Newly in the public domain

Today is a great day; in the USA, works written/created in 1922 become available under the public domain as the 1970’s extension laws durations expire. This is recorded by Ars Technica, in an article entitled, Mickey Mouse and Batman will soon be public domain—here’s what that means. This headline is misleading since these properties won’t become PD until the 2030s. Don’t quite get the maths myself since the international treaties talk of 70 year durations and this looks like 95 years but we do know that this was an exercise in corrupt lobbying power but it would seem that “I’ve got you Babe”, written by the Congressional sponsor of the second extension law, yup, they did it twice, expires in 2060; don’t think I’ll be around to enjoy it for free. What a greedy twat!

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A failure to serve fans

The European Parliament sent the Copyright Directive to the trialogue process, where the views of the commission, the council and the parliament are negotiated; the final words agreed by the parliament are basically the words lobbied for by the large corporate press and content companies aided at the last gasp by the sports industry. To understand why this is shit we need to go back to basics. This article is quite long and continues below, or overleaf … …

Ulveas together

Another interesting copyright story. In 1974 ABBA won the Eurovision song contest with Waterloo. This launched an amazing career releasing 66 singles between 1974 and 1982, with nine UK No. 1 positions and 11 BPI Gold discs, putting them in the top 20 best selling bands ever.

But as we know, copyright lasts for life + 70 years and so reusing their material can only be done at a price. While researching this article, I discovered that we can perform an artist’s copyrighted material for money in a venue, and it is the venue’s responsibility to pay the collecting society. However, band names are protected by intellectual property laws.

It became clear, that ABBA had ceased to perform, and declared that they never would again and in 1988, Rod Stephen launched an ABBA tribute band, called “Bjorn Again”, which is a different name and also protected. This has also been successful. The line-up has changed, and even at times there have been two bands on separate tours.  Fascinating that such a simple copyright statement allows the appropriation of value. I think I’ll copyright “Ulveas together”.

It’s a story of great music and showmanship, abandoned and restored, but still enclosed. You can perform it, but you can’t monetise it without paying a tax. When I first conceived of this article, I was curious as to whether the Bjorn Again owners were licensing the name as a franchise, however it seems not but it would be a smart business move, and another illustration of the monopolistic tendencies created by modern creative copyright.

There seems to me to be something not quite right about the way the performers & fans are at the bottom of the heap in this particular model. …

Racism in culture & politics

Racism in culture & politics

Two stories, one personal and one public showing the endemic racism in the UK in Thatcher’s ’80s and wondering how much things have changed. Originally posted as a storify, rescued and back dated to the original date.

The personal story related to watching an episode of Minder, “Poetic Justice, Innit!” and the endemic, unnecessary casual racism within it. This was cross referenced with yet another shock story of racists in the Tory cabinet.

The Minder episode was published a year after the Brixton riots, and the video copy on youtube, pointed to in the story is no longer available there. The story was made in 2017, posted here in 2020 and backdated to the date of its first publication.  …

Watching Game of Thrones (again)

Watching Game of Thrones (again)

Yup, I am! Artistically, now I know what happens, I can concentrate on relevant harbingers since we know what they are. There’s quite a few, I was obviously concentrating on the wrong plot points the first time through.  If I was really concerned, I could probably organise my life better; I deleted my older copies of the show from my skybox and so short of buying the box set, £32 for S1-3 I am stuck waiting for them to show repeats and so I took the opportunity over Xmas. Great show but the opportunity to whinge about Sky & HBO’s monetisation strategies is too great. …

monopoly in film

On the 27th Sept, Torrentfeak comments on an MPAA funded report on film distribution in the USA.  It highlights the oddity that the most used service (Netflix) has the weakest catalogue. Later in the year, the researcher, KPMG LLP published a report on the UK market, which Torrentfreak commented on here…. The headline was that a film fan wanting the best catalogue would need to subscribe to 27 services, which seems a bit excessive.  …

I need 27 suppliers? Watching film in the UK

I need 27 suppliers? Watching film in the UK

A UK movies fan has to subscribe to 27 services to get a full catalog of current(ish) releases. On the 27th Sept, Torrentfeak comments on an MPAA funded report on film distribution in the USA.  It highlights the oddity that the most used service (Netflix) has the weakest catalogue. Later in the year, the researcher, KPMG LLP published a report on the UK market, and locally hosted here … which Torrentfreak commented on here…. The headline was that a film fan wanting the best catalogue would need to subscribe to 27 services, which seems a bit excessive. See below/overleaf for critical quotes from the reports … …

Not so open, a Bioware take on open source

This article represents some thoughts on how copy-left and permissive licences create value. It uses the story of Bioware and it’s use of the D&D™ and Forgotten Realms™ games & mythos as an example. There are two recent news items that make this current: that the community repository for Neverwinter Nights has just shut, and that Wizards of the Coast have just released Dungeons & Dragons V5 rules as a free to use .pdf, a small but significant step to a freemium business model. The story shows how an initially traditional author-publisher business model, leveraged a pre-made community, grew it and latterly enabled it. The point of this story is the way in which community and value grew, becoming significant author contributors and the way in which Bioware responded and learnt although some might say not as quickly or as generously as they might.  …