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I have gone for a very soft looking photograph today, I dunno why, I suppose its the weekend and I feel great. I am also pleased to announce that I have decided to take my copyrighting a bit more seriously now on mcawilliams.com, and as of tonight all images, past and future, will be watermarked. I have taken this step due to the fact that I have always said if someone wants an image, once its not for commercial use ie. a personal blog etc, you are more then welcome to it once you let me know and also dont do the silly thing of hotlinking to my images. Well this has fallen on many a deaf ear and so things have to change, watermarking is step number one, behind the scenes myself and my hosts are going to work on the images that have been hotlinked already....

Ireland’s favourite EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy is responsible for the proposal to extend EU copyright law by 45 years under the proviso of helping ’struggling session players’ to earn money when they’re old. The proposal has now passed the commission and is on the way to the parliament. What does this really mean? Well, extending copyright under the noble cause of helping “thousands of anonymous session musicians who contributed to sound recordings in the late fifties and sixties” as McCreevy puts it, also allows record labels to live off these artists for another 45 years while simultaneously extending the barrier that legally allows creativity in the form of sampling and collage-based works. In the US, a similar law has already been passed but “fair...

I note in a new version of iTunes terms and conditions, Usage (viii) You may not use The Products as a musical ‘Ringer’  in connection with phone calls First of all this is fair use, second of all its unenforceable, third of all its a classic example of the record company regouging for every new format of a piece of content you already own. Music executives should have their eyes taped open while they watch Larry Lessig’s talk on copyright at TED....

Its much linked to, but Larry Lessig’s talk at TED is a fantastic treatise on the bogon field that is modern copyright law....

“Everyone has been bombarded with media. We’ve almost been forced to use it as an art form. It’s like anything. If people were handing out paint for free on the streets, I’m sure there would be a lot more painters right now.” Gregg Gillis - DJ (Girl Talk) I watched this insightful documentary last week - Good Copy Bad Copy. It’s an look into copyright and culture and how it is affecting people around the world. We are taken through the issues like sampling in hip hop involving NWA and the copyright issues over Dangermouse’s Beatles/Jay-Z mashup album The Grey Album (A professor quips during the film - “The Beatles lawyers must have made some money but no-one else did”) , Creative Commons, and MPAA’s attempt to shut down the...

For readers with longer than Goldfish memories, you may remember the recent tussle between Tom Raftery and O’Reilly over the use of the Web 2.0 term. Yesterday, I got an email from Dion Hinchcliffe , President and CTO of the Web2Journal. He says (regarding the Enterprise Web 2.0 Term). I first encountered the phrase when storied VC [...]...

SIGN THE PETITION PRESS RELEASE 19th June 2006 European Podcasters Team Up To Lobby WIPO Podcasters across the world have come together to emphatically reject the re-drafted Broadcast Treaty. the Irish Podcasting Representive Body (PodRepBod) has been joined by the UK Podcasters Association and German Podcastverband to lobby WIPO in a pan-european effort to assert podcasters’ rights at the WIPO meeting in Barcalona Wednesday, June 21st, presenting a petition, the text of which follows: To: World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO) This is a petition to the World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO) regarding the Broadcast Treaty as it affects podcasting and podcasters. This treaty as it stands gives broadcasters (not creators or copyright holders) the right to tie up the...