“The Power of Pirates; Small Creators Sing the Blues – At the Open Video event, author Matt Mason argued “one of the best ways to grow your business is to give pirates the space to innovate on your ideas.”

“Copying,” he said “is one of the reasons that the fashion industry is so dynamic.” Because three-dimensional clothes cannot be protected, slight modifications by several different designers is what gives rise to a trend.

The key is to make piracy work for you, said Mason, whose book The Pirate’s Dilemma argues that piracy can also be a business opportunity.

For example, he said, a band by the name of Guyz Nite released on video-sharing site YouTube – in response to the release of action movie Die Hard 4.0 – a song that humorously summarised the first three movies. It generated millions of hits before the legal department at 20th Century Fox, which owns the film, had it removed on charges of copyright violation. A few weeks later, Mason said, the marketing department heard about the video, and contacted the band to ask how much they would want to be paid to put the video on YouTube.

“Exceptional thieves” – people who are taking your idea but also adding value to it – are people you “need to compete with and learn from,” said Mason.

Ultimately, “the only way to control your content is to be the best provider of it,” said Eirik Solheim, project manager at Norway’s Public Broadcaster – which provides much of its content free on YouTube and Pirate Bay, where they gain eyes over pirated versions because their releases are higher quality.

“If a record company says you have to drive to the store and buy a record and Pirate Bay tells you that you can just download it at home with one click,” he said, “people take the path of least resistance.”

Further, the current IP system only “benefits 1 percent of artists, and for the other 99 percent it’s a clamp on our freedom of speech,” said Nina Paley, a cartoonist and creator of the animated film Sita Sings The Blues.
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Wow.

Doesn’t this fall in line with the report the other week (think it was Harvard?) about how P2P/downloads stimulates the economy and exposes more choice or the betterment of all (and not just some big media/movie/music business)?

Anyone read German here?
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CDU_Wahlprogrammsentwurf_beinhaltet_3-Strike-Out_Internetsperren%2C_20_Jun_2009

“Draft of the government program of the german conservative party (CDU). Contains plans for adopting graduated response measures (three strikes law).”

When I pass this through online translators I get the following:
“The pdf contains the current program of the CDU to the election to the Bundestag 2009.Es contains among other things the proposal of one ” 3-Strike-Out” Regulation (see line 2607, chapters IV.1) was introduced, similarly like it straight of of France government, and abgeschmettert by the constitutional court. This plans a blockage of the Internet connection, should a participant three times for injuries of interests of copyright admits to become. In the French model the contract is not quit, a user continues to pay here for its connection, gets however no more access on the Internet. This project represents a further aspect of the Internet Crackdowns by the CDU, is in the context from censorship law and externally stored data storage to be understood and proves the interest of the CDU to the penetration of interests of lobby in the Internet.”

Anyone able to properly translate this?

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Also on wikileaks:
Bizarre California cult, Fellowship of Friends, attacks GodLikeProductions.com for reposting WikiLeaks expose, 21 Jun 2009
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Bizarre_California_cult%2C_Fellowship_of_Friends%2C_attacks_GodLikeProductions.com_for_reposting_WikiLeaks_expose%2C_21_Jun_2009