Sony pulls a fast one with CC material
p2pnet news view P2P:- A few days ago, Jon posted “694,000 illegal downloads as you read this“, discussing “Did You Know?“, a video project by noted educators and bloggers Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Jeff Bronman.
Like me, I’m sure most who viewed this video found it fairly well-packed with eye-opening facts, most of which reflected the exponential growth of technology and its use in general.
However, at least one slide in the video contained something we all know shouldn’t have been in a “factual” presentation.
Toward the end of the 5-minute video, we’re “informed” that by that point in the presentation, “694,000 songs were downloaded ILLEGALLY”!
Illegally? Who says? As far as I know, to date, no law has been anywhere against downloading ANYTHING. So I wondered who, exactly, had the audacity to publish this obvious piece of Recording Industery propaganda as “fact”.
Staying afloat
I’ve been getting pretty wrapped up in all the deliberate misinformation campaigns currently being staged by the content industries, as well as our beloved providers.
It seems everything we hold dear about the Internet itself, our phone services, and our very music and entertainment cultures are in jeopardy, thanks to a handful of greedy corporations who are so desperate to keep their sinking business models afloat they’ll stop at nothing in their attempt to regain control that has already slipped from their fingers.
You may also remember from some of the comments under Jon’s post that I was concerned with pointing out “Did You Know?” was obviously an educational effort by someone NOT affiliated with the Recording Industry.
Hold on to that thought to appreciate the irony of what’s to follow!
“Did You Know?” was put out by three educators, among them, Karl Fisch, a teacher at Arapahow High School in Centennial, Colorado.
No mention of ‘illegal downloads’
Karl also has a blogsite called The Fischbowl and I contacted him for an explanation as to why he’d include a widely-known unsubstantiated claim about “illegal downloads” in an otherwise, factual and rigorously-researched presentation.
Bear in mind I’m not quoting Karl at any point here, but here’s what went down, as I interpret from his words …
Karl did put out the “original” video. His source materials, as well as his text and PowerPoint work, are freely available from his site, and, after contributions and fine tunings by Scott McLeod and Jeff Bronman, the video is licensed for general consumption under Creative Commons (with a “non-commercial, share-alike” attribution).
I downloaded the original material, and there’s absolutely no mention of “illegal downloads” anywhere in it: others have remixed it for their own purposes. And this is where the questionable slide comes in.
Apparently, SONY/BMG inserted the rest of the material! And, it’s the infected Sony version that’s enjoying the circulation via YouTube, etc.
Karl believes Sony did it to encourage discussion and says he believes Sony is already in talks about making changes.
Sony?! Changing its attitudes on “piracy”?
Is this the same Sony that thought it was a good idea to put silent rootkit installers on its music CDs, resulting in countless PCs going down for a reformat?? The same Sony caught creating fictitious movie reviewers whose “raving reviews” of some Sony pictures were seen all over the place (when all the real critics were trashing the same movies)??
The same Sony that was successfully sued for claiming ownership of game features that weren’t invented or patented by it?
Historically, Sony has proven to be “the company that’ll never learn”.
It’s also been just as keen as other recording companies to have copyright expanded far beyond its intended design, keeping everything from hitting the public domain.
Now, it’s taken a project from Creative Commons and remixed it to further a mission which is nothing short of “commercial”.
Commercial value?
A supposedly “factual” video will almost automatically have a “trusting audience”, ready to accept any slide as containing “fact”. And Sony is using that trust to insert deliberate misinformation!
Isn’t there a law against putting unsubstantiated claims or anything that isn’t actually a “certified fact” in a public submission of FACTS? (I don’t know the answer to that one.) And, what about the commercial value Sony is getting from the CC project? Isn’t that a breach of the CC terms? (The terms do state, roughly, “to be used at will for personal, non-commercial use.”)
If they’re really supposed to be using it to “discuss changes” amongst themselves, wouldn’t they be keeping it to themselves? Similarly, why have it on YouTube?
I don’t know how Karl Fisch felt afterward, but I did relate the key points of this issue to him, and how his factual work may now be in the process of being used as a tool to perpetuate a corporate lie that has been told to the public for some time now, as well as to tell him I really liked the unspoiled original.
Devil’s Advocate – p2pnet
March, 2009
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March 17th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Disgusting, makes me want to offer a service of installing custom firmware on PSPs for free…
oops, already did that for all my pals… oh well.
March 17th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Does Sony offer the modified clip under the same CC license as the original?
If not, then they are copyright infringers.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
So, they are wholly against public domain and yet they use commons material mercilessly? Stating the obvious here, but isn’t that a bit hypocritical. Lawmakers beware: when you lobbyists are lobbying for a corporate entity that can’t make up its mind whether to hate or love public domain and public-domain-like, pause carefully before you make a law for them.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
@Jakykong:
Hypocrisy in the media cartels? Say it isn’t so!
/sarcasm
March 17th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“…a corporate entity that canât make up its mind whether to hate or love public domain…”
Not really, they HAVE made up their mind… their *love* the public domain as long as someone else has created it but *hate* to think their work will ever end up in the public domain.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
There used to be a Sony plant in Springfield Oregon. It closed when the tax incentive ran out. During it’s operation I know of 3 times it’s employees payroll checks bounced. Nobody in Lane County trusts Sony anymore.