship/advertising money laying around out there. It might just be enough to keep the paywall from being a total disaster if there is some other company or group of companies willing to pick up the free subscriptions next year.
I have had a feeling that the IP industry has been overreaching. The entertainment industry has come to feel that they can get anything they want with the Obama administration in office. They have been aided by the fact that most legislators have not taken the time to ask questions, and so they take the path of least resistance which is to just accept what they are being told by the industry.
However, COICA was asking too much for some people. The real significance is not just in blocking COICA. As the article says, it starts people thinking. The industry might not find it so easy to float its bogus statistics in the future if legislators get educated on COICA. Also, legislators don't like being made fools of. And that is exactly what the industry has been doing by foisting off bogus claims and statistics to get them to pass pro-IP legislation.
There are also a lot of people in Congress who don't want to be too associated with Obama. IP would be one area where Republicans could take delight in tweaking Obama's nose, and where Democrats could demonstrate their independence. All it may take is a wakeup call named COICA.
>>"the courts are not merely tools for encouraging and exacting settlements from Defendants cowed by the potential costs of litigation and liability."
That quote should be part of every defense motion filed in these types of cases. It is nice to see it put so concisely. We have seen people post here in TD that is is perfectly fine to send pre-settlement letters as soon as the John Doe cases are filed, but that leads to exactly the type of abuse this judge has highlighted.
I generally agree with the solution lying somewhere in the work for hire or implied license for the tattoo itself.
However, the artwork in the tattoo may be a different issue. Some tattoo artists are in fact artists. If the tattoo artist creates a truly original piece, wouldn't they have some claim to against other artists using that same same image on other clients? Most tattoos are derivative work and that would likely be an interesting issue in the case.
Copyright could be an issue if the artist had copyrighted images in its sample books or wall displays. However, someone getting a tattoo would probably be able to make a fair use claim, at least in the US. Tattoos could almost certainly be interpreted as a matter of personal expression and could possibly make a First Amendment claim.
Trademark shouldn't be an issue. If someone gets "Pepsi" tattooed on his body it is unlikely people would think he was a product of Pepsico, and he would not be using it in trade. A moron in a hurry would probably recognize it as a personal tattoo. In that case, however, the person getting the tattoo would be the moron, and they are probably in a hurry because of the combined effect of sugar and caffeine consumption.
Let's face it. There are a few big companies like Disney that are frantic that their old franchise Mickey Mouse movies might be about to go into the public domain. These few big companies are willing to do just about anything to get copyright extended, and when they do they get a blanket extension for everyone and everything. A 20 year extension only guarantees that they will be back in 15 years wanting another extension for everything.
I propose a system that would let a copyright holder extend copyright by paying a fee each year. The fee could be used to renew the copyright indefinitely, but the fee would increase every year. Once the fee stopped being paid the work would go into the public domain immediately. This would let companies like Disney have a certain way to extend their copyright without the political uncertainty of extensions.
>>This would suggest that even "monopolies" are not freee to operate outside of normal competitive forces.
But if there were "normal competitive forces" in play we would not see "prices go up consumers seek alternatives that cost less." Your arguments seem to contradict each other and do suggest that at least in the company's own mindset they are working in a monopoly environment.
>>My big scare with drug companies and the drugs that we may need is that they will not develop new drugs if there is no financial gains attached.
Actually, that is exactly what happened. The incentives for executives in the big drug companies is to maximize near-term profits. To further that end, the big pharma companies slashed research funds and put the money into marketing. Consequently they have their gravy-train drugs approaching the departure stations and they don't have new trains ready to take them beyond.
Smaller companies are developing new drugs, and one article I read a while back said that the major companies had been hoping that they could buy up drugs or research from some of the smaller companies, push them through the approval process and then apply their marketing expertise. I suppose this could still happen. Perhaps they are ramping up the prices of existing drugs to fund the purchase of some of the smaller companies.
One other thing is that we assume that the best way to improve health care is to develop new drugs. The drug companies have certainly perpetuated that line of thinking. However, some people in the medical community thing this is the wrong approach to improving long-term health care. New drugs can be useful, but perhaps we are putting too much emphasis on their importance.
Why not just implant everyone with RFID chips and require all property owners to install RFID recorders every 20 feet. Better yet, skip the recorders; we'll send the data directly to the government. Microphones should be added to the recording stations so that we can catch any prohibited speech, and so that we can charge anyone listening to music a performance tax.
These stories are usually written as if some type of massive economic catastrophe were taking place. True, it can be a tragedy for someone loosing their job or sees a chuck of their retirement nest-egg vanish, but on the large scale these are not tragedies. The money spent on these industries is not going away. Generally consumers benefit from these changes. At the large scale their is not a loss to the economy. But a story about "killing" is a lot more dramatic than a story about "changing."
I doubt the discussion focused on whether to "let them tweet." I would guess that at least part of the discussion was whether they could charge extra to tweet. After all, when someone tweets about an article in The Daily they are stealing content from the publication. Not to mention that Twitter is making money from the tweet and should share its revenue with the publishers.
As someone else noted, this "Goes back centuries." Given the aches and pains I am feeling today that sounds about right. I would have been in 7th grade about that time. It was cutting edge.
I have a friend who is a high school librarian. He always started the year by putting out a rack of paperback books right near the entrance to the library. One year he got concerned because it took longer than usual for all of the paperback books to get stolen. He did some checking and confirmed that library usage was indeed down by several other measures. He started a couple of programs to get library usage back up, but his first clue that there was a problem came from books not being stolen at the usual rate.
History of technology and the entertainment industry in the 20th century
We have gone through the same cycle several times.
Stage 1: Technology A is introduced.
Stage 2: Industry declares A will destroy their industry.
Stage 3: Industry learns to make money off A.
Stage 4: Industry comes to rely heavily on A.
Stage 5: Technology B is introduced.
Stage 6: Got to Stage 1, replacing A with B.
In the days of Napster, illegal downloads were mostly a music issue because large-scale moving or storing entire movies was not practical for most people. When movie downloads became practical the MPAA didn't want to have the same problems as the RIAA, so it seemed to be reasonable for the two groups to start chanting the same mantra about "Piracy is killing our business."
The problem was, piracy was not the thing that was killing either business. At most piracy was nipping at the edges, and it might actually have been boosting some aspects of the businesses.
I can't really blame either industry for their concerns in the early days. However, we have had a decade of failed efforts to stem piracy. Not only have they utterly failed to stem illegal downloads, we now have objective studies that put the whole situation into perspective. We also have lots of examples of artists that have demonstrated that it is possible to make a very good living by exploiting p2p sharing instead of railing against it.
It is time both industries ask themselves two questions:
-What do customers want?
-What are customers willing to pay for?
Industry shills say that what customers want is "free." But there have been plenty of cases now that demonstrate that is not not true. Many customers are willing to pay for content. Just ask NetFlix or Kindle or iTunes. They are all making money despite the entertainment industry's best efforts to impede them. It is time for the industries to stop fooling themselves and set a course that will make them successful in the long term.
Supposedly one thing that keeps big companies from suing each other on patent issues is the threat of the "nuclear option" where the defendant counters with by suing the plaintiff for violations of its patent portfolio. This deterrent only works if the plaintiff is actually producing products and innovating; if it is just a patent troll it is relatively immune to the nuclear option retaliation.
Google has generally not chosen to go with the usual massive portfolio needed to make the threat of the nuclear option credible. Google is doing something worse than the nuclear option. They are actually defending themselves on the merits of the case. If you sue Google and press them too hard, they are likely to defend the patent by trying to invalidate your patent or limit its scope. In the worst (or best) case scenario they might try to fight the patent system itself and invalidate an entire class of patents such as software patents. This is a risky strategy, but it is a credible threat against trolls as well as producing companies.
I resent seeing these mass lawsuit schemes called "business models." They are extortion schemes that abuse the legal system. Some copyright maximalists who post here defend the system, but if they understood what is really going on they would realize how much damage the scam is doing to their long term interests.
On the post: Even With A Very Leaky Paywall, Noticeable Decline In NY Times Traffic
Also, there is a sponsor (Lincoln?) giving people free accounts for the rest of the year. This indicates that there is a fair amount of sponsorship/advertising money laying around out there. It might just be enough to keep the paywall from being a total disaster if there is some other company or group of companies willing to pick up the free subscriptions next year.
On the post: Senator Wyden: I Will Do Everything In My Power To Block COICA
A Bridge Too Far
However, COICA was asking too much for some people. The real significance is not just in blocking COICA. As the article says, it starts people thinking. The industry might not find it so easy to float its bogus statistics in the future if legislators get educated on COICA. Also, legislators don't like being made fools of. And that is exactly what the industry has been doing by foisting off bogus claims and statistics to get them to pass pro-IP legislation.
There are also a lot of people in Congress who don't want to be too associated with Obama. IP would be one area where Republicans could take delight in tweaking Obama's nose, and where Democrats could demonstrate their independence. All it may take is a wakeup call named COICA.
On the post: Righthaven Dismisses Lawsuit After Judge Slams Its Business Model
That quote should be part of every defense motion filed in these types of cases. It is nice to see it put so concisely. We have seen people post here in TD that is is perfectly fine to send pre-settlement letters as soon as the John Doe cases are filed, but that leads to exactly the type of abuse this judge has highlighted.
On the post: Who Owns The Copyright On A Tattoo?
What if a second person gets the same tattoo?
However, the artwork in the tattoo may be a different issue. Some tattoo artists are in fact artists. If the tattoo artist creates a truly original piece, wouldn't they have some claim to against other artists using that same same image on other clients? Most tattoos are derivative work and that would likely be an interesting issue in the case.
Copyright could be an issue if the artist had copyrighted images in its sample books or wall displays. However, someone getting a tattoo would probably be able to make a fair use claim, at least in the US. Tattoos could almost certainly be interpreted as a matter of personal expression and could possibly make a First Amendment claim.
Trademark shouldn't be an issue. If someone gets "Pepsi" tattooed on his body it is unlikely people would think he was a product of Pepsico, and he would not be using it in trade. A moron in a hurry would probably recognize it as a personal tattoo. In that case, however, the person getting the tattoo would be the moron, and they are probably in a hurry because of the combined effect of sugar and caffeine consumption.
On the post: Sony Settles PS3 Jailbreaking Lawsuit Against Geohot
Passed on Sony
On the post: EU Getting Ready To Vote On Unnecessary Copyright Extension
We need a new system for old works
I propose a system that would let a copyright holder extend copyright by paying a fee each year. The fee could be used to renew the copyright indefinitely, but the fee would increase every year. Once the fee stopped being paid the work would go into the public domain immediately. This would let companies like Disney have a certain way to extend their copyright without the political uncertainty of extensions.
On the post: Desperate Drug Companies Raising Prices On Drugs Still Under Patent
But if there were "normal competitive forces" in play we would not see "prices go up consumers seek alternatives that cost less." Your arguments seem to contradict each other and do suggest that at least in the company's own mindset they are working in a monopoly environment.
On the post: Desperate Drug Companies Raising Prices On Drugs Still Under Patent
Re:
Actually, that is exactly what happened. The incentives for executives in the big drug companies is to maximize near-term profits. To further that end, the big pharma companies slashed research funds and put the money into marketing. Consequently they have their gravy-train drugs approaching the departure stations and they don't have new trains ready to take them beyond.
Smaller companies are developing new drugs, and one article I read a while back said that the major companies had been hoping that they could buy up drugs or research from some of the smaller companies, push them through the approval process and then apply their marketing expertise. I suppose this could still happen. Perhaps they are ramping up the prices of existing drugs to fund the purchase of some of the smaller companies.
One other thing is that we assume that the best way to improve health care is to develop new drugs. The drug companies have certainly perpetuated that line of thinking. However, some people in the medical community thing this is the wrong approach to improving long-term health care. New drugs can be useful, but perhaps we are putting too much emphasis on their importance.
On the post: SF Entertainment Commission Says Attending Any Gathering Of 100 Or More People Means You Lose All Privacy Rights
On the post: 10 Industries That Are 'Dying'? Or 10 Industries That Are Changing?
Not an economic catastrophe
On the post: Murdoch's Big Bet Gone Bad: iPad Only Publication Not Engaging Readers Much
On the post: Zen And The Art Of Patent Protecting Zen Art
Re: Re:
On the post: Zen And The Art Of Patent Protecting Zen Art
On the post: Which Would You Rather Have: 100,000 Unauthorized Downloads Of Your Music... Or None?
Barometers
On the post: Harvard Business Review Explains How Big Content Is Strangling Innovation
History of technology and the entertainment industry in the 20th century
Stage 1: Technology A is introduced.
Stage 2: Industry declares A will destroy their industry.
Stage 3: Industry learns to make money off A.
Stage 4: Industry comes to rely heavily on A.
Stage 5: Technology B is introduced.
Stage 6: Got to Stage 1, replacing A with B.
On the post: Why Chris Dodd Is Doing Everything Wrong With The MPAA
Re: Speaking from the viewpoint of the MPAA
Turns out right, goes down in flames, or becomes irrelevant. More often the second or third options.
On the post: Why Chris Dodd Is Doing Everything Wrong With The MPAA
The dangers of playing Follow the Leader
The problem was, piracy was not the thing that was killing either business. At most piracy was nipping at the edges, and it might actually have been boosting some aspects of the businesses.
I can't really blame either industry for their concerns in the early days. However, we have had a decade of failed efforts to stem piracy. Not only have they utterly failed to stem illegal downloads, we now have objective studies that put the whole situation into perspective. We also have lots of examples of artists that have demonstrated that it is possible to make a very good living by exploiting p2p sharing instead of railing against it.
It is time both industries ask themselves two questions:
-What do customers want?
-What are customers willing to pay for?
Industry shills say that what customers want is "free." But there have been plenty of cases now that demonstrate that is not not true. Many customers are willing to pay for content. Just ask NetFlix or Kindle or iTunes. They are all making money despite the entertainment industry's best efforts to impede them. It is time for the industries to stop fooling themselves and set a course that will make them successful in the long term.
On the post: Are Homeland Security's Domain Seizures Actually Working? Doesn't Look Like It
The Big Lie Works
The danger of the Big Lie is that the liar begins to believe the lie, too.
On the post: Does Google Have A Patent Problem... Or Does The Patent System Have A Google Problem?
Worse than the Nuclear Option
Google has generally not chosen to go with the usual massive portfolio needed to make the threat of the nuclear option credible. Google is doing something worse than the nuclear option. They are actually defending themselves on the merits of the case. If you sue Google and press them too hard, they are likely to defend the patent by trying to invalidate your patent or limit its scope. In the worst (or best) case scenario they might try to fight the patent system itself and invalidate an entire class of patents such as software patents. This is a risky strategy, but it is a credible threat against trolls as well as producing companies.
On the post: Yet Another Judge Says No To Mass Infringement Lawsuits
Not a business model
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