2008-10-03

Copyright news

+ Belgian schools are getting more and more bills from copyright collecting societies. The singing of a simple children song like "Op een klein stationnetje" (In a little station), causes troubles: first there's the copying of the music sheets and texts, then the singing, and eventually the teaching CD, which are all to pay to diferent societies like Sabam, Reprobel, Semu, Simim/Uradex, Auvibel. Now, politicians are asking to make all this more simple in one bill. Read more (Dutch).
+ Flemish libraries offer digital borrowing of music with the 'Digileen' system. One can download from a database of 160.000 tunes, from Keane to Alice Cooper. The 'only' restriction is that this music is DRM protected, and does not work on Mac nor Linux. Read more (Dutch).
+ "Why should a musician who sells one million albums a year be paid so much more than the editor of a national newspaper that sells one billion copies a year?" Tom Whitwell argues that the rock stars of the future will earn less than a Java programmer. Read the whole article.
+ In its latest issue, the magazine Emerce writes about the problems copyright struggles with, the upcoming of Creative Commons, and the uniting of bloggers in a contra-lobby. Read more (Dutch).