CONTENTed

CCC on May Day
Copyright Clearance Center, an SIIA member, recently held a one day conference on Copyright. Once there I saw the schedule and got a little worried – they had schedule four ninety minute panel discussions on the topic. I’m thinking that is way too long and people will be nodding off. SIIA runs lots of conferences and we’ve moved to much shorter sessions , never venturing beyond 60 minutes. To my surprise and delight – they were all terrific. CCC matched the right speakers with the right audience. The people in attendance, including Keith Kupferschmid and Ken Wasch from SIIA live and breath the topic and were quite passionate about their opinions. They touched on copyright in print, music and video.

The highlight for me was hearing recording artist Suzanne Vega talk about her experience with the global remixing of “Tom’s Diner”. This tune was remixed by a variety of artists. Once they reached some level of popularity they’d contact her or her legal team for permission. For the first and most popular remix, she wisely paid a flat fee for global rights to the version and she now receives all royalties whenever this version is played. She has pretty much approved every request except when someone wanted to use it in a porn soundtrack – she advised them that there were probably better songs they could choose from.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

You Should Never Say "What Customers Need to Understand is..." I always cringe when product people utter the words “What customers need to understand is…”. To me it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how to serve a market. I saw this sentiment reported in a recent New York Times article on the hearing aid market which explained that the pricing model is essentially a forced bundle where two thirds of the price was for service, including hearing evaluation, counseling and adjustments over the life of the product. This approach has put a pair of hearing aids at or about $5,000. The manufacturers believe, and perhaps rightly so, that diagnosing and treating hearing loss are too complex for consumers to do using consumer devices, without the aid of a professional and therefore justifies the forced bundle. However, in this age of self-service people will search out their own solutions. By assuming a status quo approach with forced bundles a...

Trading Print Dollars for Digital Dimes in the Paperless Cockpit There was a fascinating article in the New York Times entitled the Paperless Cockpit . It describes the trend of airlines and private pilots to trade off 40 pounds of paper for a 1.5 pound iPad. One interviewed pilot summed the benefit up succinctly: “ When you need to a make a decision in the cockpit, three to four minutes fumbling with paper is an eternity.” There were a couple of other noteworthy points that the information industry can relate to as pilots embrace the “electronic flight bag”: Form Factor – The small, easy to carry tablet affords many benefits to pilots. As all professional publishers know, the shift to electronic offerings has been going on for decades. The Information Industry Association, the predecessor to the SIIA was founded over forty years ago for pioneering digital publishers. Early electronic products focused on news and financial data. However, accountants, consultants and ...

Publishing Industry Contacts (Updated December 2019) As I've moved through the information industry I've collected contacts about associations, financial firms, companies, recruiters and consultants. I've maintained it as a word document and am finally moving it online so that I can refer job seekers and industry researchers there. I'm hoping it will be easier to update and more permanent. Please send any additions, deletions or corrections to ed.keating@gmail.com or use the comment feature below. 1) Associations a) SIIA – Software & Information Industry Association. They cover the content and software area quite well. . i) FISD.net – Financial division of SIIA b) SIPA – Specialized Information Publishers Association (merged with SIIA) c) American Business Media – Founded in 1906, American Business Media is the association for business-to-business information providers, including producers of print publications, websites, trade shows and other medi...