Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: copyright

  • How the photographers won, while digital rights failed

    How the photographers won, while digital rights failed

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    How did the music business end up with a triumph with the new Digital Economy Act? How did photographers, whose resources were one laptop and some old fashioned persuasion, carry an unlikely and famous victory? How did the digital rights campaigners fail so badly? Back in January, a senior music business figure explained to me…

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  • Kumbaya is not a legal defence

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Maybe photographers have a guardian angel, after all. The Stop 43 campaign to throw out the orphan works clause may be the only part of the vast Digital Economy Bill where activists have achieved their goal – rather than made things worse. With the Tories pledging to drop the clause, it’s unlikely to survive the…

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  • Pirates and the politics of spite

    Pirates and the politics of spite

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    If “digital rights” becomes reduced to gesture politics, only one group can win: the one with the biggest, boldest, daftest gesture A clear winner is emerging from the Digital Economy Bill – and it’s the UK Pirate Party. The penny only really dropped for me yesterday, after the Open Rights Group’s big demonstration at Westminster.…

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  • Google knew YouTube ‘did evil’ – but bought it anyway

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Do no evil? Google execs knew YouTube was in the wrong, but swallowed hard and bought it anyway, emails disclosed to a US court show. In 2006 execs at the Chocolate Factory were aware that the startup was less than wholesome, describing it as a “rogue enabler of content theft” whose “business model is completely…

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  • ‘Thousands’ sign up for legal P2P

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Tens of thousands of students have signed up to pay for a legal P2P music program in US universities, set to start later this year in experimental form. It’s Choruss, the incubator hatched by Jim Griffin – a long-time advocate of licensing P2P sharing on networks. Choruss won’t ultimately be in the retail or service…

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  • Who killed Three Strikes for filesharing?

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Rejoice! “Three strikes and you’re out” is dead in the UK. Music file sharers will no longer face the threat of seeing the household broadband connection severed. The plague that is currently endemic in France won’t be jumping the English Channel. Strangely, some people want to keep it alive. Stranger still – this includes the…

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