TPB Update: Internet Love and Other Stuff

"During the trial of pirate bay yesterday, a professor (Roger Wallis) took the witness stand. He told the court things that the prosecutors did not want to hear. The prosecutors then tried to discredit both him and his team's work in the area, as well as his title, it was a real spectacle. In the end, the judge asked if he wanted compensation for being there — he replied that he did not want anything, but they could send flowers to his wife. Many listening online heard, and began sending her flowers, from all over the world. As of this submission, the sum is over 40,000 SEK worth of flowers." -- Slashdot

Business as usual or a real paradigm shift? The music industry's response to e-commerce technology and ideology. Roger Wallis, Visiting Professor (Multimedia), Media Technology & Graphic Arts, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. Chairman, Swedish Society of Popular Music Composers (SKAP).

Abstract. Digital production and distribution technology, in theory, provide powerful opportunities for creators and performers of musical works to reach a potential global audience without dependence on the series of intermediaries that are so typical of the established music industry. Such a development, however, does not appear to have occurred in practice. This paper looks at the resilient nature of the established music industry value chain. Current data suggests, that the power structure in the music industry serves to retain a status quo where powerful players in the value chain can maintain their influence and revenue share, although their contribution in terms of value added had changed beyond recognition. The age-old tensions between concentration and diversification have not been markedly altered by the introduction of digital networks and production technology.

How To Kill The Music Industry by Jens Roland, TorrentFreak, 02/27/09

The Pirate Bay has just released their manifesto in English. 

The book, titled ‘POwr, Broccoli and Kopimi’ is filled with 100 inspiring principles for everyone who aims to live the Kopimi lifestyle. “The Internet is right,” is the ultimate wisdom.

Authors´ Guild vs. reality: Kindles and read-aloud by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, 02/25/09

     In yesterday's New York Times, Author's Guild president Roy Blount Jr. rails against the Kindle's text-to-speech feature, opining that it infringes copyright because it provides a "derivative work" by creating audio editions of your textfiles. Blount says that eventually, text-to-speech will be so darned perfect, the audiobook market will be destroyed by it, so he aims to do something about it right now.

    If Blount believes that making a device capable of infringing copyright is the same as infringing copyright (something refuted by the Supreme Court in Betamax in 1984, the decision that legalized VCRs), then email, web-browsers, computers, photocopiers, cameras, and typewriters are all illegal, too.

P2P, Online File-Sharing, and the Music Industry by Rufus Pollock

First is the differential impact of file-sharing on an artist depending on their existing popularity. According to Blackburn who investigates this issue the 'bottom' 3/4 of artists sell more as a consequence of file-sharing while the top 1/4 sell less. Second is the first tentative estimates (by Waldfogel and Rob) of the welfare consequences of file-sharing. Waldfogel and Rob's dramatic result is that file-sharing on average yields a gain to society three times the loss to the music industry in lost sales.

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada by Birgitte Anderson and Marion Frenz 

Description: Industry Canada undertook a music file sharing study during 2006-07 to measure the extent to which music downloads over peer-to-peer file sharing networks, for which the sound recording industry receives no remuneration, affect music purchasing activity in Canada. The data used for this analysis are from a Decima Research survey conducted between April and June, 2006, on behalf of Industry Canada. The report, prepared by University of London researchers, Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, found that music downloads have a positive effect on music purchases among Canadian downloaders but that there is no effect taken over the entire population aged 15 and over.

Stop Suing Tech Investors Over Copyright! by Richard Koman, ZDnet, 02/27/09

Does Piracy Pay? Mininova records show earnings over €1 million a year, Ars, 03/11/09