Offspring and Napster fall in love – again. This time it’s a two-way street. As any good relationship should be.
Elian parody:
From Salon – AP backs down on the Elian/Whassup parody. “…The satirists appear to be winning concessions from a ‘chastened’ AP.”
Parody:
A lot of people linked to the Elian-Whassup parody yesterday. As expected, Wired News has the story today. The story is interesting though: the guy from AP admits that “[we] police our copyright as aggressively as we can, although this is the first time that I can remember us going after a parody site.”
Uh, if you’re claiming copyright infringement, it’s probably not a good idea to be quoted admitting that the infringing item is a parody, which is generally considered to fall under the scope of fair use.
Contradiction:
While Dr Dre and Metallica are both talking about suing Napster, record company people are starting to get it. Wired News reports that the majors are going to offer downloadable music in a big way this summer. Quote: “Although the recording industry has complained that some services that offer downloadable online music violate copyright laws and cut into a label’s profits, company sales actually are up.”
It’s promising in one way, but the article is also pretty depressing, because the contradiction between Metallica/Napster and what the labels are planning to do indicates that the artists are probably going to be squeezed by this whole thing.
Copyright is supposed to encourage
more production and wider distribution of new editorial/creative material, not just help copyright holders to cash in. Declan McCullagh reports that first principles are being lost. From Wired News.
