Tag: copyright

Data Incumbency

Open-data requirements could make it clearer who is providing a valuable service and who is primarily exploiting information asymmetries between creators and services. They could help identify the genuine rip-offs that thrive on opacity, such as the chronic underpayment of artists or the role of concert organizers in ticket black markets. They could help answer the perennial question of whether streaming payments and other licensing schemes are fair to artists, based not on a notional “value gap” but on who else is getting a cut.

Spinal Tap’s $400M Lawsuit

As Shearer fully appreciates, he and his bandmates may be the perfect plaintiffs for a case like this. Their original deal with Embassy dates from the period before the Buchwald suit motivated studios to find ways to make their contracts more lawsuit-proof, such as adding the mandatory arbitration and confidentiality clauses. The creators may qualify for copyright recapture, giving them even more leverage. And Shearer, at least, has a war chest filled with all that Simpsons money—and is famous enough to get lots of publicity and start shaming the studios right away. They’re not the first to go after Hollywood accounting, but they could be the loudest.

Copyright Protectionism

Dead people tend not to be very creative so I suspect that the retroactive extension of copyright will not spur much innovation from Eames. The point, of course, is not to spur creativity but to protect the rents of the handful of people whose past designs turned out to have lasting value.

europe importing a very bad law.