John Gordon Ross

This is a manifesto, or countermanifesto. It’s Spain-specific, because it is addressed to the Spanish government, but its concerns are general. Here’s the background: the other day, a group of slightly famous Spanish musicians, egged on (I imagine) by the SGAE (Spain’s royalty-collection agency), held a kind of demo and issued their manifesto demanding, among […]

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Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is such a thing as ‘illegal’ software, as ‘they’ would have you believe (though even that is moot – actual successful prosecutions have been few and far between, for one thing. But let’s leave that to one side for the time being). Reasons to buy legal […]

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Under the same headline as the above, myth-busting science journalist Ben Goldacre debunks the imaginary figures the industry pulls out of its hat to support its hysterical “jail file sharers” yapping. His conclusion is particularly in tune with my own feelings on the matter, though I would extend it to the entire lying-scumbag copyright sector: […]

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While I’m on my anti-Big-Industry high horse, a word of support for Pablo Soto. Pablo and his company MP2P Technologies are being sued by Warner Music, Universal Music, Emi, Sony and the Spanish record industry association PROMUSICAE, which seek the ridiculous sum of 13 million euros for competencia desleal, unfair competition. Pablo’s offences are a) […]

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AFP reports that “Canada, China, Mexico, Russia and Spain have been singled out by members of the US Congress for “alarming levels” of piracy of copyrighted movies, music, video games and other entertainment.” This comes in the wake of the IIPA Special 301 I was talking about yesterday, and is surely not unrelated. Now, the […]

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