Much has been made of this article in the New York Times about the work of the BMI in enforcing the law that any business in the US playing music (radio, CDs, spotify, live etc.) needs to pay a public performance license, the cost of which is based on the size of the business. There’s […]
Category Archives: news/current affairs
Digital Economy Bill – My Relevant Posts In One Handy List
I had an email from an MP earlier today, asking for some background info on my position on the Digital Economy Bill. So I sent him this list of links (it’s far from complete, but the poor guy’s got a lot on, so 50-odd links weren’t going to help!): http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/01/quick-thoughts-on-obscurity/ http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/02/warners-mistakes/ http://www.stevelawson.net/2010/01/dear-rock-stars/ (particularly the bit […]
Another letter to my MP, Jim Down, about the 3rd Reading of the Digital Economy Bill
I’ve just watched 6 hours of live debate from Parliament. I can’t remember the last time I watched 6 hours of anything. Some of it was riveting, some of it was appalling. Major respect to those MPs who had REALLY done their homework and stepped up to the task of debunking some of the nonsense […]
Email to my MP Jim Dowd about the Digital Economy Bill
[I wrote to Jim before, but didn’t post it here. Anyway, here’s the follow up that I just sent him.] Hi Jim, just a quick note ahead of tomorrow’s debate to express again my fear that highly contentious and misunderstood elements of the Digital Economy Bill will get pushed through in the wash-up. I was […]
Cloud Culture – The Obvious Obstacle?
The tendency for people to shift their computing life into ‘the cloud’ is rolling on at great pace. More and more people are trusting • their email to Gmail, • their photos to Flickr, • their back-up to Amazon or Dropbox, • their documents to Google Docs and are using collaborative platforms for sharing data, […]
Open Letter to Lib-Dem Lord Clement-Jones re: Web Blocking.
[I just sent this in response to the Open Rights Group’s call to contact the Lib-Dem and Conservative Lords over their proposed amendment to the Digital Economy bill allowing sites to be blocked under suspicion of enabling the transfer of copyright materials.] Dear Lord Clement-Jones, Along with everyone I know who works in IT/the internet […]
RATM Christmas Follow-up: Was It A Fix?
I’ve started mentally drafting this a few times, but almost all of them just ended up with me reiterating everything I said in my ‘Futility Of Fighting Fire With Fire‘ post over on stevelawson.net. However, this evening, someone linked on Twitter to This blog post claiming that it was a campaign masterminded by Sony. And […]
The Future of Politics is Mutual
This is not a post about the things that are wrong with our world. This is a post about how we make them right. Of course it is not exhaustive, and by no means is it intended to be a detailed and flawless solution, in fact it openly admits that fact, because that (you will […]
Together We’re Louder – Campaigning In the 21st Century
Everything has changed. And the more things change, the more they stay the same. Every time a new technology comes along, its success is largely governed by the level to which it helps us to do what we’ve always wanted to do, but have previously been unable to do properly – or at least as […]
Free Albums – Screw The RIAA
Having just read the story of Joel Tenenbaum, who has just been fined over $600,000 dollars for downloading 30 songs, I’m incensed by the insanity of the RIAA – the Record Industry Association of America. While it claims to be “the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a […]