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Creator haters at the LSE

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“one last fag, then bop, bop, bop”

– Wolfie Smith

London School of Economics I saw one of the most disturbing of all. If you thought people don’t behave in real life like they do online, think again. Here were all the most unpleasant aspects of online behaviour – ignorance, rudeness, groupthink, and a general sneering moral superiority – but made flesh. By the end, it had degenerated into farce. So what was it all about?

The event was billed as “Music, fans and online copyright”, and hosted in co-operation with the British Berkman clone, the Oxford Internet Institute.

Music and copyright are subjects that everyone has a stake in. But the speakers had been hand-picked by a fanatical anti-copyright Jacobin, Ian Brown. Brown drew from a narrow, ideologically homogenous group of friends. That didn’t make for an enlightening debate, but it made for a good lynching party – and the afternoon would culminate in a ritual lynching, with Mr John Kennedy of IFPI lined up for the noose.

With a selection like this, unpleasantness was guaranteed.

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US students, alumni to get legal P2P

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US colleges and their alumni may be offered the right to P2P file-sharing under one of the most radical copyright reforms in a hundred years, The Register has learned.

The amnesty would be part of a “covenant not to sue”, covered by a collective licence that offers the right to exchange major label repertory over a participating college’s campus network. Rights holders would be compensated from a pot of money drawn from students’ tuition fees.

Today, many US universities participate in a compulsory Napster or Rhapsody program; these only offer time-limited DRM-encumbered songs, though, and students are still liable for prosecution by the RIAA or its biggest members. Unexpectedly, the deal would extend outside the campus network to college alumni, too.

However, the proposals, which are still at the planning stage, have already drawn concern from publishers and smaller labels. Digital deals, and specifically collective licensing deals proposed by major labels typically offer songwriters little or no compensation, and leave the burgeoning independent sector as an afterthought.

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Nathan Barleys mourn Great Lost Quango

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Soho’s Nathan Barleys were in mourning yesterday after Ofcom chief Ed Richards abandoned his shape-shifting flagship, the “Public Service Publisher” quango. Richards said in a speech to the Royal Television Society on Tuesday night that the “the PSP as a concept has served its purpose and we can move on to the relevant questions for … Read more

DAB: A very British failure

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Emergency talks to save digital radio are taking place in Manchester today, the FT reports. Unloved, unviable, and often unlistenable, DAB is a technology the public clearly doesn’t want; so it comes as no surprise to learn that coercion will be used to persuading the public to get on board. With DAB, we’re expected to … Read more

Trivia crisis: Wikipedia’s bogus Professor resigns

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The essential reference?

After pressure over the weekend from Wikipedia’s Il Duce Jimmy Wales, the encyclopedia’s most illustrious fake professor Ryan Jordan has resigned his post at Wikia Inc.

An assiduous editor with the nickname “Essjay”, the 24-year old Jordan passed himself off as an older and more mature character: a Professor of Theology with two PhDs – these impressive credentials even winning him fame in a New Yorker feature. The deception did little to stop Jordan’s meteoric ascent. Wales appointed Jordan to “ArbCom”, Wikpedia’s Supreme Court, and even found him a position at his own commercial venture, Wikia Inc.

The deception was initially unearthed by Daniel Brandt in January, and has been simmering since early February, when Wikipedians themselves put two and two together: the Essjay that Wales had blessed couldn’t be the character that Essjay claimed to be. It breezed into public view last week, with a short disclaimer on the New Yorker‘s website.

Wales initially said he was happy with Jordan’s deception, but changed his mind over the weekend, inviting Jordan to resign his positions of responsibility on Wikipedia. The 24-year quit Wikia Inc. yesterday.

(We don’t know if Jordan detached himself from the project completely, however – one blogger advised him to rejoin using a different pseudonym, and, presumably, a new fictional identity. What will it be this time?)

The incident raises more questions than it answers, as neither Wales, Jordan, nor the editors at the New Yorker appears to show a shred of regret for their behavior. And this is what turns a dull story about the procedures of a tediously procedural website into a kind of modern morality play.

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An interview with Feargal Sharkey

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Feargal Sharkey needs little introduction. A chart-topper in his own right, and as the lead singer of one of the greatest pop groups of all time, The Undertones, he subsequently crossed into regulatory and policy work – constantly agitating for musicians, songwriters and performers. At the start of the month he joined British Music Rights, … Read more

Why you don’t need TV news to tell you you’re in an earthquake

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Houses shook across much of Britain as the country experienced its biggest earthquake for thirty years early this morning. Impressively, within ten minutes of the tremors, CSEM (EMSC), the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre, revealed the cause: a 5.4 magnitude quake with an epicentre 10 miles north east of Lincoln, in the East Midlands. (Within an hour, … Read more

Major labels ‘face DoJ antitrust probe’

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Two major labels have been served notice of a fresh antitrust investigation, a music business newsletter reports today. MusicAlly’s daily Bulletin suggests that the as-yet-unlaunched TotalMusic service, currently backed by Universal and Somy BMG, has prompted notices from the US Department of Justice. The report suggests all four major labels have been contacted.

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An interview with Martin Mills

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It’s the conventional wisdom amongst some Reg readers that “the evil record labels” are dying, and deservedly so. But such a simplified view of the world overlooks the contribution of the independent sector – which operates very differently to the Big Four. Independents have a different business model, and have embraced digital networks as an … Read more