German music rights group GEMA is known for its strict copyright regime, but sometimes they take things too far. The group recently claimed money from the organizers of a dance event where only Creative Commons music was played. The organizers informed GEMA beforehand about their royalty free status, but the group suspects foul play and demands cash.
US President-Elect Barack Obama is a man with a message, and according to the speeches made during his campaign, that message is ‘Change’. One of those changes has been somewhat of a snub to the creative industries and their lobby groups – the embracing of Creative Commons licensing.
While the British government puts huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to clamp down on file-sharers, it is doing some pirating of its very own. It seems that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in serious breach of copyright, as it is based on a ripped-off Wordpress theme.
Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. Adding fuel to the ‘significant non-infringing use’ argument is their latest partnership, with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo.
It is a bit of an awkward, and perhaps even a suggestive name, but LegalTorrents.com reopens today as a community driven BitTorrent site where users and publishers are able to share Creative Commons licensed content.
Jamendo.com offers over 4000 free music albums, all published under a Creative Commons license. The albums are available in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format, free of DRM of course.
Jamendo just added a great new feature to their site that makes it easier to discover new music from their collection of over 2500 free music albums. It’s like a remix of the Digg Swarm and Pandora, incuding free BitTorrent downloads.
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Peter Sunde Left Quote
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