Mike Masnick at Techdirt… on the “right to play” post:
Oh, and don’t forget, the entire reason why South Korea is suddenly putting in place draconian, self-damaging, protectionist, copyright policies is because the entertainment industry went on a huge lobbying campaign claiming that South Korea was a haven for piracy, and then had the US gov’t include requirements for much more stringent copyright laws in a free trade agreement — despite the fact it was about the opposite of free trade. The entire purpose wasn’t free trade, but protectionism of the US entertainment industry. Soon after that passed, we noted that it would require shutting down any service that permitted unauthorized reproduction… and we’re seeing the impact of that now.
South Korea has been a leader in internet technologies. It had real broadband (both wired and wireless) to nearly every home well before almost every other country. As such, it has a thriving internet industry… but it has also had a thriving entertainment industry made up of execs who embraced the internet. Folks like JY Park, who recognizes that selling music directly is the past, but by embracing that fact, is building a media empire. But, of course, the folks back in Hollywood don’t want to compete and don’t want to change… so they got the US gov’t to force South Korea to put in place these ridiculous copyright laws that help them and harm pretty much everyone else.
Up the road from me in Hollywood, the musicians stand to lose plenty: if all free range MP3s are assumed to be infringing, making music on the internet will be de facto illegal.
Funny extremist commenter over at Techdirt says that Google should be forced both to host and to pay royalties for hosting:
Google shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this sort of thing. The law was put in place for a reason, to make uploaders, and sites holding those uploads, pay suitable penalties to Intellectual Property rightsholders. For Google to avoid the penalties simply by blocking such uploads, means that the rightsholders lose out on payments which are an important part of their livelihood. Don’t they have a right to be reimbursed for their hard, thankless work? To anybody who believes in the morality of Intellectual Property rights, this is simply unacceptable.