Three days before a protest blackout of major Internet sites including Wikipedia, SOPA’s main sponsor Eric Cantor announced that he will stop to move the bill forward … unless there is consensus.
While Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Digital Agenda launched Europe’s “No Disconnect Strategy”, the USA driven by the mighty culture industry was set to go the opposite way. First in 2010 there was COICA, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which failed and was re-written as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the US Senate in 2011. In October 2011, it was followed by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives. All of them were intended to make US service providers like domain name registrars, advertising and payment providers stop servicing alleged copyright infringing sites abroad. Search engines, social networking platforms, cloud storage providers, universities and other institutions would also have come under pressure to monitor and filter Internet activities of their users.
O Centro de Estudos do Auditório Ibirapuera de São Paulo publicou dois livros emagosto do ano passado: o primeiro número da Revista Auditório e a edição especialRepensando Música. Leia mais na página do Auditório.
O segundo livro contém meu artigo: “Uma exceção ao direito autoral para monetizar o compartilhamento de arquivos”, tradução de Raquel Setz
After the depths of the plagiarism scandal leading to his ousting as German Minister of Defense, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg moved to exile in the US of A, where he joined the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Now he is back in the European political arena. When on 12 December, Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the EC in charge of the Digital Agenda announced the launch of Europe’s “No Disconnect Strategy”, she also announced that she has invited Guttenberg to advise “on how to provide ongoing support to Internet users, bloggers and cyber-activists living under authoritarian regimes.” As top CSU politician, Guttenberg was favoring Internet blocking and data retention. Now he is supposed to bring “Arab Spring” to Syria, Russia and China. Kroes defended her controversial choice to bring him on as voluntary CSIS advisor: “I’m looking for talent, I’m not looking for saints.” Nevertheless, her important intiative was nearly drowned out by the causa Guttenberg. In explaining why he thinks he is qualified for the job, the fallen minister shared a remarkable piece of insight:
“Last but not least, I have been personally exposed to the power of the Internet just this year. And I recognize and value its ability to hold those in power to account.”
Here is the video from the press conference with Kroes and Guttenberg:
Munich’s LiMux project announced that on 12.12.2011 the 9,000th PC workstation in the city’s administration was migrated to the new LiMux Client, putting the project ahead of its schedule. With a few exceptions all MS Office suits have been uninstalled and replaced with OpenOffice. The migration of the remaining 3,000 workstations will be concluded in 2012. For a background story on the project that was initiated in 2003 see:
O DIGITALIA – Congresso Internacional de Música e Cultura Digital pretende reunir, em Salvador, de 1o a 4 de fevereiro de 2012, diversas iniciativas que relacionam o campo da música às novas tecnologias da informação e da comunicação, notadamente aquelas conformadas pela chamada Cultura Digital. O congresso está articulado sobre três eixos: de pesquisa, de formação e de integração.
O Digitalia é promovido pela comunidade Audiosfera, uma rede social dedicada à relação entre música e cultura digital, tendo como âncora o grupo de pesquisa de mesmo nome, hospedado no Instituto de Humanidades, Artes e Ciências Prof. Milton Santos (IHAC), da Universidade Federal da Bahia.
In the economic South, access to global flows of goods, technology and ideas increasingly occurs through a culture of piracy that sidesteps the global juridical and economic norms set, for instance, by the WTO. To date, academic discourse has addressed such practices of piracy predominantly from three different angles, viewing them either in terms of criminal theft, as expressions of creative freedom, or as acts of anti-capitalist resistance.
Against such overtly ideological readings, this conference promotes a re-orientation that focuses on postcolonial piracy primarily as a strategy of access to global modernity and as a culture that demands to be understood in its own right. Participants will discuss examples from across the globe that show how both everyday and artistic strategies of medial copying and recycling are currently changing legal, economic, social and aesthetic concepts of authorship and originality.
Speakers include Marcus Boon, Adam Haupt, Ramon Lobato, Ravi Sundaram and yours truly.
International Symposium, organised by Prof. Dr. Lars Eckstein and Prof. Dr. Anja Schwarz, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Potsdam. Literaturwerkstatt and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2 – 4 December 2011.
“Auch ein Herz, das an Kontaktmikrophonen und Oszilloskopen hängt, wird still. Und wenn mit Laut und Leise, Hell und Dunkel, Himmel und Hölle alle Unterschiede schwinden, kommt ein anderer Raum näher, den andere Kulturen wohl Satori nennen. Darum sollte man die Medienexplosion unserer Tage nicht nur medientheoretisch wie ihre Propheten hören.”
This is a collection of materials on the proposals to legalize file-sharing in exchange for a flat-rate remuneration. These proposals are as old as P2P file-sharing itself. They have been advanced by law scholars, people from the music industry, consumer and Internet user organisations, collecting societies and political parties. They have come in the form of feasibility studies, passionate manifestos, scholarly and popular articles, law proposals and (near) pilot projects. And they have come under names such as alternative compensation system, content or culture flat-rate, licence globale, artistic freedom voucher, noncommercial use levy and sharing licence. If you have materials (text, audio, video) that should be in this collection, please mail me. Any discussion paper, law proposal, artist’s statement from any country in any language pertinent to the subject is welcome. Broken links as well. Thank you.
Ende April stellte der Chaos Computer Club (CCC) ein Vergütungsmodell für Kreative vor, die Kulturwertmark (KWM). Zunächst was mir daran gefällt: Urheber und Publikum werden ins Zentrum des Modells gestellt. Ebenfalls zu begrüßen ist, dass Deutschlands Hacker-Club sich in die Debatte ums Urheberrecht einschaltet. Nicht so gut gefällt mir, dass er das nicht in seiner Kernkompetenz tut, sondern sich auf dünnes Eis begibt. Vor allem hat mich enttäuscht, dass das Papier offensichtlich als Reaktion auf die Kultur-Flatrate formuliert ist, es zu dieser aber nichts zu sagen weiß, als “Komplettüberwachung des Netzes, um korrekte Downloadzahlen … zu ermitteln.” Genau zu der Frage: Erhebung der Downloadzahlen, hätte ich mir vom CCC kreativere, konstruktivere Beiträge gewünscht.
Tatsächlich unterscheiden sich die Kultur-Flatrate – für die ich den in Brasilien geprägten Namen “Tauschlizenz” vorziehe – und die KWM im Grundsatz nicht. Beide sehen eine gesetzliche Erlaubnis zum privaten, nichtkommerziellen Tauschen und Mixen vor. Dafür bekommen Urheber und Künstler von allen Breitband-Internet-Nutzern eine Vergütung. Beide Modelle nehmen eine – noch näher zu bestimmende – Vergütungshöhe von monatlich € 5,- an, was einen Gesamtbetrag von € 1,5 Milliarden pro Jahr ergibt.
Wie dieser Topf ausgeschüttet werden soll, darin liegt der größte Unterschied. Üblich ist bei dieser Art von kollektiv verwalteter Umverteilung, dass der individuelle Anteil im Verhältnis stehen soll zur tatsächlichen Nutzung der eigenen Werke. Die wird z.B. über Abspiellisten von Radiostationen und Clubs erhoben. In der digitalen Welt geht das natürlich viel einfacher und genauer. Der CCC lehnt diese Verfahren ab, vor allem, weil man die real-existierenden Urheberkollektive, allen voran die GEMA, tatsächlich nur ablehnen kann. Stattdessen schlägt er vor, den Zahlungspflichtigen ihre € 5,- in Form einer Mikrowährung zurückzugeben. Jede Einzelne kann sie dann an Songs, Podcasts, Fotos usw. verteilen, die ihr gefallen haben.
Ich bin überzeugt, dass eine Auszahlung im Verhältnis zur Popularität dem Gerechtigkeitssinn der allermeisten Kreativen ebenso wie dem des Publikums entspricht, vom Urheberrecht ganz zu schweigen. Die Verwertungsgesellschaften müssen grundlegend reformiert werden. Darin sind sich alle Beteiligten einig. Sie zu ignorieren und – unsehenden Auges – eine neue aufzubauen, wie sich das der CCC vorstellt, ist nicht die Lösung. Ich halte eine individuelle, willkürliche, also nutzungsunabhängige Verteilung des Geldes für unplausibel. Andere sehen das anders. Wir werden nur wissen, ob diese Methode erfüllt, was sie leisten soll, wenn wir sie ausprobieren.
Daher schlage ich am Ende des Textes ein Pilotprojekt vor, in dem es vor allem um die Frage der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit gehen soll. Nach zehn Jahren Debatte über die Legalisierung des Tauschens und die vergeblichen, aber schädlichen Versuche es zu unterdrücken, ist es an der Zeit, das Modell endlich mal praktisch auszuprobieren.
On Monday, the EU Council voted to extend the copyright on sound recordings from 50 to 70 years. The move follows a campaign by artists like Cliff Richard as well as lesser-known performers, who said they should continue to earn from their creations. Critics argue that many musicians will see little benefit, with most income going to big stars and record labels.
… Under the 50-year rule, the copyright on songs by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who would have expired in the next few years. (weiterlesen…)
Three days before a protest blackout of major Internet sites including Wikipedia, SOPA’s main sponsor Eric Cantor announced that he will stop to move the bill forward … unless there is consensus.
