For the second time in the last month, a mainstream news outlet has published an article about the mixtape. Two weeks ago, The New York Times published an op-ed article by a music store owner who wrote about the mixtape market and law enforcement’s focus on prosecuting retailers who sell them, despite the active role that copyright owning music labels play in distributing raw tracks for DJ remixes and the passive role the labels play in enforcing their exclusive rights.

Not to be outdone, USA Today last Friday weighed in on the mixtape market, focusing on how big the market has become. Writes USA Today’s Steve Jones

Mixtapes long have been part of hip-hop’s culture, but the DJ-produced compilations that once existed underground are percolating much closer to the surface these days. The often unlicensed and frequently bootlegged collections of exclusive advance tracks, hot street jams, diss songs and freestyles — available for sale via the Internet, small retail shops and street vendors, or as free downloads and file swaps — aren’t just for hardcore fans anymore. They’ve become promotional tools for artists and record labels trying to build a buzz.

Hip-hop diehards looking to be the first with the latest sounds or seeking edgier material have always scooped up mixtapes. But 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) is credited with changing the way they are viewed.

I find it curious that the mixtape market is getting attention from mainstream press. As Jones points out, DJs have been making and selling mixtapes forever: one of the first things a DJ does once he gets his mixer and two wheels of steel is make a mixtape and try to sell it. Back in the day (and I mean in the eighties), I was selling mixtapes for as much as $30 for a 90-minute cassette. (They really were tapes back then.) Now, artists like DJ Vlad are putting out mix-DVDs: mixtapes on DVD, complete with video and film footage. Many of Vlad’s titles sell for between $7 and $15.

To me, the real story is how the music industry allows this infringing activity to occur — encourages it, really — yet chooses to sue file traders. There can be no real debate that mixtapes are illegal: at a minimum, they violate a copyright owner’s exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution; arguably, they violate a copyright owner’s exclusive right to make derivative works from the original. Further, unlike some file traders, DJs who aggressively market and sell mixtapes clearly are deriving commercial benefit from the practice? So why would Big Music go after file sharers, but not mixtape DJs?

One plausible answer lies in perception: the labels perceive there is a promotional benefit to having a track — remixed or not — placed on a mixtape by Vlad, DJ Clue, or Whoo Kid. But isn’t it just as plausible that there is a promotional benefit to having a track active on the file sharing network? Isn’t that, after all, why several labels have hired BigChampagne for years?

Steve Jones. Money in the Mixtape. USA Today. April 20, 2006.

See also:

Alan Berry. The Tale of the Tapes. The New York Times. April 11, 2006.

Jeff Howe. BigChampagne is Watching You. Wired. October 2003.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Alex Joel’s appointment to his new role as U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence is one of several steps the Bush administration is taking to soothe concerns about civil liberties. Under siege for compromising privacy rights, most recently because of a National Security Agency program to monitor communications between people in the U.S. and overseas terrorist suspects, the administration is creating several privacy-related posts at government agencies.

“In February, the Justice Department named Jane Horvath its first chief privacy and civil-liberties officer, making her responsible for developing and ensuring compliance with privacy and civil-liberties policies, specifically as they relate to counterterrorism and law-enforcement efforts. The Department of Homeland Security splits the job between a chief privacy officer and an officer for civil rights and civil liberties. Mr. Joel’s role is even broader because numerous intelligence agencies report up to the director of National Intelligence.

“While even critics of the administration applaud the effort, they question what authority these officials have. Unlike inspectors general at federal agencies, these privacy officers lack the subpoena power necessary to conduct investigations and don’t report to Congress.”

Anne Marie Squeo. New U.S. Post Aims to Guard Public’s Privacy. The Wall Street Journal. April 20, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Third time unlucky? Yahoo!, like several other giants of the Web, has seen its share of criticism about the way it juggles both its Chinese business and requests from Beijing. Now the group led by Chief Executive Terry Semel is in the thick of it again, and this for the third time. A free press advocacy group has published a verdict from Chinese authorities that may implicate Yahoo! as having provided evidence for the Communist state to prosecute one of its users for subversion.

“Jiang Lijun, 39, is serving a four-year prison term after being convicted in November 2003. The verdict published on the Reporters Without Borders Web site and translated by the Dui Hua Foundation said that Jiang Lijun had ‘used the Internet… to promote so-called Western-style democracy,’ and ‘advocate that our country implement a multiparty system.’”

See also:

Reporters Without Borders. Yahoo! Implicated in Third Cyberdissident Trial — U.S. Company’s Collaboration With Chinese Courts Highlighted in Jiang Lijun Case. April 19, 2006.

Associated Press. Group: Yahoo Helped China, Again. Wired News. April 19, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“For decades auto makers preferred to give comprehensible names to their cars. To lend an air of prestige, Lincoln called its top-of-the-line model the Town Car. Cadillac was already playing that game, with models including the DeVille and Eldorado. But in the past several years, car companies, particularly luxury auto makers, have favored combinations of letters and numbers, like the BMW X5 and Lexus LS 450. Their thinking is that this build the image of a whole brand, not just one model.

“But with a finite number of letters available, and some of them way sexier than others, car makers find it more and more difficult to think up letter combinations they can call their own and that haven’t been take by products in other industries.”

Gina Chon. “Henry Ford’s Model A Would Be at Home in Car-Name Game.” The Wall Street Journal. April 20, 2006. p. A1.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.