The asshats at ASCAP are now making waves that ringtones are derivative works of commercial art and therefore due an payable. Why this is a scam after the jump –

Internet watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation has hit out at a US music royalties collector, accusing it of making “outlandish copyright claims” about mobile phone ringtones.

The American Society of Composer, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) filed a lawsuit against telecoms giant AT&T, in which it told a federal court that ringtones fell under the public perfomance Copyright Act.

ASCAP collects royalties and licences on behalf of 350,000 members in the US.

In effect, the organisation is gunning for additional payments from mobile firms, and if they don’t cough up the royalties ASCAP could claim copyright infringement against mobile users, according to the EFF.

The lobby group responded by filing an amicus brief* for the case earlier this week in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The brief, which was also joined by the Center for Democracy and Technology and Public Knowledge, urged the federal court to reject what the EFF described as “bogus copyright claims… that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardise consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation”.

Here’s the clue this is a con job. The threat that ASCAP is throwing around is that they will go after the carriers customers. BUT, they won’t if the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint pay up for them. This is the typical lawyer trick. Don’t go after the violator, go after the peripheral player in the affair that possess deep pockets. Always go after the deep pockets is the lawyers choice. That is the tip off this is a legal scam.

Linky.

In my small circle of acquaintances, most are tech workers and most are struggling. I’ve heard of taking third world pay rates. With more western workers accepting less, it’s also impacting the outsourcing market. Data showing up today affirms that tech has taken a major hit, not just here but world wide.

Tom Silver, senior vice president of Dice.com, told us this morning that Dice.com is reporting a 44% year-over-year drop in job listings for the month of June. May’s year-over-year decline hovered around 45%. And Silver also points to a rise in the Department of Labor’s unemployment rate for the “Computer and Mathematics sector,” (the area best associated with the tech sector). June’s unemployment rate for the tech sector almost tripled year-over year, from 1.9% in June of 2008, to 5.4% in June of 2009. While Silver says that the tech job market is certainly better than during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the number of job opportunities have remained stagnant over the course of the past few months. (Tech Crunch)

According to the Times of India, the big outsourcing firms are marking down their bills by 35 to 40 per cent.

Apparently it is now possible to hire an IT specialist in India for about $16 per hour, which analysts say is the lowest rate for human labour since Kunta Kinte was imported into the Southern US to pick cotton.

Siddhartha Pai, MD, at the India offices of TPI told the Times that such rates will continue at least until the first quarter next year. (The Inquirer)

This could mean we’re in for an even bumpier road ahead. It also means what the politicians have been doing isn’t working. Maybe they should stop meddling for a while.

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We living in strange times. In our new Third Pipe world small and decentralized is the rule. Information moves freely and big is on life support demanding a tribute and a toll on its motion. Unfortunately big won’t go away without a fight. Big has an ally in government, and laws are being made to protect big even though, it has become antiquated and inefficient. It can even be argued that the forces of  big won the last round of elections for federal offices. For the last several months, we’ve seen government getting bigger at an unsustainable rate, spending unthinkable sums of money to extend the lives of equally big and unsustainable enterprises.  We’ve also seen big extending it’s reach into our lives hoping to control us, because it’s the only way that it can remain big in this new world. One of the biggest enemies of big is free. Big creates nothing. Big has gotten big and rich from distribution.  Now that distribution is largely free, big is in trouble.

There’s plenty of benefit to giving things away in a business. In fact, many businesses are already giving away or losing money on some products, just to have a chance to sell something else. There are also plenty of us who freely contribute what we produce into the commons,  supported by individuals that value our work. Chris Anderson, best know for editing Wired and popularizing the concept of the long tail recently released a new book called Free, the future of a radical price in which he contends that the value of most intellectual property is in a race to zero.

“Free” is essentially an extended elaboration of Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that “information wants to be free.” The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” Anderson does not consider this a passing trend. Rather, he seems to think of it as an iron law: “In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win.” To musicians who believe that their music is being pirated, Anderson is blunt. They should stop complaining, and capitalize on the added exposure that piracy provides by making money through touring, merchandise sales, and “yes, the sale of some of [their] music to people who still want CDs or prefer to buy their music online.” To the Dallas Morning News, he would say the same thing. Newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business. “Out of the bloodbath will come a new role for professional journalists,” (The New Yorker)

The lawyers at the RIAA are having a field day with seemingly any business the could enable the sharing of files. I have no doubt that plenty of illicit files are shared on the Usenet. It’s also true that most burglar’s access their victims via public streets.  No one is suggesting we should rip up the streets to stop burglaries. For now, the low hanging fruit for litigation seems to be enterprises who were foolish enough to advertise that illicit files are shared on their systems: IE Pirate Bay and now Usenet.com.

In a decision that hands the RIAA an overwhelming victory, U.S. District Judge Harold Baer of the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main theories: that Usenet.com is guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. In addition, and perhaps most important for future cases, Baer said that Usenet.com can’t claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision. That ruling says companies can’t be held liable for contributory infringement if the device they create is “capable of significant non-infringing uses.” (Cnet)

As we have mentioned in earlier posts, there is no  major US ISP that offers usenet service with their access accounts - from fear of lawsuit. As long as the lawyering sticks to those who openly invite using thier services to break the law, we’re OK. Unfortunately, I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. This will certainly send a chillng effect through the industry, and we can expect smaller usenet providers who have done nothing wrong to close up shop even if the RIAA lawyers don’t attack them next. Actually, with it’s lawyers working the current laws that were authored by big media, it’s not a question of if but when.

Update. Now Hawaii is in play as well. Looks like there is a whole series of States wanting to play this game. Does Amazon have the guts to keep cutting? I hope they do. –

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has informed its marketing affiliates in Hawaii and Rhode Island that their business relationship with the online firm has been ended. Amazon has been dropping its affiliates in states that approve the collection of sales taxes for online transactions.

It is a massive game of chicken. The only people getting hurt are the citizens affiliates in these States. Thanks Legislators. You are screwing your own citizens and not gathering any taxes.

Linky.

In 2001 the combination of an over invested stock market combined with a terror attack on American soil caused the greatest IT spending crash in the industry’s short history.  The need to cut costs made the industry more global and the US centric spending never fully recovered.

New data ranks the current world IT spending shrink as worse than what we suffered in 2001.

Based on current economic conditions and the word that Forrester is getting from the IT departments, Forrester is now saying that global IT spending for hardware, software, and services by companies and governments will drop by 10.6 percent to $1.53 trillion. In 2008, Forrester reckons that IT spending rose by 8 per cent to just over $1.7 trillion globally, and this year was slated to be bad, but not as bad as the IT budget downdraft in the wake of the dot-com, Y2K, and ERP booms in 2001 and 2002, when IT spending fell 6 per cent in both years. (The Register)

While most Americans suffering from the hard times cut their expenses and take second jobs, the insatiable appetite of pols grows. One possible benefit from the recession is it forces most of individuals and business to re-evaluate spending and priorities. That makes for a leaner and more efficient household or company as things improve. Politicians seem to be incapable of cutting anything and are too quick to blame that sales tax boogyman, the Internet. First it was North Carolina, next it’s Rhode Island. At issue are sales that were not shipped from either state, nor delivered there in most cases. In both cases, the states are now to lose more than they could have possible gained, because Amazon has pulled the plug on affiliates operating from both of those states. It’s time for state governments to get efficient, and maybe help get some bigger pipes built if they want to improve thier lagging revenues. Killing a small income stream for bloggers who are unfortunate enough to live in their states helps no one.

Amazon.com Inc. cut ties today with its business affiliates in Rhode Island to protest a provision in the draft state budget that would force the company to collect sales tax, Providence Business News has confirmed.

Rhode Island is now the second state where affiliates in the program, known as Amazon Associates, have been cut off over the sales tax issue. Earlier this month the Seattle-based online retailer also closed its affiliates’ accounts in North Carolina. (Providence Business News)

It has been announced that Pirate Bay, the audio/video/mp3/ogg/flac source site for things not paid for has itself been sold. Why a sucker? Well I will get to that after the jump –

The Pirate Bay has agreed to be sold for $7.7 million, a deal with a Swedish software maker that would ultimately turn the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker into a legitimate player.

The move by Global Gaming Factory X AB comes nearly three months after the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement, and face a year each in prison pending appeals in addition to a $3.6 million fine.

While the site is to discontinue pointing the way to free movies, music, games and software, Global Gaming Factory thinks it can turn The Pirate Bay into a money-making venture.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” Hans Pandeya, Global Gaming’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Eh, Hans, you are the sucker.

This is not an issue about Pirate Bay going legit. I hope they do, I also hope they are successful at it. For if they are, they will be positioned to offer deep discounts on media, if the sources get a clue. If I could get a copy of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ legit for $2.99 vs $19.95 off the storefront I would do so.

But that is not Pirate Bay’s draw. Bay’s draw was something for nothing. That and the ‘Tee Hee….’ mindset of ripping off The Man. I dare not call it counter-culture. Not quite that but almost. When the chic is off the rose then so goes the audience. That happened to Napster to a certain extent. The other fact is it is too easy to set up another site like it in Pakistan and have free competition vs paid service. Its the mindset in play here.

Possibly Pirate Bay will need to be renamed to Rum’s Cay and Media Emporium when the dust settles.

Linky.

OK this isn’t big news, but it does introduce some interesting possibilities. As part owner of the Clear service build that began as a partnership between Clearwire and Sprint, Comcast could add quite a bit of muscle to the marketing push for the new service.It’s beginning to look like a service that will be sold under many brands. One service with many brands, outlets and potentially different service levels is something we haven;t seen before in the wireless or broadband space

The so-called fourth-generation (4G) wireless service, is the first execution of a partnership between Comcast, Clearwire Corp and other companies that use the emerging WiMax high-speed mobile technology.

Many consumers already update their blogs and watch videos using their mobile phones. Cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable Inc do not want to become irrelevant by restricting subscriber access to the home.

The new service, called “Comcast High-Speed 2go,” is expected to deliver data to laptops, netbooks and other devices over a wireless network at faster speeds than has been commonly available to date.

Comcast said it will offer download speeds of up to 4 megabits per second. Existing 3G wireless networks typically offer download speeds between 1 and 1.5 megabits a second. (Reuters)