Media
Why Copyright Law Must Change
In early February 2007, Stephanie Lenz’s 13-month-old son started dancing. Pushing a walker across her kitchen floor, Holden Lenz started moving to the distinctive beat of a song by Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy.” He had heard the song before. The beat had obviously stuck. So when Holden heard the song again, he did what any sensible 13-month-old would do — he accepted Prince’s invitation and went “crazy” to the beat. Holden’s mom grabbed her camcorder and, for 29 seconds, captured the priceless image of Holden dancing, with the barely discernible Prince playing on a CD player somewhere in the background.
Ms. Lenz wanted her mother to see the film. But you can’t easily email a movie. So she did what any citizen of the 21st century would do: She uploaded the file to YouTube and sent her relatives and friends the link. They watched the video scores of times. It was a perfect YouTube moment: a community of laughs around a homemade video, readily shared with anyone who wanted to watch.
Sometime over the next four months, however, someone from Universal Music Group also watched Holden dance. Universal manages the copyrights of Prince. It fired off a letter to YouTube demanding that it remove the unauthorized “performance” of Prince’s music. YouTube, to avoid liability itself, complied. A spokeswoman for YouTube declined to comment.
This sort of thing happens all the time today. Companies like YouTube are deluged with demands to remove material from their systems. No doubt a significant portion of those demands are fair and justified. Universal’s demand, however, was not. The quality of the recording was terrible. No one would download Ms. Lenz’s video to avoid paying Prince for his music. There was no plausible way in which Prince or Universal was being harmed by Holden Lenz.
Revisiting ideas from his TED talk last year, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig posts an article in the Wall Street Journal outlining how and why copyright law must change. This is a must-read for anyone who creates and shares anything in the 21st century.
Newspapers Should Link
One of the complaints I hear from Philippine entrepreneurs is that Philippine newspapers often fail to link to their businesses. Hell, sometimes they won’t even publish URLs. It’s as if Philippine newspapermen still deny the existence of the Web.
When even the New York Times, the gray old lady of newspapers, notes the rise of outbound links on newspaper sites, even the stodgiest newsroom dinosaur should know that times are changing.
This is why I like the Philippine Daily Inquirer: they link. Mere dead tree coverage doesn’t have the assumed value it once had. If a newspaper won’t link to relevant resources on their site, then its value to you is diminished fivefold. If a newspaper won’t link to your business on their site, then its value to your business is diminished tenfold.
