September 09, 2003
Suit filed against RIAA's amnesty program
A lawsuit was filed today on behalf of the general public of the State of California against the RIAA for unfair, deceptive, and unlawful business practices regarding its "Clean Slate" program. Said attorney Ira P. Rothken: "This lawsuit below seeks a remedy to stop the RIAA from engaging in unlawful, misleading, and fraudulent business practices including advertising an 'Amnesty Program' to members of the general public that does not provide real amnesty from being sued and a 'Clean Slate Program' that does not provide a real 'clean slate.' "
Here is a copy of the lawsuit (PDF) filed today in Marin County Superior Court.
Flansburgh, Cannon face off over file sharing
PBS' NewsHour had a pretty entertaining back and forth tonight between John Flansburgh of the seminal band They Might Be Giants and Chuck Cannon of the Nashville Underground, representing the music publishers, on -- what else? -- the Recording Industry Association of America's decision to sue hundreds of music file sharers.
Said Flansburgh at one point: "I think there is a real generation gap between the record industry and record consumers. The kids who are downloading MP-3s don't even feel as guilty as they would if they were stealing penny candy. They feel so alienated from the music business and all the money related to the music business."
Journalists, devoted until death
I just got around to reading Orville Schell's piece in the Sunday NY Times Magazine with the vague title, "Another Tribe Without a State." (God forbid they should use the word journalist.) It's about modern-day journalists without borders who put themselves in the line of fire for something greater than nationalism -- to tell people the truth about a story. Excerpt:
[Mazen] Dana, [a Palestinian Arab from Hebron,] represented those reporters whose allegiances are not primarily to nation, patriotism or ideology but to this new independent tribe of cryptic witness-bearing, the antithesis of embedded, producer reliant, flag-waving Geraldos. ''Freedom means to me to work free, no one bother you,'' he told his C.P.J. interviewer in his game English. ''We film, and we show the world what's going on. . . . My motive is to continue my work, even if it costed for me a lot of problems and a lot of injury . . . even if it cost me my life.''It finally did cost him his life. ...
API's Media Center and NDN merge
The Media Center at the American Press Institute and New Directions for News, an independent media research think tank, are combining their organizations.
RIAA sues 12-year-old
Fox News: 12-year-old sued for music downloading.
Later: Less than a day after filing suit against the 12-year-old girl and her mother, the RIAA settled the claim -- for $2,000.
We don't need your stinkin' amnesty!
Some friends and acquaintances are quoted in Salon today in the story "We don't need your stinkin' amnesty!" File sharers scoff at the recording industry's offer of forgiveness for repentant downloaders.
Among those interviewed: Lisa Rein, Mary Hodder of Berkeley IP Blog fame, Joseph Lorenzo Hall and Eric Olsen of Blogcritics.org .
Can the music revolution be slowed?
Jon Healey in today's LA Times: Legal Effort May Slow but Not Stop Music Revolution. Fans will find other ways to copy songs if file sharing is blocked, critics say.
... Some critics say the major record companies are trying to slow the online music revolution when they should be capitalizing on it by taking the music business to the masses. That means allowing the copying of an unlimited number of songs for a reasonable monthly fee that would encourage people to be paying customers, instead of pirates."We have to get to the place where we can collect the money, but we can't control the business," music publisher Jim Griffin of Cherry Lane Digital said at a recent industry conference.
Label executives offer a slew of reasons not to go that route. For one thing, they say, file sharers never would accept a monthly fee high enough to pay for all the music, movies and games they download. Record companies have begun talking to the file-sharing companies about offering services that pay royalties to artists, but in the meantime the industry is escalating the technological arms race against unauthorized copying. ...
Ueberroth drops out of recall race
Breaking news: Former sports czar Peter Ueberroth dropped out of the governor's recall race today.
Slip into court
AP story: For those who missed the latest nuttiness on the intellectual property front:
LOS ANGELES - The makers of the Slip 'N Slide filed a lawsuit Monday over a scene in the hit movie Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star that shows actor David Spade skidding to a painful halt on the summertime water toy.Wham-O is asking a judge to order the film out of theaters as long as it contains the Slip 'N Slide scene, or for a disclaimer to be added urging viewers not to try the maneuver made by Spade.
In the movie, Spade jumps belly first on the yellow plastic sheet without first inflating it with air and water. He then coats the slide with oil and crashes into a fence.
The scene has been used heavily in television and theater ads to promote the film, which was No. 1 at the weekend box office.
The lawsuit, filed against Paramount Pictures and Happy Madison Productions, charges the filmmakers violated its trademark by using the product without permission. ...
Why Are We in Iraq?
Sunday's NY Times Magazine carried a thoughtful piece titled, "Why Are We in Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?)" The United States has always been interventionist. What is new is the absence of a doctrine ó or even an honest principle or two.
It's accompanied by a Web poll: When should the U.S. intervene in situations of global conflict?
Top 10 Arnold Schwarzenegger Debate Conditions
Here are the Top 10 Arnold Schwarzenegger Debate Conditions, courtesy of CBS's Late Show With David Letterman:
10) Questions may be answered in English, German or a combination of both.
9) Long breaks to allow screenwriters to craft candidates' responses.
8) Debate ends when gas truck plows through wall and Arnold gets everyone out just before the whole place blows up.
7) Candidates may use their time to show a 90-second clip from "Terminator.''
6) No tricky words like "budget'' or "Sacramento.''
5) Attire: bathing suit and baby oil.
4) Candidate receives a standard $30 million fee, plus 10 percent of box office gross.
3) Moderator: Lou Ferrigno.
2) No questions that can't be answered "I'll be back.''
1) Arnold must win.
Will Europe's Copyright Directive mirror DMCA?
New Scientist: The proposed European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) could have consequences similar to the highly controversial US law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Blogging and the PR invasion
The Boston Herald's Cosmo Macero has a column about Blogging and the PR invasion. He blogged about it here. The Herald has one of those absurd subscription-only policies for its web site, so can't point you to the entire article, but Cosmo blogged most of it.
Cosmo interviewed me and Glenn Reynolds. Here's what I tossed in:
"I've noticed an upward trend in the past six months of PR people sending me all kinds of items for mention in my Weblog,'' says media blogger JD Lasica."I suspect PR folks are catching on to the blogging phenomenon and plugging into the viral machinery at its core. They're now viewing Weblogs as legitimate news and information outlets.''
Lasica, who is senior editor of Online Journalism Review, says he gives a fair shake to blog pitches as long as they aren't garbage.
Indeed, a couple of PR teases led to recent Lasica blog postings about ActiveRefresh, a software program that tells users when their favorite Web sites have been updated, and a set of ethical guidelines for digital image editing.
"As long as it appears to be a legitimate product or service that would be of interest to readers, I'll blog it,'' Lasica says.
Of course, this does not necessarily mean I would welcome a flood of solicitations from the august public relations community.
Mike said:
Oh no! Don't encourage them... As I wrote recently, I've been receiving a lot more "sneaky" pitches from PR people, including one from someone who didn't think it was necessary to identify himself as a PR person for the company he was pitching. He also thought it was okay to suggest that I didn't know what I was talking about. My article also looks at ways that I think PR people *should* interact with bloggers - and interact is the key word. It's not about pitching, but building a relationship where information can flow.
Bush, Iraq and character
Three views of Iraq on Tuesday's NY Times' editorial and op-ed pages.
Paul Krugman: Other People's Sacrifice.
It's now clear that the Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch operations. Mr. Bush and his officials portrayed the invasion of Iraq as an urgent response to an imminent threat, and used war fever to win the midterm election. Then they insisted that the costs of occupation and reconstruction would be minimal, and used the initial glow of battlefield victory to push through yet another round of irresponsible tax cuts. ...But the most important concession Mr. Bush should make isn't about money or control ó it's about truth-telling. He squandered American credibility by selling a war of choice as a war of necessity; if he wants to get that credibility back, he has to start being candid.
Yet in the speech on Sunday he was still up to his usual tricks. Once again, he made a rhetorical link between the Iraq war and 9/11. This argument by innuendo reminds us why 69 percent of the public believes that Saddam was involved in 9/11, despite a complete absence of evidence. (There is, on the other hand, strong evidence of a Saudi link ó but the administration's handling of that evidence borders on a cover-up.) And rather than acknowledge that the search for W.M.D. has come up empty, he declared that Saddam "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction" ó 1991, 2003, what's the difference?
New columnist David Brooks makes his debut (he'll appear in the Times twice a week) by putting a different spin on the president's speech Sunday night:
The essential news is that Bush will do whatever it takes to prevail, and senior members of his administration are capable of looking honestly at their mistakes. You will just never be able to get any of them to admit publicly they've ever made any.
The Times' editorial page, meantime, has an editorial on Presidential Character.
