3 Count: Sony’s Song

This is daily column on Plagiarism Today where the site brings you three of the days biggest, most important copyright and plagiarism news links. If you want to offer your feedback on the column, use the contact form or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.

1: Guardrails for the Internet: Preserving Creativity Online

First off today, a great deal of controversy is swirling over an opinion piece posted by Michael Lynton, the CEO and Chairman of Sony, to the Huffington Post.

In his editorial, in this editorial, he says that piracy is a major burden on the copyright holders and puts the entire Web at risk and proposes putting safeguards on the Web to, in his view, make the Web a better place to sell and promote creative works. He likens the Web to the highway system and encourages that “rules of the road” be placed on the Web.

Naturally, this has caused a great deal of controversy and led some to even post paragraph by paragraph rebuttals. It seems as if, rightly or wrongly, this is going to be the conversation piece for copyright for the next few days…

2: Gaming anti-piracy chief blasts ‘terrorists’

Next up today, Yutaka Kubota, the president of Japan’s Association of Copyright for Computer Software, used the word “terrorist” to describe those who pirate Nintendo DS games. This has upset many on both sides of the issue and flames tensions at a very critical time for Japan.

This come on the heels of Nintendo releasing estimates that 120 million DS games have been bootlegged and Japan is considering legislation to criminalize such piracy, which is currently legal under current Japanese law.

3: EU pushes music industry to open up online rights

Finally today, EU antitrust regulators have sent a strong message to the various licensing boards and publishers “to move quickly to adapt their licensing solutions to the online environment.”

This isn’t the first time the EU government has made statements along these lines but, this time, it seems to be tinged with more of a threat. The European Commission has already found the collecting societies guilty of anti-trust violations but did not impose any fines at the time, which was July of 2008.

The biggest problem that the EU government has is that there is no EU-wide licensing system. There are different systems in most countries, 12 overall, and artists are typically bound to the organization that serves their particular nation. This is one of the reasons why Apple does not provide an iTunes store EU-wide.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

Want to Reuse or Republish this Content?

If you want to feature this article in your site, classroom or elsewhere, just let us know! We usually grant permission within 24 hours.

Click Here to Get Permission for Free