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Stupid
Metalheads
I’ve
never been too keen on Metallica. I’m not sure I can describe
why, but they’ve always struck me more as wannabe rock stars
than the real thing. And not particularly bright. The Joe
Berliner and Bruce Sinofsky documentary film Some Kind
of Monster only reinforced these feelings, which were
grounded more in pity than dislike. These guys weren’t even
close to intellectually capable of handling what had been
handed to them, and their music was neither original or compelling.
The band made a big stink in 2000 over Napster, suing the
company and a bunch of colleges after Metallica’s music was
discovered available for free online. Heavens! The group’s
blowhard drummer, Lars Ulrich, held a bunch of press conferences
and testified before Congress about his “art” and the evils
of free music. More than anything else, Ulrich’s appearances
were narcissistic and embarrassing. Dude really likes the
sound of his own voice, for reasons that aren’t apparent to
the rest of us.
Eight years later, Metallica’s still taking hits for the Napster
mess it made, and last week it stepped in something again.
The band invited a bunch of music writers and bloggers to
a pre-release listening party for the band’s new album. When
the writers and bloggers did what one would expect them to
do, write about what they’d heard, Metallica representatives
demanded that all the reviews be removed from the Internet.
Huh? I guess the biggest surprise was that all the reviews
were actually taken down, despite the fact that there was
absolutely no legal basis for Metallica’s demand. One online
magazine said that the review was removed to “protect the
writer’s professional standing.” As what? A wuss?
Hit with a fury of bad press (TechDirt ran with the headline
“Metallica Still Doesn’t Get It”), the band first said that
the writers had heard rough mixes of tracks, so that what
they were writing about wasn’t what was going to be released.
Uh, right. That makes a whole lot of sense. When that
excuse didn’t placate anybody, the band issued a statement
on its Web site saying that this was a management-company
screw-up, and that as soon as the band members found out about
this brou-ha-ha they demanded that the reviews be allowed
online and even put up links to the reviews on the Metallica
Web site.
Whatever, guys. Whatever.
Elsewhere, the Associated Press has started chasing down bloggers
who post links to AP stories. In every reported case, the
bloggers have posted nothing more than the headline and a
sentence or two from the news article. Every copyright law
professor in the country is going to tell you that this sort
of thing is fair use, but apparently the Associated Press
has other ideas. In a couple of public statements, AP spokesmen
have blathered about respecting both the importance of bloggers
and of “creators”, have made absurd and flatly wrong statements
about the law of fair use of copyrighted materials, and wrapped
up with hints that bloggers could buy licenses in order to
use AP materials.
The absurdity of all this is that the bloggers drive Internet
traffic to places where the AP and its licensees have the
full articles posted, along with advertisements which presumably
help pay for the content. It’s hard to understand what the
AP is trying to accomplish, other than the kind of shooting-itself-in-the-foot
power play Big Media content owners like to indulge in all
too often. Remember, this is the same company that jumped
ugly in 2000 when some jokesters posted a mash-up of the AP’s
Pulitzer Prize winning Elian Gonzales photo and a Budweiser
“Wassup?” advertisement. After the AP successfully had the
funny little movie taken down from the Web, enraged ’Netizens
flooded the AP with so many e-mails that the company’s mail
server shut down. Shortly thereafter, AP came clean, and sheepishly
admitted that the Elian/Wassup movie was a fair use of its
photograph.
You’d think that AP would learn, but apparently not. If AP
thinks that the dust-up in 2000 was debilitating, wait until
the entire weight of the 2008 blogosphere lands on it. If
you’re gonna be a bully, you’d better be sure that you’re
bigger than whoever you’re picking on. Otherwise you get squished.
And—earth to Associated Press—no one, especially you,
owns the news.
Finally, there’ve been some on-going closed-door negotiations
among a bunch of industrialized countries, including the United
States, trying to create something called the Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement, that the countries want to implement by the
end of the year. Some leaked documents out of the negotiations
indicate that they are seriously considering outlawing all
peer-to-peer services, as well as mandating border searches
of laptops for any infringing stuff. The U.S. trade
representative has always been an industry lapdog on matters
like this, and is likely the staunchest advocate of the worst
aspects of this treaty. EFF.org has got as much info on this
as is available. I’m guessing this will be just another stupid
thing Obama will have to undo when he moves in this coming
January.
Paul
Rapp is an intellectual-property lawyer with offices in Albany
and Housatonic, Mass. He teaches art-and-entertainment law
at Albany Law School, and regularly appears as part of the
Copyright Forum on WAMC’s Vox Pop. Contact info can
be found at www.paul rapp.com. Comments about this article
can be posted at rapponthis .blogspot.com.
—Paul
Rapp
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