[iDC] Fwd: Battling Bragg beats MySpace

[Andreas Schiffler]

While I fully agree with this the general "suckyness" of the original 
MySpace copyright and the current move to alleviate that, I feel that 
Billy Bragg  and "the next generation of artists" that use the internet 
to avoid "physical manufacturing and distribution" are running around 
with blindfolds over their eyes if they try to market themselves through 
MySpace.

For example, to avoid his copyright issues, he could have rented a 
virtual fileserver with domain ($3.19/month for the Economy hosting plan 
at godaddy.com). And just for fun, I commented a screenshot of Billy's 
MySpace page - not as a  personal critique, but  merely to illustrate 
the general tech-unsavyness that is apparent.
http://www.ferzkopp.net/MediaAndArt/IDC/billybragg-myspace-with_comments.jpg

So what does this mean? Here we have a prime example how many of us (and 
I don't exclude myself) are stumbling around this new "net world" trying 
to make sense of the things - from technical issues to legal ones like 
copyright. I think we are generally failing to protect our rights and 
privacy due to the inherent complexities of the technology and murky 
nature of its laws. MySpace was seen as "the good guy" because of its 
popularity ... until someone actually read the "legal.html" page and 
made their copyright policy more public. But who is to blame? I could 
argue that Billy doesn't deserve better if his songs are taken away by 
News Corp - it was stated in the "legal.html" that they could and I am 
sure he clicked on the "I Agree" button during signup. Or do we need to 
police these service providers better and dissallow them to do these 
kind of blanket "upload it and give up your rights" policies. I would 
argue that the second option is the better one, but that would get very 
political very quickly.

Recently I read about a policy shift with a big Canadian ISP that will 
enable them to 'monitor or investigate content or your use of your 
service provider's networks and to disclose any information necessary to 
satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request.' once you 
sign on to their service. 
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/28/1516243
Wow, that sucks away my privacy, I thought - although I am with a 
competitor for my internet needs, my ISP will probably soon do the same 
in due time. So here I am - technically astute and with a Linux server 
in the basement and two hours later I had the TOR http://tor.eff.org/ 
server running and PRIVOXY http://www.privoxy.org/ removing the 
GoogleAds on the fly. Finally private surfing again - but uselessly 
slow, and oh so ineffective against an ISP! Last week when I was 
streaming a worldcup soccer game from my home PC to the office, the 
provider seemd to put a filter on my connection after about a day of 
streaming. No more outgoing video packets pass through my wire now ... 
and no this is not port filtering, believe me I tried.

My personal conclusion: Living with "the net" means being smart about it 
(=extra effort). And maybe one should at least think about an "exit 
strategy" when it becomes time to drop out from parts of the net.



Chris Byrne wrote:
> New Corp's MySpace has changed the terms and conditions it offers 
> artists, following a recent protest by UK singer/songwriter, Billy Bragg.
>
> "Now that the popularity of downloading has made physical 
> manufacturing and distribution no longer necessary, the next 
> generation of artists will not need to surrender all of their rights 
> in order to get their music into the marketplace. It is therefore 
> crucial that they understand, from the moment that they first post 
> music on the internet, the importance of retaining their long term 
> right to exploit the material that they create."
>
> http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?&NewsID=15107
>
> (It seems the notion of authorship still is very much alive in the Web 
> 2.0 world, at least when it comes to music - Chris)
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity 
> (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at bbs.thing.net
> http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: aschiffler.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 135 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20060630/a9ba58ed/aschiffler-0002.vcf