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Digital Media Winners and Losers of 2006

Posted by Zonk on Sun Dec 24, 2006 06:20 PM
from the there-were-many-of-both dept.
Media The Internet
An anonymous reader writes "MP3 Newswire released its annual list of winners and losers in digital media for 2006. Winners include Azureus, the Pirate Bay, and YouTube. The losers list includes Streamcast, Captain Copyright (and his sidekick Lieutenant Lame), and the Online Guitar Archive. At the bottom of the post are links to past year's winners and losers lists."
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[+] Captain Copyright Targets Kids 430 comments
frank249 writes "The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency has set up a copyright education website called Captain Copyright. There is a section for kids with comic books and a section for teachers for grades 1-3, 3-6 and 6-8. An example of a grade 1 class activity: 'Present the following situation to students: Your friend is downloading a song off the Internet. In comes Captain Copyright. Ask: What do you think Captain Copyright will say? Encourage students to brainstorm. Then hand out (or read) Line Master: Some Copyright Laws.' In Canadian law it is incorrect to download a song unless you pay for it. They also neglect to mention that Canadians pay a tax on blank media that is meant to compensate artists for downloads."
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[+] OLGA Shut Down
Sean McPherson writes " OLGA (the On-Line Guitar Archive) has been harassed by the Harry Fox Agency once again, and has (at least for the moment) shut the site down. As a full mirror, ntr.net has always kept daily updates available to the public, but we're complying with the request from the OLGA admins to close ours off as well. This kind of things REALLY needs to be brought to the attention of the public. HOW far does legal ownership of ideas and such go? If you need any more info, just contact me directly, or email the people off the site at www.olga.net. "
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Digital Media Winners and Losers of 2006 36 Comments More /

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  • Check out the Captain Copyright site now. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Sunday December 24 2006, @06:23PM (#17356328)
    http://www.captaincopyright.ca/Default.aspx [captaincopyright.ca]
    Seems that they've picked up on how dumb their idea was.
    The Captain Copyright site was created for educators because they told us through surveys and focus groups conducted by an independent consultant that they needed tools to help them teach their students about copyright, but none were available.

    I can understand asking for more text books, smaller classes or new equipment ... but what "educator" is going to put "copyright education" on their list?
    • You might be surprised. Teachers or educators, however you'll have it, face the issue of copyrights, royalties, and public performance caveats all the time. If you don't cough up to the copyright owner beforehand, public performance of copyrighted works can potentially cause a bundle of trouble. A librarian I know told me her branch pays $400/year to be able to show Disney films at the library. I'm sure that some of them would enjoy having a dedicated curriculum resource to integrate with Social Studies or

      • I'm still not seeing it. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Sunday December 24 2006, @06:50PM (#17356442)
        Teachers or educators, however you'll have it, face the issue of copyrights, royalties, and public performance caveats all the time.

        I'm sure they do. But I'm not seeing why any of them would list it as something to spend money on teaching it to kids.

        To me, it sounds like their "independent consultant" wasn't as independent as was advertised. Particularly since Access Copyright
        http://www.accesscopyright.ca/ [accesscopyright.ca]
        was involved in the production.
        • What's wrong with an independent consultant that was hired by a licensing agency asking educators questions specifically about copyright education? The alternative seems downright illogical to me.

          You don't really think that Access Copyright would waste their time asking educators what they needed in the classroom in general terms, do you? That's the government's job to find out. The licensing company involved with the focus groups and other committees that gave birth to Captain Copyright was interested sole
          • That's exactly the problem. The questions didn't give them any room to want anything but copyright education.
            • You say that like it's automatically a bad thing. Being *properly* educated about something like copyright law could motivate students to actually do something about it.

              The agency in question probably had their 'independent consultant' ask focus groups composed of educators questions from the perspective of "What can we do to make educating about copyright law easier?" or "How can we integrate this into a classroom environment?" and realised they didn't have a mascot like the anti-drugs/smoking lobbies or P

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Azari (665035)

      I would. There's very little good information on copyright that I've seen that's easily digestible by kids. (In no way saying Captain Copyright is 'good' information, just saying that I've not found a lot to use for my kids.)

      Just because people tend to go overboard about what copyright should or shouldn't do, doesn't mean that kids should be informed about it. I realise that this would qualify me for a 'you must be new here', but just because you might have a low opinion of copyright doesn't make it less w

    • Well, jeez, you had to bring up poor Cap Copyright. It was such a shame when he was busted for snarfing data from wikipedia. At that point he spontaneously combusted. All children who were watching are still in counseling.

      Now, if only we could get all those other damn astroturf sites to essplode!
    • DRM's victories this year:

      Xbox live gold has proven that a DRM'ed box can sell a lot of DRM'ed content, a concept that is pushing forth in the beta and release versions of Windows Vista.

      Apple's online store may be faltering, but still the strongest in the space. Sales of DRM'ed TV shows online are up.

      Cellphone unlocking was ruled legal, but cellular providers still have a lock on the content space of your phone.

      The HDMI standard really started to become standard on HDTV's this year, finally allowing people

  • Easy answer... Bleep.com. Go there, it rocks! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Aphrika (756248) on Sunday December 24 2006, @07:37PM (#17356714)
    No-DRM == winner!
    DRM == looser!

    If you like coffee-table electro then visit bleep.com [bleep.com]. Non-DRM'd, MP3'd, cool music from Warp Records and associates. If you like the Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Plaid or that kind of stuff, then consider that link a Christmas present from the Gods!

    Merry Christmas all!

    DRM'd music? I'd rather feed their bones to pigs...

  • I'll throw in a shameless plug for DivX Stage6 [divx.com]. It's in alpha, but you can publish DivX and XVID video files in their original quality all the way up to 1080p with 5.1 MP3 Surround. Stage6 also allows you to easily download the videos directly with no DRM (so long as the publisher permits it), and it's focused around building high-quality content communities.

    A couple of example channels launched recently:
    http://stage6.divx.com/BT [divx.com]
    http://stage6.divx.com/Witness [divx.com]

    DivX Web Player [divx.com] is required for in-brows

  • Sad to see OLGA in this list. It was a great site, but you go there now and you get all kinds of OCILLA [wikipedia.org] notices. If you play guitar and need to quickly cheat and get the chord progression for a song, that was the place to go. Sad part is, it was just a bunch of people contributing .txt files of songs as they had figured them out. It's not like it was mp3's or anything. Jeez.
    • It's too bad that the music publishers hound dedicated fans and hobbyists and stop them from sharing these resources when they are unwilling or unable to offer well-formatted songs piecemiel in a similar way to how they could be obtained on the net. Most of enthusiasts are reverse engineering songs they like with their ears and not directly copying the copyrighted materials of the publisher.

      OF course, when it gets to the web it is 'published' -and therein lies the rub....

      AS someone who plays cover songs wit
  • Of course, the Zune might singlehandedly kill off DRM due to piss-poor execution, so we all get to be the winners.

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