Posts by Russell Brown
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
You have to poke pretty deep to find any pirate links to Mega as far as I can tell. It really doesn’t seem to be a popular service for such activities.
So it seems. But it keeps being singled out in press statements from local rights owners.
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
I could upload my entire legal iTunes library to Mega and it’s totally legal.
Bear in mind, though, that that would not have been local in the case of music from CDs before the law was changed to allowed format shifting. And that right still does not apply to video and even music rights owners can, in theory, contract out of format-shifting with a shrinkwrap licence.
I’m not sure how all that applies to books, but I wouldn’t be surprised if backing up your e-books was considered an infringement.
-
Mega's Bram van der Kolk has pointed out on Twitter that although Slater is now talking about protecting his "source" for the story, his original post claimed that he found the infringing file by dint of just "a bit of poking around on the internet".
The two claims don't exactly tally.
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Pead are the guys who do the free food, right?
More relevant: they're the longtime PR reps for Recorded Music NZ (formerly Rianz) and, more recently, the Publishers Association of New Zealand.
They don't do lobbying or government relations -- they're mostly consumer PR (they have Samsung and L'Oreal) and event management.
-
Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to tussock,
Now, yes, these subsidised exports produce a lot of high-paid local specialists, some of y’all are here. But there’s no natural market for your investment in time and money, never was, certainly not locally, and that’s the whole problem. More subsidies just distort the market further and drive more capital into this false investment opportunity.
I understand that argument. You could take the view that it’s a more desirable form of subsidy than letting dairy farmers destroy our waterways to keep their competitive advantage in their industry, or selling cheap hydro power to preserve jobs in Southland.
But I would debate that there’s “no natural market” for skilled screen workers. All of them work on local productions, which would not be viable were it not for the presence of their skills and, in many cases, specialised equipment. In the past, that standing workforce has been supported by public money, via public broadcasting and the National Film Unit. The problem now is that the industry is nearing a critical point at which that skill and technical base would disappear.
Also: there’s the fact of the sheer amount of money this industry has been spending locally – literally billions of dollars. That does start to make rather a large hole in the economy if it goes.
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
Storing files in the cloud is not infringing on copyright.
You'll find a few copyright maximalists who'll argue that with you.
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Rob Stowell,
That said: The Luminaries epub was the easiest, fastest and least painful ebook experience- was reading it within ten minutes of wanting it. Yay for VUP and meBooks
Credit where due, etc. Good on them.
-
Speaker: Ed Kuepper: a legend interviewed, in reply to Ken Double,
I loved Ed. That beautifully processed acoustic guitar made him sound like a one man orchestra.
Didn't he just. I thought it underlined what a remarkable guitarist he really is -- the sheer spectrum of sound he wrought from his instrument was amazing.
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Mike Kilpatrick,
The release also said links (plural) had been made available for free download of the book. Not true. No-one had those links apart from the uploader and perhaps Whale Oil.
Slater definitely did obtain the links in some way. They're the basis of his story.
-
Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Samuel Scott,
I’m reading it at the moment, and I kinda wish I had purchased the ebook as I’m travelling a lot this month and it’s just too heavy! I seriously think hardcopy books should come with download codes like vinyl. Wouldn’t that be great for the user? A nice copy for you bookshelf and a copy to read on the plane.
I chatted to Fergus Barrowman a bit about this via Twitter. Some specialist publishers do this, but I gather the market dominance of Amazon et al makes it very difficult to do in many cases.