3 Count: Swift Reversal

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1: Apple Music to pay royalties during free trial: ‘We hear you Taylor Swift’

First off today, Stuart Dredge at The Guardian reports that Apple has reversed course and announced that it will pay royalties to music labels, publishers and others during the three-month free trial of its upcoming Apple Music streaming service.

Apple announced the service, which is meant to be a competitor to both Spotify and Pandora, earlier this month. However, artists quickly challenged the company over its plans to not pay royalties during the three month free trial that it was offering all users. This came to a head this weekend when Taylor Swift penned an open letter saying that Apple’s decision was “shocking” and “disappointing”.

However, in a Tweet Eddie Cue at Apple announced that the company has reversed course and said that they will pay artists, labels and songwriters during the trial. How much remains unclear but it will be a “per stream” royalty rather than a percentage of revenue royalty (which is divided by the streams), which is what streaming companies normally pay.

2: Google Will Begin Unlinking Revenge Porn from the Internet

Next up today, Dave Gershgorn at Popular Science reports that Google announced in a blog post that it will begin complying with requests from victims to remove image of revenge pornography from it search database.

The move follows on the footsteps of Reddit and Twitter, both of which made similar promises to remove or remove links to such content. These policies, including Google’s, include the removal of nude or sexual images/videos posted without the subject’s permission.

While the Google move will not result in the removal of the images from the Web, unless they are hosted on Google-owned sites, they will make the images and videos harder to find, especially for those performing simple searches.

3: It’s Over: Australia’s Site Blocking Anti-Piracy Bill Just Passed The Senate

Finally today, Luke Hopewell at Gizmodo Australia reports that the Australian Senate has passed a controversial anti-piracy bill that paves the way for ISPs to be required to block overseas websites used primarily for the purpose of copyright infringement.

The bill, which was supported by both the Coalition and Labor was opposed by the Greens and independents. It had been previously passed by the House and sailed through the upper chamber without amendments. The Greens attempted to add several amendments to the bill, including providing greater protection for VPNs, but were voted down.

This sends the bill to the Governor General who is expected to sign it into law. (Note: In my previous coverage of this bill I said it would then be going to the Governor General, but it still needed Senate approval. I’m sorry about that error.)

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will 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.

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