Marc Weidenbaum — Despite the Downturn: An Answer Album
I may never get around to listening to this, but the idea is fantastic.
"An article in the May 2010 issue of the magazine The Atlantic critiqued the current generation of young music fans for rampant copyright violation. In a small irony, the illustration used to decorate the article interpolated a detail of a preexisting work that appears to not yet be in the public domain. This notice isn’t intended as a criticism of the illustrator — quite the contrary; the illustration is excellent — but instead of the theoretical foundation of the article, which suggests a clear line between right and wrong where there is, in fact, significant ambiguity. I forwarded Traum’s image, and article it accompanied, to various musicians and asked them if they would record a piece of music that took Traum’s picture literally: use it as a score.”
Balkinization: Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of Glee
"The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned."
This is a very interesting look at the frequency with which this show (that I have never seen) addresses copyright issues without actually addressing copyright issues. And it's dead-on about the potential for a television show or other media of this popularity to effect social change in the realm of copyright perception.
Ars Technica: 750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on piracy
How the two astronomical numbers most often thrown out by the intellectual property lobby are utterly bogus. Interesting: "When someone torrents a $12 album that they would have otherwise purchased, the record industry loses $12, to be sure. But that doesn't mean that $12 has magically vanished from the economy. On the contrary: someone has gotten the value of the album and still has $12 to spend somewhere else."