'Rants & Raves'
Das zumindest lässt die folgende Pressemitteilung erahnen, die mir heute reinkam:
"Eins, zwei, drei, vier", so schallt es auf vielen Truppenübungsplätzen in Europa. Damit Armeeangehörige auch so angenehm wie möglich zu Fuß unterwegs sind, arbeitet derzeit im Auftrag der ARMASUISSE die Professur Bewegungswissenschaft der TU Chemnitz um Professurinhaber Dr. Thomas L. Milani an einem einzigartigen neuen Armeestiefel. Gemeinsam mit Dr. Stephan Odenwald, Juniorprofessor für Sportgerätetechnik, konnte er bereits europaweites Interesse wecken: "Die deutsche und die österreichische Bundeswehr sind in das Projekt eingestiegen. Wir werden auch ihre Schuhe testen und neu entwickeln."
So geht das. Und weil die britischen und amerikanischen Soldaten ihre Stiefel selbst kaufen (denn diejenigen die sie kriegen seien crap, wie ich den Fortgang der Meldung paraphrasiere), ist der Schritt zur Weltherrschaft nicht mehr weit — wenigstens was Militärstiefel betrifft.
Die volle Meldung hier
Google will pay $125 million in a settlement with the Authors GUild and AAP (the american publishers’ association), which still must be approved by a federal judge before it takes effect. $34.5 million will be used to set up an independent Book Rights Registry. Authors whose books have been scanned in Google’s book project might get tiny a share of the money “at least $60, depending on how many rightsholders file claims”, as the Authors’ Guild tells on their website.
The settlement will also establish a mechanism of Google selling books to users (individuals and libraries) and sharing the revenues with rights holders.
Paulo Coelho got quite some press exposure after his speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week — which he startet with a reference to the heretic Giordano Bruno. Quite purposefully, I think, as he goes along picturing himself as the “pirate Coelho” who is giving his books away for free, on the Internet and (good forbid) via peer-to-peer networks.
But Coelho went even further — he invited his readers to shoot films based on his novel The Witch of Portobello. The results of this competition can be found on his blog. Also, Coelho staged a virtual exhibition for readers sending him their photos of reading Coelho which he used as a backdrop for the Frankfurt Book Fair. There is the author connecting with his readership using the Internet.
So is he the new bad kid on the block or the (re-)inventor of the book in a world 2.0?
This is ‘The Author’s Rights Awareness Campaign’, and our message to the public is: ‘Texts don’t grow on trees. – It is all about authors’ rights. Respect the authors’ position. Get to know their economical situation – also and particularly in the digital era. Become their partners.’ Equally, our message to authors could be: ‘Texts don’t grow on trees. – It is all about your rights: Use your rights for bargaining. Make people your partners in text.’ Eventually it is your, the authors’ choice how you want to use your rights.
Denial comes in many forms, and most recently from academics from TU Berlin. A certain Prof. Erdmann claims to have discovered, that using wind energy would increase the costs of electricity in Germany by more than 0,7 Cent per kWh. Obviously it’s all to do with how you define your system boundaries; and Erdmann does that in favour of the big energy consumers and the highly centralized electricity production industry. He (or the TU Berlin press department) are so busy denying the benefits of wind energy that, in their press release, they fail to spell the weblink to the study properly (http://www.ensys.tu-erlin.de/menue/research/publications/), which I’m happy to correct here: http://www.ensys.tu-berlin.de/menue/research/publications/.
A new organisation, the Featured Artists’ Coalition was launched yesterday (Sunday 5 October 2008) at the music industry’s In The City in Manchester to campaign for the protection of performers’ and musicians’ rights. Formed by some of the best-known names in music — Billy Bragg, Craig David, Iron Maiden, Radiohead, Robbie Williams, Wet Wet Wet to name a few — the Coalition will give artists the voice they need to argue for greater control over their music.
The campaign is all about artists remaining in control of their creative works, rather than giving it away for (almost) nothing to producers, labels and other middle men.
Details on the website of the Featured Artists Coalition, www.featuredartistscoalition.com
According to the Beeb, or more accurately: according to Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, as cited on BBC, writing for the Royals is “a hiding to nothing.”
So do we have to rewrite all these business models based on the idea powerful platforms of performance? Do we have to revert back to the old fashioned royalties idea? Or is writing for the Royals not even more old fashioned, given the post of Poet Laureate has been introduced in 1668, the statute of Ann dating from 1710?
On the official Google blog it is announced today that Google is starting a similar digitization campaign with newspapers. As an example they show the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of July 21, 1969 … Is that now violating the poor news sub-eds author’s rights or an incredibly valuable source for young novelists?
The recent ‘forward-looking’ Intellectual Property Package of the EU has at its core the term extension of copyright. Earlier, the respective policy unit commissioned a study into this very question, which deals with the topic of term extension in detail and, on the basis of a thorough
legal and economic analysis, rejects the main arguments made in favour of an extension (1). However, the EU has chosen not to mention this study in the Explanatory Memorandum. Quite rightly, the copyright experts who carried out the study, remind the EU in an Open Letter, that ‘the Commission’s obscuration of the IViR studies and its failure to confront the critical arguments made therein seem to reveal an intention to mislead the Council and the Parliament, as well as the citizens of the European Union.’
(1) Study carried out by the Institute for Information Law for the European Commission (DG Internal Market). Chapters 1 and 2 describe and examine the existing ‘acquis communautaire’ in the field of copyright and related (neighbouring) rights, with special focus on inconsistencies and unclarities. Chapters 3-6 deal with distinct issues that were identified a priori by the European Commission as meriting special attention: possible extension of the term of protection of phonograms (Chapter 3), possible alignment of the term of protection of co-written musical works (Chapter 4), the problems connected to multiple copyright ownership, including the issue of ‘orphan works’ (Chapter 5), and copyright awareness among consumers (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 provides an overall assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of the fifteen years of harmonisation of copyright and related rights in the EU and dwells on regulatory alternatives: The Recasting of Copyright & Related Rights for the Knowledge Economy
