'Arts & Culture'
In an otherwise rather lengthy (but interesting and relevant) blog-entry (on statements of ASCAP about CC licensing) Lawrence Lessig makes a good and important point:
“ASCAP historically has played a crucially important role in helping artists get paid for their work. Today, the nonexclusive ASCAP agreement is a model for collecting rights societies internationally. In my view, we will and should always have collecting rights societies to help authors and artists deal with the burden of collecting royalties where they want royalties to be collected. The only question is how public policy can help make sure these societies are competitive and efficient. The US has done a good job in that respect. Other countries, not so good. But nothing in CC’s mission has anything to do with displacing the proper functioning of efficient and well run collecting rights organizations.”
Very well put.
Even the Register reports on the new Swiss copyright regulation.
The wording of the regulation is ambiguous, argues petition author Florian Bösch. Switzerland’s new copyright law has been described as “brutal” by BoingBoing.net and is hotly debated on Slashdot.
The Swiss copyright collecting authority, SUISA, dismisses the claims as groundless and misguided.
ACC announces the immediate closure of the Lemon Tree
“{ACC Resources Management} Committee members agreed unanimously that the venue should be offered the chance to take out a loan from the City Council-administered Aberdeen Business Enterprise Scheme (ABES) – or The Lemon Tree could have its overdraft facility underwritten up to a reasonable new limit by the City Council.Neither option was taken up by The Lemon Tree’s board.”
And the Lemon Tree Website is just a bunch of nested emtpy folders…. 
The Lemon Tree board had good reasons not to take up ACC offers, as comments at the Scotsman website reveal: each of the board members would have to “personally put up a guarantee of £25k from their own pockets” in order to accept that generous offer from Aberdeen City Council…
Same tune, maybe, but on another note: Plans for Aberdeen Arts Centre were rubber-stamped by city councillors yesterday, the P&J reports
Dutch actors and musicians request that the introduction of a copying fee on mp3 players and DVD-recorders takes effect immediately. The Dutch government wants to postpone that extra fee until 2009. Copyright organisation Norma claims through its lawyer that the government’s decision is illegal.
Apart from Norma, the Dutch system consists of over 20 organisations that deal with fees for copyrights and neighbouring rights. Earlier this year, this system has been accused of being inefficient and of wasting money by the association of SMEs in the Netherlands.
Striking screen writers turn to web outlets that, while paying less, give them total control over their content and share a substantial proportion of revenue, up to 50 %, much larger than conventional Hollywood companies; read “Striking Writers Gravitate to Web” by Gary Gentile, AP Business Writer, for Wired News.
