Indie music label rejects lock-down CDs

A European indie music label is taking an unusual approach to the issue of CD copy protection - it is branding all its releases with a sticker proclaiming the absence of any such control measure.

While the major labels and other indie labels are considering the use of copy-protected CDs in order to prevent disc contents being quickly ripped and posted on P2P networks, !K7 has rejected the idea.

Induce Act Talks Sputter

After four days of painstaking negotiations, technology and consumer groups said they have failed to reach a consensus with the entertainment industry on the language of the Induce Act, a proposed bill making it illegal to encourage copyright infringement.

Nevertheless, the bill, introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), is still scheduled for markup in a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday, to be put in final form for a vote. The technology and consumer advocacy groups sent letters to the committee Wednesday urging them not to move forward with the legislation.

I was only prepared to go as far as “pending” in describing UK record industry lawsuits against file sharing: UK music to sue online ‘pirates’ (also UK record industry sues 28 file-sharers)

The British music industry is to prosecute 28 internet users it says are illegally swapping music online.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says it is targeting “major uploaders” - those who make music available to share free with others.

[...] A further 459 alleged file-sharers across Europe now face legal action, the global music industry body said on Thursday, with France and Austria also targeted for the first time.

The BPI press release; the IFPI press release; Slashdot discussion

Appeals court to reconsider e-mail snoop case

A federal appeals court said Tuesday that it will reconsider its June 29 decision that dismissed a case against a man accused of snooping on clients’ e-mail messages. In that case, which has drawn fire from Capitol Hill, a three-judge panel said that Bradford Councilman, a former executive for an online bookseller, did not violate federal wiretap laws by allegedly snooping on e-mail that Amazon.com sent to customers through accounts Councilman provided.

The U.S. Justice Department had asked the full 1st Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case. Tuesday’s order reinstated the charges against Councilman and scheduled oral arguments for Dec. 8 in Boston.

Slashdot: Court To Reconsider Decision On ISP Mail Snooping; earlier Furdlog posts on Councilman

Protecting ourselves to death

From the conclusion:

Copyright policy must support vibrant and economically viable Canadian cultural production. Protecting individual rights only will not achieve this goal: it will raise the costs of and inhibit access to cultural materials, while benefitting only a few. If we see culture as purely a market, or inevitably becoming only a market, we might say that this is the only way it can be. If we see the Internet as purely a market, or inevitably becoming only a market, we might say that this is the only way it can be. But if we see culture as an ecology including both market and non–market dimensions, in which we want to maximize quality and output, we can recognize that future creativity and initiative comes from education, from community, from experimentation, from imitation, and from absorption. Creators do not create from nothing. They borrow from peers and previous generations — through fair dealing, permission, or the public domain; they create; they have a limited monopoly to reward their talent and effort; and then that material becomes free again for later generations of creators. Cultural markets depend on non–market creativity, which generates new ideas and revisits old. Insofar as protection is a goal of copyright law and policy, it must apply to non–market cultural practices just as strongly as it does to marketed culture.