Category: Music

MUSO piracy report spots some new global trends

MUSO piracy report spots some new global trends

by | Jul 27, 2016 | , , , | 0

A report in today’s Torrent Freak noted that content protection firm (anti-piracy) firm Muso recently released its annual Global Piracy Insights Report for 2016 so I was prompted to take a look to see what what’s new on the piracy landscape.  According to the report there’s been a, “massive shift towards direct downloads for music content – growing by 31% in 2015”  In addition the report found that “28% of all visits to piracy sites in 2015 were through mobile devises, up 8% during the year.”

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First Look, Facebook’s New Rights Manager Tools

First Look, Facebook’s New Rights Manager Tools

by | Jul 21, 2016 | , , , , , | 0

Facebook finally joins YouTube in offering anti-piracy content detection tools

Facebook has been promising for some time to introduce tools that would allow rights holders to automatically detect and remove pirated content from its pages.

The company has endured a lot of bad publicity around the freebooting of viral YouTube videos on its pages, but Facebook’s also long been a place where pirated movies and music found a cozy habitat.  That is–until now. I’ve recently begun to utilize this tool to manage Facebook DMCA takedowns and wanted to share my first impressions, but first a bit of background.

First of all, I’m thrilled that Facebook, with all its resources, has finally begun to take copyright infringement seriously.  In introducing the new tool last month the Facebook development team explained why the company had finally stepped up:

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In supporting Aurous, EFF dismisses musicians’ right to earn a living

In supporting Aurous, EFF dismisses musicians’ right to earn a living

by | Oct 14, 2015 | , , , , | 0

EFF comes to new music piracy app’s defense

By now many have heard the news that a much-anticipated “Popcorn Time” for music launched this week.  Dubbed “Aurous,” the new app goads users into downloading the app with the catchline,  “Enjoy music how you want to for free.”  Unfortunately, as we all know, music is not free to create, nor should it be free to consume.

Andrew Sampson, developer of Aurous, claims his app is legal and compares its functionality to that of Google’s search engine.  Of course we all know what Google’s record has been when it comes to linking to pirated content.  Sampson told Billboard:

We’re pulling content from sources that are licensed. From a legal standpoint, what we’re doing is okay. All files are streamed from legitimate sources — we don’t host anything. We only share cached results over peer-to-peer…

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Counterpoints to Steven Johnson’s NY Times Magazine piece — “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t”

Counterpoints to Steven Johnson’s NY Times Magazine piece — “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t”

by | Aug 25, 2015 | , , , | 0

No, actually everything’s not hunky-dory in the creative universe

The creative community has been buzzing this past week in response to the NY Times Sunday Magazine piece by Stephen Johnson, “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t.”  Not surprisingly, feedback in the Times comments section was decidedly negative.  As the week’s progressed we’ve also seen a number of thoughtful responses in commentaries published across the web.  Some of the criticism, notably that found in a blog post, The Data Journalism That Wasn’t by the Future of Music Coalition’s Kevin Erickson, took Johnson to task for his questionable analysis:

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