Recently in Copyrights Category

Briefly after writing the German summary of Stephanie Booth's article on piracy, I found a strange item: it was a self-burned CD, it was not labelled, it contained music I had never heard before in my life, and I have no idea how it had come into my possession.

In all likelihood, it is an illegal copy. Its illegalness is based on the sole principle that this copy should never have been made. However, being confronted with this item, I asked myself a few questions before I destroyed the CD:

Ein weiterer Beitrag zum Thema Urheberrecht und Musikindustrie: schon vor mehr als einem Monat hat Stephanie Booth auf ihrem Weblog einen Artikel veröffentlicht, in dem sie versucht, die Mythen rund um Filesharing und Piraterie zu widerlegen: "Pirater n'est pas voler, en sept mythes"

Wie am Titel zu erkennen ist, ist der Artikel leider in französischer Sprache verfasst. Da er einige interessante Ansätze enthält, möchte ich hier die Kernpunkte kurz auf Deutsch zusammenfassen. Zum Schluss gibt es dann noch ein bisschen Senf von mir dazu.

[The] American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) has told a federal court that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law. Therefore, ASCAP argues, phone carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone users' copyright infringement. (Source: EFF.org, via Catalogablog)

Not much of a surprise when you even have to pay royalties for singing "Happy Birthday" (or, for that matter, any copyrighted song) in a public place. As perverse as ASCAP's claim may seem at first, performing music licensed for private use in a public place is technically a copyright infringement.