Who Is Your Lawyer? » Internet

Grooveshark and the Copyright Pirates

Robert Scott Lawrence — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:53:57 +0000

Just before the closing bell on Friday, Universal filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Grooveshark’s parent company, Escape Media Group, in New York district court alleging that the company’s employees had illegally uploaded as many as 100,000 songs to the Grooveshark playlist. Though the complaint is not yet available on the court’s website, the allegations bandied about in the press paint a damning picture of the company’s business practices. These new allegations follow hard on the heels of last month’s comments by an anonymous tipster who claimed to be a current Grooveshark employee. According to the tipster: “We are assigned a predetermined amount of weekly uploads to the system and get a small extra bonus if we manage to go above that (not easy). The assignments are assumed as direct order for the top to the bottom, we don’t just volunteer to “enhance” the Grooveshark database … Are the above legal or ethical? Of course not . . . .”

A number of reports quote the complaint as alleging that Grooveshark’s executive officers not only directed the illegal uploading, but participated in the wrongdoing themselves, going so far as to claim that CEO Samuel Tarantino personally uploaded at least 1,791 copyrighted songs to the Grooveshark system, Senior Vice President Paul Geller uploaded 3,453 copyrighted songs to the system, and Vice President Benjamin Westermann-Clark uploaded more than 4,600 illegal tracks. Although, as a general rule, I tend be skeptical about allegations of pervasive wrongdoing in the upper echelons of a company when they are casually bruited about without any accompanying proof, the allegations – if true – do not bode well for Grooveshark’s future. The company has been plagued by similar litigation in the past, which resulted in settlements and licensing agreements with Capitol and Virgin Records (among others), but in recent days the attacks have come with a relentlessness that bodes ill for Grooveshark. Among other setbacks, earlier in the week the anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen (renowned for taking on Pirate Bay) exhorted the Danish courts to have the country’s Internet service providers block Grooveshark in Denmark. While Grooveshark has managed to weather such storms in the past, the efforts now being brought to bear against the company may presage its doom.

Stay tuned for further news and updates.

Update 11/23/2011: Click here for a copy of the just-released Universal v. Grooveshark Complaint. Click here to see the Exhibits to the Universal v. Grooveshark Complaint.

Live Nude Copyrights

Robert Scott Lawrence — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:27:28 +0000

Dear readers, fans, intellectual property aficionados, and assorted paparazzi,

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve fallen down on the job. In strict counterpoint to Future Tom and his almost mythological daily posting, my production has withered as my workload has increased. The new move, the new job, the new commute, the new hairstyle — they all conspired to throw me off my game. Instead of posting jocular commentary about the insanity of the virtual world and the plebeian nearsightedness of the PTO, I have been applying myself at work, Hemingway-style, engaged in industry, high finance, and the tedium of document review. My lighthearted moments appear at increasingly longer ends of the sine wave, and tend to strike me unawares about 11:00 at night, when I climb into my IP-laden Tesla roadster and silently zip home on the toll roads to the Elysian hunting camp in which I now reside.

I post here in an almost-but-not-quite embarrassed fashion to explain to you that with respect to my blog — just as with my languishing marathon training — I have adopted a new resolve. I vow to post more frequently and regain the vigor of my misspent youth. If you thought I was amusing before, prepare yourself for an entirely new level of amusement, Rabelaisian in scope, Machiavellian in design, Neapolitan in choice of pastry.

And when, you ask, will this new romance commence?

Soon. Very soon. Perhaps as soon as the day after yesterday.

If you misplaced or forgot to bookmark my URL, please subscribe to my feed now. For those of you who hate to subscribe to things but still have sufficient neurological juice left in your big big brains to remember short phrases, just open up your browser and type “Who Is Your Lawyer” in one of its myriad forms (e.g., Who Is Your Lawyer, whoisyourlawyer, whois your lawyer, whoisyour lawyer, or even “who’s your lawyer” or “whos your lawyer“). Eventually, you will find your way to my site, as all variations of Who Is Your Lawyer? lead to me.

Be forewarned that on occasion these latter variations of my name will attempt to waylay the distractible reader with intriguing articles about the now-defunct series Rex Is Not Your Lawyer. As much as I hate to say it, that is not my series nor my site, as I am not David Tennant (however much I appreciate his work in Dr. Who).

Tweet, Twit, What?

Robert Scott Lawrence — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:24:54 +0000

Superstar: Is this thing on? So, yeah, like I was saying, I listen to this song on YouTube somebody sent me, like it, and hit the “share” button, and then the tune goes out to my 20 million Facebook followers and my 29 million Twitter followers, and then the artist gets a record deal with Sony or Geffen’s new company or somebody big, and they send me an email thanking me for the shout out and FedEx me a couple tickets to their show at the Hollywood Bowl.

Me: Pretty cool.

SS: I felt like Oprah doing the whole ‘Book Club’ rhumba or something.

Me: Yeah, but you’re skinnier.

SS: That’s true. But then I had this idea, see? I was dating this hot young singer, and she cut this smokin’ new single and I thought, you know, if the Beaver could be an overnight sensation with a gazillion preteens running barefoot after his limo breaking through barricades just to be next to a kid whose voice hasn’t even broken yet then what would happen if I got a few friends to tweet out her new song along with me?

Me: I thought you were too famous to have friends.

SS: That’s funny. So I rounded up all the Kardashians, Kobe, Charlie Sheen, that Claudio Whatshisname from Barcelona, and together we had at least 50 million fans, and we pre-tweeted . . .

Me: Is that a word?

SS: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we pre-tweeted that we were going to tweet this song the night after, and then Gaga said she’d tweet it too if we told her who it was, and then Sting said he’d tweet it to Elvis Costello who tweeted it to Amy Mann and somehow Sean Penn got involved and then Clooney and Pitt got sucked in along with Angelina Jolie and Gwen Paltrow said she wanted to sing it – and we said “No” – and then we had like 111 million people waiting for this thing so we decided we’d just do it live. I had this little handheld digital recorder and I went over to my girl’s house and said “Hey, baby, could you sing me that new single?” and she said “Sure.”

Me: So she sang it right there barefoot in the living room and didn’t know it was going out to 100 million people?

SS: Absolutely.

Me: She had no idea?

SS: Right. Isn’t that totally epic?

Me: Totally. Isn’t she suing you for 100 million dollars now? For copyright infringement and invasion of privacy?

SS: Yeah.

Me: Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. That’s definitely the most expensive tweet in history.

Marketing Madness

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:05:53 +0000

Turn on your television and, if you are one of the unfortunates who forgot to TiVo your favorite shows, you will be subjected to the most aggressive advertising in the history of mankind. Not only will you be bombarded with the passive advertising we are all subjected to by covert product placement in the context of the story itself (“Look, they’re going to Tiffany’s to buy a wedding ring. How cute!”), but you will be blasted into your recliner by a cascading variety of ads designed around the predicted audience for the show you’re watching.

Like golf? Well guess what kind of commercials you are going to see? Ads from investment banks who want to manage your money, ads from Rolex, ads from Jaguar, and ads from the competing triumvirate of drugs pitched to successful captains of industry in their waning years – Viagra, Lipitor, and Levitra.

Collectively, the message espoused by the ad industry could not be cruder, but we’re so used to getting pounded on the head by the capitalism stick that we think it’s perfectly normal for ad companies to unceasingly pitch these products. The Platonic ideal of the man who watches The Masters is a 48-year old who vacations in Aruba and Vail, has four watches collectively valued at $62,000, drives three cars (sports car, family car, plus a Range Rover for the wife’s trips to Neiman’s), sports a 2-handicap, enjoys handmade shoes, whiskey, and Havanas, is casually athletic without really trying, knows the difference between starboard and port and can tack into the wind, and prefers Kiton suits over Brioni every day. In the mind of the average creative director this hypothetical viewer is someone who closely resembles an aging James Bond, and who wants to retain his competitive edge as the puling youngsters try to push him out the door or off the cliff. Thus big pharma hits us with the blunt end of the bully stick, urging this idealized consumer to get regular blood work, take a magical cholesterol pill, and to make sure he remains Alpha in the eyes of his woman by being ready at a moment’s notice to perform après ski sexual acrobatics.

I admit that I am generally anesthetized to this sort of marketing, but lately it has seemed to me that part of the reason I am so comfortable with this apparent collaboration between the viewer and the advertiser is that I have been sucked into the whirlpool of consumer desire along with everyone else, and that all my worldly needs have been tidily calculated by the marketing gurus who record my every internet purchase, ISP query, and visited URL. The concept of personal advertising to a known viewer at a known address is, frankly, already possible. Part of me wonders if I went across the street and turned on my neighbor Steve’s television whether his channel 1641 would show entirely different ads.

At the utmost end of my paranoia I wonder what exactly it is that these companies are creating. A new, more credulous type of human? An even more materialistic version of modern man, who thinks all his woes can be cured with one Prozac, one Lipitor, one Viagra, and a communion wafer washed down with a nice Chianti on the flight to Mazatlan? Clearly, no one has thought out the implications of advertising and television as the primary forces that shape society. School means nothing compared to what advertising and television teach us. Every life lesson laboriously parsed for you by the frumpy homeroom teacher in 3^rd grade will be undone by the 6 hours of daily sitcoms viewed by the average American child. The 2,000 years of knowledge imparted by your philosophy degree simply dissolves in the insidious glow of the TV screen. It’s “Goodbye, Marcus Aurelius” and “Hello, Spartacus.”

If you wonder why corporations fight like angry junkyard dogs over the most trivial of intellectual property rights, and why they spend years and millions on name brands and marketing, wonder no more. They do it so that they can control you. Work for IBM, buy Microsoft, invest in Pfizer, take Advil, drink Coke, do it for Nike, watch House, wear Prada, eat at Hell’s Kitchen, wake up in Paradise Island. Everything you can name, you can own. So we are named as passive nonentitites — consumers — and owned by the corporations who spin us fantasies and feed us soma.

If you don’t believe me, go watch How TV Ruined Your Life and let me know if it enlightens you. Of course, that’s a TV show too, so caveat emptor, Roman.

Your Second Life Is Virtually Here

Robert Scott Lawrence — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 02:37:08 +0000

In an age where there is never enough time for the new-new thing (nor, sadly, even enough time to read the New New Thing), millions of people who are perfectly happy with their ordinary, everyday lives as teachers, poets and big band leaders are somehow finding the time to try on what it’s like to be someone else. Didn’t get into med school and want to experience the drama and pressure of a ten-hour operation? Now you can be a brain surgeon, ophthalmologist and general practitioner all rolled into one. Can’t run a 5 minute mile to pass the fire fighter’s exam? Now you can save children from burning buildings without fear of blowback, collapsing floors, or dying from smoke inhalation. Want to effortlessly be taller, stronger, better looking, and better paid (e.g., Fabio) — while traveling the globe making friends and drinking mojitos? Now, you can be all these things with the click of a mouse, courtesy of Second Life.

And not only can you be what you want to be, you can buy what you want to buy. A multitude of businesses have set up shop within virtual worlds to sell in-game versions of their products, including, by way of example, Nike, Dell, American Apparel, Coca Cola, Reebok, and Toyota. A virtual Scion (the automobile) costs about 350 Linden dollars in Second Life, which at today’s exchange rate equates to $1. At Reebok stores in Second Life, you can buy a new pair of tennies for your avatar and then click through to the real world and have the identical sneakers delivered to your home in Neverland, Kansas the next day.

How do you find such virtual goodies, pray tell? Oh, they’re advertised. Really. Just like in real life. In fact, companies as diverse as Adidas, Sun, and the NBA have purchased virtual headquarters in Second Life from which to promote their intangible goods. Coca-Cola owns a virtual concert hall bearing its name (“Coca-Cola Pavilion”), Wells Fargo bought its own virtual island with TARP money, and Gibson Guitar runs an island where it hands out free guitars. In a realm where you can literally create an island out of nothing, owning your own genetically-enhanced land of milk and honey is no longer a dream, but a (virtual) reality. You can even grow money trees in your orchard, which will thoroughly confuse your pre-teens about the nature of finance.

Some of the recent highlights of marketing in the virtual world are intensely silly, though no sillier than one might expect when marketing executives try to capitalize on something they don’t quite understand. Thus, variously, MTV offered free virtual replicas of celebrity accessories and fashion items to encourage people to watch the 2010 MTV Video Awards show; H&M showcased its new denim collection and offered online discounts to purchase the jeans at your local mall; and Colgate has reps handing out free software coupons at metro kiosks which will — if uploaded — brighten your avatar’s smile into Sinatra-like brilliance.

Other items of interest: Coca-Cola billboards litter the virtual highways, as Coke apparently thinks the world needs to be reminded of its existence. Herman Miller ran a “Get Real” campaign offering to replace knock-off Aeron chairs that users had purchased (for their virtual internet startups) with official virtual Aeron chairs. If this sounds as odd to you as it did to me, then realize that counterfeiters have invaded Second Life, and are hawking fake Rolexes and Coach bags on every street corner as we speak. (“Hey, buddy, come take a look at this Bose sound system. It fell off of a truck *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*”).

I would love to expound further upon the odd factoids of Second Life, but for now I leave you with one final oddity: the USPTO has granted a trademark registration to the avatar of a woman who uses it as her alter-ego in Second Life to sell custom-built structures, including, inter alia, islands. That’s right, you heard it. The USPTO has trademarked a . . . real estate broker!

And you thought trademarks had to be unique.

China Hits Cafes With Copyright Fee

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:44:34 +0000

In an attempt to rebut allegations that it allows copyright thieves to roam unmonitored throughout Beijing and the great steppes, China has announced that it will impose a copyright fee on internet cafes which allow customers to download and watch movies while enjoying their lattes. How China intends to monitor internet usage at the 140,000 registered cafes has not yet been revealed, but it should not be an insurmountable task for a country with over a billion people seeking work, and whose attitude toward individual privacy is more draconian than democratic. For further information, see the article on the PI Newswire.

Factoids About the Google Books Settlement

Robert Scott Lawrence — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:12:52 +0000

For those of you who are confused about what Google actually hopes to accomplish by digitizing more than 12 million books, and what the implications are for copyright holders, the Open Book Alliance has published a very interesting analysis of the proposed Google Books Settlement, which attempts to parse rhetoric from reality. The article can be found here.

Who Is Your Lawyer? » Internet

Grooveshark and the Copyright Pirates

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Live Nude Copyrights

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Tweet, Twit, What?

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Marketing Madness

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Your Second Life Is Virtually Here

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China Hits Cafes With Copyright Fee

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