The Right to Copyright?: Mp3 Blogs and the Rise of the Online Taste-Makers
12 Pages Posted: 25 May 2010
Date Written: May 25, 2010
Abstract
On Thursday, February 11, 2010, Internet users the world over – keen musicophiles and other – woke to a dire new reality. Many of the World Wide Web’s favourite music blogs (otherwise known as mp3 blogs, for the format of music files they make available for download) had been slain by their seemingly benevolent guardian, Google, under Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) orders from the US Copyright Office. The Act, which entered into force in 1998, effectively criminalizes the production and dissemination of services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works. Essentially, those blogs terminated by Google were seen by DMCA enforcers to have ignored myriad take-down orders and thus breached digital rights management law one too many times to continue operating. Google (already in copyright hot water over Viacom v YouTube ) offered condolences to this effect, capping consolatory emails to blog editors with ‘Thank you for understanding, The Blogger Team’. But understanding was the last sentiment on the minds of blog enthusiasts and music aficionados. Quickly branded #Musicblogocide2k10 on Twitter, their anger – vented primarily through social networking sites – was palpable. Mp3 blogs, long the quiet, well-behaving younger sibling to the brash Peer-2-Peer networks that were so hammered by legislators in the early 2000s, now found themselves on the receiving end of industry backlash. It was unexpected, confronting and a little scary. But did they deserve it?
Keywords: mp3 blog, copyright, blogging, blogs, legal, blogocide, Google, DMCA, RIAA, Dangermouse, Lessig, Keen
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