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SpinVox carcass laid bare in final accounts
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Andrew Orlowski
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“Dragon’s Den TV star Julie Meyer described SpinVox as “the first major technology success story out of Europe”, but the company’s final accounts show a business running at a huge loss, spending heavily to acquire customers, and with interest payments alone exceeding income.” Read more at The Register……
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Obama plagiarist has a legal posse
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Andrew Orlowski
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Artist Shepard Fairey is facing a Grand Jury probe for falsifying evidence in a copyright case. Fairey was suing Associated Press over the use of an copyright image Fairey had used as the basis for a popular Obama election poster. To the dismay of the Boing Boing crowd, Fairey turned out not to be a…
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Music biz: get a cluestick from online games
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Andrew Orlowski
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An answer to the music industry’s woes slipped into the IFPI Annual Report last week, but its significance went unnoticed. Before I get to it, though, here’s a poser. “We screw the struggling artist, and pay the suit,” Nick Carr mused recently. Carr was examining a contradiction: information has never been less free, it’s…
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Lords mull Hail Mary penances for file-sharers
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Andrew Orlowski
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Lucas is a self-styled libertarian, so he must realise the inherent contradiction of the state acting in this way. The Lords this week discussed new compensation for copyright holders this week – including a voluntary ‘Hail Mary fine’ payable by file sharers, instead of suspension – but nobody noticed. It was late on Wednesday night,…
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Net Neutrality: the Good Guys always were white
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Andrew Orlowski
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Delicious news from the United States, where ‘Net Neutrality’ is again being recast for a new political purpose. The term long since ceased to mean anything – it now means anything you want it to mean. But as a rule of thumb, advocating Neutrality means giving your support to general Goodness on the internets, and…
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The Digital Economy Bill: the story so far
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Andrew Orlowski
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Pelted from all sides by amendments, the Digital Economy Bill continues to plough its way through Parliament. This week, the Lords lined up to have their say, but since there are so many (300) Amendments, they’ll be at it again on Monday. Of course, out of the ten subject areas, the one labelled ‘online copyright…