There’s a bunch of stuff you can’t do when you’re living outside Helsinki. Luckily this will change soon as I’ve had to pass way too many events just because it’s a drag driving/catching a train down to Helsinki for one short event. I’m definitely looking forward to Mobile Monday Helsinki on March 6th in Stockholm Diskotek.
MobileMonday in Helsinki gears up for lively discussion on mobile music and copyrights in its next meeting. There will a prestigious panel that is sure to disagree on several issues.
The debaters will include Jukka Liedes, Ministry of Education and Culture; Kimmo Valtanen, SonyBMG; Herkko Hietanen, Creative Commons; and Ahti Vänttinen, Finnish Musicians Union. We will also have representatives from Nokia and a mobile content provider.
Looking forward to how their opinions have changed from the end of September to now with all the opposition to the new law, or if it has changed in any way.
Man, this week has flown past me. I’ve had so much stuff to do it’s hard to imagine. I just got back from work and it’s 7pm. I’ve got some good news that have made me work a bit harder than normal. Our paper that we did for Journal of Interactive Advertising was conditionally accepted into the word-of-mouth special issue! We’ve had to do some revisions and clarifications to the text, let’s hope it gets published - that would give me my first academic publication.
Also in the news this week (short clips, haven’t simply had the time to blog about these):
The Futurice guys have struck a deal with the largest commercial television network MTV3 with their discrete photosharing service Kuvaboxi. Kuvaboxi seems to be now an official part of MTV3 offerings. Congrats!
How do I know them? I did my Master’s thesis in close co-operation with these guys.
Ex-CEO of Nokia, Mr. Isokallio, launches the first open WiFi in Helsinki center in co-operation with Fujitsu and a restaurant chain (source - in Finnish). With this he wants to show that it does not require a lot of money to operate a ubiquitous WiFi network, but more a will to do so. This is something I’ve been ranting about previously quite a bit - for example; here, here, here, here, here and here. Man, talk about being obsessed about WiFi :) Anyhow, my point is: Pity the fools who don’t see the value in this and a big thank you to Mr. Isokallio for doing something about it!
The head of US copyright office has actually said that the current copyright term is too long! Is this the beginning of the end to large media companies bullying consumers?
Oh, and the Finnish Curling team is in the Olympic finals playing at the moment…
Teosto (the Finnish RIAA) has independently decided to raise prices for restaurants playing music to their customers. The raise is pretty significant as for a restaurant for 800 customers open 5 days a week the price for to pay for Teosto rises from 4000‚Ǩ a year to 40 000‚Ǩ a year (HS). A 10-fold increase - that’s ridiculous.
The Finnish Hotel and Restaurant union (SHR) has told their members not to abide by the price increases and pay the smaller increases that were suggested by the union for Teosto. The talks between Teosto and SHR ended without results earlier and Teosto decided to go ahead with the price increase nevertheless. The CEO of one of the most famous Finnish restaurants in Helsinki, Juhani Merimaa of Tavastia, has said that, “their methods are questionable as they do have a monopoly in the business”.
Running a restaurant is very regulated by the government and thus it is already very difficult to keep the businesses profitable (in smaller towns at least). Raising prices for music like this is pretty ridiculous by any standards. When do we see the first bar that decides to play Teosto free music and thus save 40 000€ a year?
Torill Mortensen, a Norwegian professor at Volda College, has a good entry on how she tried to use an e-book in the way books are really used. The e-book was fitted with DRM technology to prevent it from being copied. However when you try to use the file in the way you would use normal books, ie. possibly let a colleague use it or use the book in several locations, the technology fails.
I know media companies are pushing DRM technologies into the business due to piracy, but when they don’t work - you’re only hurting the industry as a whole. I’m sure Torill won’t buy another e-book very soon, because she effectively ended up paying for something that does not work at all.
ps. The book is great, because I’ve used in my thesis for example and it also lays down the basic theories for diffusion studies.
Apologies to my foreign readers, but this is a commercial from another site and I decided to show that since Sony is illegally using code that isn’t theirs - could I report Sony BMG?
(the plot in short: it’s against pirated software, but the slogan on the left in the beginning says: Did you forget to mention something? and continues to ask “do you know of companies selling illegal software?”)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with two leading national class action law firms, today filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair the damage done by the First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software it included on over 24 million music CDs.
[...]
The law firms of Green Welling, LLP, and Lerach, Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman and Robbins, LLP, joined EFF in the case. Sony BMG is also facing at least six other class action lawsuits nationwide and an action by the Texas Attorney General. EFF looks forward to representing the voice of digital music fans in the resolution of these disputes between Sony BMG and consumers.
Rosa Meril?§inen, a Finnish MP writes in her blog (translation from here):
On Thursday I was already awake, but it didn’t turn out to be useful. During the question hour, I tried to get a turn three times, but I failed. I didn’t feel too sorry about it, because we left with Irina [Krohn, I would presume; a fellow MP] to the winter season opening of Gramex [one of the lobbying organizations for stricter copyright laws, sort of like the RIAA, but for performing artists] to receive compliments over the copyright law. It was very therapeutic, because we got so much negative feedback on it originally. Now I got to bask in the copious compliments of wonderful men. I have to confess that some of them didn’t understand to compliment us, so we needed to guide and urge them a bit.
Ok, if you missed the show - go get your copy of it from Radio Free Finland. We discussed the recent Sony DRM mess, along with the Olen Rikollinen? -campaign, blogging, podcasting and a whole lot more. Enough self promotion for today :)
Sparky has put up a site reporting on the Sony DRM mess. I think he has a good definition of DRM as well and some Finnish politicians should understand it like this as well;
DRM is bad for people. DRM stops users from enjoying their content and frustrates consumers while doing nothing to stop pirates from stealing and selling their digital wares. DRM is the industries’ way of saying you no longer own your content when you buy it, but are merely borrowing it.
I helped out at a seminar today and just got back to the office an hour ago. I’m back here to work on my thesis when the others left for the Lappeenranta Kasino to enjoy dinner. I had to pass it… I wanna get this done! Oh well, I’m pushing hard to not have to work the weekend and at the moment it looks good.
Sparky has 