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Canadian study: P2P users buy more music
An economic study funded by the Canadian government has concluded that heavy Peer-to-peer (P2P) users buy more music, not less as had been posited by entertainment industry organizations like the MPAA and RIAA. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has more background on his blog.
And why, you say, should FGI care about a Canadian study about file-sharing technology like Napster? Because this technology, a fundementally different 'Net architecture -- and one that looks and acts like a library consortium! -- is currently the architecture being used in LOCKSS and could be widely employed to much positive effect by libraries to build and share digital collections, that's why :-)
However, P2P has been under attack from entertainment industry organizations paranoid about copyright infringement. The attack has been so fierce that some states have begun looking into legislation against P2P (On September 16, 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger signed executive order S-16-04 charging the CA state CIO with the development of a statewide policy on P2P technology. See my P2P backgrounder for more). So legislation against P2P and the perpetuation of equating P2P with "piracy" has a deleterious effect on libraries and other cultural institutions trying to build systems of better digital access and preservation for the public.
- When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.
- When viewed in the aggreggate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. According to the study authors, "the analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole."
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Pimps and Ferrets: Copyright and Culture in the United States, 1831-1891
I thought folks here would be interested in reading about the history of copyright (plus I really like the title of the thesis!). Eric Anderson has put his dissertation, "Pimps and Ferrets: Copyright and Culture in the United States, 1831-1891" online under a Creative Commons license. I notice he's at Bowling Green University, home of the Browne Popular Culture Library, an amazing repository of American popular culture (post 1876). If you ever find yourselves in Western OH, do take a trip to the library!
Title: Pimps and Ferrets: Copyright and Culture in the United States, 1831-1891 Author: Anderson, Eric Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies/History, 2007. Advisor: Philip G Terrie Pages: 231p. Abstract: How did people think about copyright in the nineteenth century? What did they think it was? What was it for? Was it property? Or something else? How did it function? Who could it benefit? Who might it harm? Pimps and Ferrets: Copyright and Culture in the United States, 1831-1891addresses questions like these, unpacking the ideas and popular ideologies connected to copyright in the United States during the nineteenth-century. This era was rife with copyright-related controversy and excitement, including international squabbling, celebrity grandstanding, new technology, corporate exploitation, and ferocious arguments about piracy, reprinting, and the effects of copyright law. Then, as now, copyright was very important to a small group of people (authors and publishers), and slightly important to a much larger group (consumers and readers). However, as this dissertation demonstrates, these larger groups did have definite ideas about copyright, its function, and its purpose, in ways not obvious to the denizens of the legal and authorial realms. This project draws on methods from both social and cultural history. Primary sources include a broad swath of magazine and newspaper articles, letters, and editorials about various copyright-related controversies. Examining these sources – both mainstream and obscure – illustrates the diversity of thinking about copyright issues during the nineteenth century, and suggests alternative frameworks for considering copyright in other times.
[Thanks Copyfight]
Continue readingLunchtime listen: Laurence Lessig talks at TED
Yes we've talked a lot and linked a lot to Laurence Lessig but only because the issues he raises in terms of copyright are so compelling, especially for librarians. Here's a clip of his recent talk at the TED Conference in March, 2007, "How creativity is being strangled by the law." This will probably be his last public presentation about copyright seeing his much written-about announcement of a shift in academic focus from copyright to corruption. While we will miss his voice in support of the public domain -- not to mention his work with creative commons and the hilarious remixes -- we look forward to his no-doubt-equally-provocative presentations on his new bailiwick. Enjoy!
Copyrights — Do They Have a Future in the Internet Age?
Copyrights -- Do They Have a Future in the Internet Age?
There was a talk recently about the future of copyright (ok, October 24, 2007, 12:15 - 1:45 pm) from an economist and a writer. Click on the link above to access the audio of this panel. Their perspectives inform the overall copyright debate currently being hashed out in lots of different communities.
Copyrights have been one of the main mechanisms for financing creative and artistic work for centuries. However, the development of digital technology and the Internet has brought about growing legal and practical challenges to copyrights. This debate answered the following question: "Are copyrights still useful or should we look to alternative mechanisms to support creative and artistic work?"Continue reading
With Gerard Colby, President of National Writers Union, and Dean Baker, Co-director of Center for Economic and Policy Research. Moderated by Jo Freeman, of UAW Local 1981/ AFL-CIO and Washington, DC chapter of the National Writers Union.
Video: What GAO Does
I found this video on the Government Accountability Office website. It tells what GAO does through short news clips that appear in my total layman's opinion to be well within traditional fair use guidelines. As a video produced by the Government Accountability Office, an arm of the US Government, the video itself should be public domain.
Because of this analysis and because I think the GAO story is too good to stay locked up in a corner of its web site, I posted the video to YouTube, which is the embedded video here. For preservation purposes and just in case that YouTube doesn't agree with my analysis of the copyright status of the video, I also posted it to the Internet Archive, which is a fierce supporter of the public domain and fair use.
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