In an exclusive excerpt from Anita Elberse’s book “Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment,” the Harvard Business School professor analyzes wh…
OCTOBER 11, 2013
Take the music industry. According to Nielsen, which collects recorded-music sales information, of the 8 million unique digital tracks sold in 2011 (the large majority through the iTunes Store), 94% — 7.5 million tracks — sold fewer than 100 units, and an astonishing 32% sold only one copy. Yes, that’s right: Of all the tracks that sold at least one copy, about a third sold exactly one copy. (One has to wonder how many of those songs were purchased by the artists themselves, just to test the technology, or perhaps by their moms out of a sense of loyalty.
This is a response to an op-ed, published last week (Oct. 21), from BitTorrent's Chief Content Officer Matt Mason. Below, former film executive and current executive director of CreativeFuture Ruth Vitale questions Mason and BitTorrent's methods for content ditribution and piracy mitigation.
On September 22, Thom Yorke published an image of a vinyl record. The earth was thrown off its axis, as Consequence of Sound reported. And it was again, four days later, when the record was released as a BitTorrent Bundle. That isn’t hyperbole, but instead, obvious and insignificant. That’s what records are supposed to do. To throw you off. To draw you in. To make you hear, see, and remember the world around you differently. Every record, regardless of the artist, is our own: a personal history of listening, an artifact of life lived out loud.
'Live fast, die young' could've been the Web's motto when the dotcom bubble burst around 2000. We take a look back at the period's monumental collapses and now-defunct successes
National Law Journal Article on Aimster Litigation
August 4, 2003
the impact of the Aimster Decision
What impact will Aimster have on the law of contributory infringement if it is followed by courts in other circuits—and not reviewed by the Supreme Court on certiorari? While it apparently reads Sony to establish a broader defense than that found by the 9th Circuit in Napster, its balancing test arguably imposes a responsibility on providers of goods or services used for infringing purposes to take effective steps to “eliminate or at least substantially reduce” infringement. That responsibility may require design changes or monitoring, even in situations when there are substantial noninfringing uses of staple articles.
The Aimster decision may also be influential because of observations made in the course of the 7th Circuit’s discussion of Sony. In that discussion, the court stated that two of the principal purposes for which the Betamax was used constituted copyright infringement. The first was “ ‘library building,’ that is, making copies of programs to retain permanently.” The second was use of the machine to avoid commercials. Aimster therefore stands as authority that facilitating such activity may amount to contributory infringement.
However these issues are resolved, the law of secondary copyright liability will continue to evolve as it attempts to respond to the dizzying pace of technological change and innovation.
1999: The Recording Industry Association of America sues Napster, the online, peer-to-peer file sharing service that’s allowing millions of computer users to score free, copyright music. The rules are about to change. Napster founder Shawn Fanning won rock-star celebrity with the service. But music-industry heads were spinning. So, the RIAA sued Napster and all of \[…\]
On a warm night last April, a 16-year-old blonde named Aimee Deep stepped onto the red carpet at the Paris Theater on West 58th Street for the premiere of The Golden Bowl , the new Merchant-Ivory f…
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - Hollywood and Grokster ended their legal war Monday as the recording and movie industries and the peer-to-peer service agreed to settle a lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Quotes from the music industry, on Grokster settlement.
"This settlement brings to a close an incredibly important chapter in the history of digital music," Recording Industry Assn. of America chairman Mitch Bainwol said. "This is a chapter that ends on a high note for the recording industry, the tech community and music fans and consumers everywhere. At the end of the day, this is about our ability to invest in new music. An online marketplace populated by legitimate services allows us to do just that."
Motion Picture Assn. of America president and CEO Dan Glickman said the court made clear what the boundaries are.
"The Supreme Court in its ruling sent a strong and clear message that businesses based on theft should not and will not be allowed to flourish," Glickman said. "The clarity of the court's decision combined with this settlement provides the content and technology sectors a window of opportunity which I think ultimately will greatly benefit consumers."
David Israelite, chairman and CEO of the National Music Publishers Assn., said the settlement helps clear the way for more legitimate services to flourish.
"The Grokster verdict has spurred growth and innovation for legal music services, including a legitimate peer-to-peer market," he said. "Now that a legal online entertainment environment has been established, the ultimate winners in the Grokster case are the music fans, who now have more options than ever before to hear the music they love."
"If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only," Cuban wrote. "It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their U.S. digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), moving important jobs overseas with them."
