Just discovered this article on the NPR Music website about sheet music piracy. I am not surprised that sheet music has the same issues and challenges as music. Jason Robert Brown, the owner of the work, is perfectly entitled to enforce his copyright but is that the right business model?
JadeXJustice/fickr
There are many examples of how the Internet has destroyed traditional and successful business models, such as the distribution of news, newspaper, movies and photographs etc. I like to focus on the business of music and the Internet as I have loved all (well not all, but most) genre of music for decades and also because I believe that there are opportunities for the music business to re-make itself to take advantage of technology.
Some interesting articles just published in the LA Times here and here. And one more here with a photo of Iggy Pop.
No time to write now as I am off to Singapore in a few hours having spent the last couple of weeks in Tokyo and Seattle.
Read this article and liked it. Having worked in companies who have been embroiled in anti-trust allegations, the points made by the author resonate with me.
Like many countries, Singapore recognizes that geographical indications can identify the source of certain products. See the Geographical Indications Act (Cap 117B) of the Singapore Statutes. Before the Act became law, I recall having to advise on whether geographical indicia were enforceable in Singapore. At that time, there was on-going litigation in England and Australia. When the dust settled, it was clear that French winemakers had won the day. It was a novel argument at the time and it worked with great success.
Over the weekend, I came across this article in the Wall Street Journal where Savile Row tailors were arguing that “Savile Row” as a street is in itself a geographical indicia of high quality suits. Not only that, the tailors were also attempting to limit the use of the word “bespoke” to custom hand tailored suits and not ready-to-wear suits. Clearly, the liberal use of the “Savile Row” and “bespoke” is diluting the value of these craftsmen.
After reading the article, I have some sympathy for the Savile Row tailors. It is interesting to see whether a geographical indicia can get down to the street level of locale.
Long silence on this blog. Thoughts on that later.
Bought “The Public Domain by James Boyle” and have started reading it. Enjoying it so far. As a lawyer who has dealt with enforcing and emphasizing proprietary rights for all of my career, I am prepared to read the thesis espoused in the book with an open mind. In fact I am hoping to be swayed by it.
Having bought the book, I now realize that you can read it for free courtesy of James Boyle. Encourage you to do so.
Don’t think I’ll get my money back though.
Especially since I spent a good amount of my life and career dealing with piracy issues. Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Guttenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns.
I wrote the article below which was published in The Business Times today. Unfortunately one needs to be a paying subscriber to access the website but b Below is the article verbatim.
The Business Times (Singapore) 19 May 2010
Who's who in Law
Law firms and lawyers can adopt it as a means to develop their brand and create a personal following
The Internetz allows me to interact with people around the world about the latest meme – like the deliberate misspelling above. The web is now the worldwide water-cooler. The most well known social media site, Facebook, was based on the high school and college facebook intended for people of that age demographic.
But online networking has transcended age groups with baby boomers and Gen-Xers gravitating to Facebook and other forms of social media in droves. Twittering has become the new verb du jour. Social media is what Web 2.0 is all about.
But what has this got to do with the staid and serious business of lawyering? I would posit – everything. The practice of law in abstract is meaningless. The practice of law has always been about the intertwined relationships between interested parties: the lawyer, client, public and governmental and legal institutions.
The Internet is similarly about relationships. Ironically, the facelessness and pace of technology create a desire for authentic relationships between its users. Technology now enables us, its users, to have those relationships via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or blogging. And this is just the beginning of Web 2.0. In the next few years the richness of applications and modes of networking will astound and delight us.
Nowadays, every self-respecting law firm has a website marketing its services. But that in itself does not create a relationship with its viewers. A website is in essence an online firm brochure.
It says a lot and yet says nothing about the firm and its people. It is static marketing that does not evolve rapidly, not giving its viewers any insight into the strengths, culture, views of the firm and its people.
Social media enables firms to add depth to their online presence. Marketing-savvy law firms try to convey a specific image or brand of the firm, with the most common being expertise in a practice area, understanding of an industry, partnering with the client etc. The usual modes of distribution are through the law firm’s website or through newsletters e-mailed to clients. Unfortunately, these are unilateral modes of delivery, that is, from the law firm to you. There isn’t any meaningful way for the recipient to respond.
Savvier non-legal businesses have realised that their customers want to interact with them and their products or services. Facebook fan pages for products and services are the most common example of how corporations have engaged with their customers and have created “fans” of their products and services. What is better than having your customers tout your product or service?
Tweeting has amazing potential as a marketing tool. The most well known case study about how Twitter can be used to generate revenue is @DellOutlet. Dell has generated more than US$6 million in revenue since 2007 by tweeting to its 1.5 million followers of the latest Dell Outlet deals. Twitter gives the ability to simply send out timely information in very short digestible morsels (within a maximum of 140 characters) to people who are predisposed to the information that is being disseminated.
Referrals in business are super valuable because a referral is a tacit recommendation by one person about another person’s competence. LinkedIn has adopted the notion of recommendations by one LinkedIn user of a LinkedIn profile of another to good effect by creating value in the recommendation. This has helped propel the number of LinkedIn members to over 40 million. Recommendations say a lot about the person and how that person is viewed by others who have worked or interacted with him or her. If I were hiring someone, I would definitely check out that person’s LinkedIn page. I would be a little wary if there were no recommendations.
It therefore seems intuitive that law firms and lawyers should adopt social media as a means to develop the firm’s brand as well as their personal brand.
Law firms in the US have embraced social media much more than any other jurisdiction I’ve seen. The fact that the US has historically been more aware of the power of marketing fuelled by the power of technology together with a large thriving legal market has resulted in a plethora of web services catering specifically to lawyers. For example, LexBlog is a blogging service focused solely on lawyers and Avvo is a lawyer rating service. Twitter too has been adopted and used to develop awareness and credentials. My friend, Susan Lyon (@SusanLyon), a privacy attorney in Seattle has in a short time built up 564 followers of her tweets on privacy issues. She has developed credibility and awareness in her field of practice.
The US legal blogosphere is thriving with thoughtful commentary on current issues and judicial decisions. Such an ecosystem can happen in Singapore too. A fan page on Facebook for a law firm is probably not something I would advise but an insightful blog (or ‘blawg’ as it is known in legal online circles) focusing on the issues of the day certainly helps the firm’s credentials. I was impressed by the daily updates on the Climate Change blog (www.climatelawreport.com) by the firm K&L Gates as it covered the Copenhagen climate change talks.
There is no shortage of legal expertise in Singapore. I can envisage Singapore law firms blogging about issues such as the property market (a topic close to everyone’s heart in Singapore), foreign investment, setting up a start-up company etc.
Lawyering is very much an individualistic pursuit. At the end of the day, it is a lawyer’s personal reputation and brand that attract and retain clients. Developing one’s personal brand helps differentiate one lawyer from another. LinkedIn is a good foundation for a fledgling lawyer to become familiar with social media as a means to network with clients and peers. The next leap is probably a big one but I would encourage using Twitter as a means to develop followers who are interested in an area of law.
The brevity of the medium makes tweeting easier than blogging. But there is a skill to being succinct. Legal haiku of sorts. The novelty of tweeting also allows for more latitude in experimentation (and mistakes) in the use of the medium.
Personally, I find blogging creates the most credibility with an audience and is the most rewarding. However, commensurate with those outcomes, it is also the hardest and most time consuming form of social media. The amount of thought and work that goes into blogging about something interesting exceeds the time needed to read the blog by at least a factor of ten. Being a lawyer, I agonise over words and there is continual fact-checking. There have been times when I’ve thought of giving up my blog only to have someone totally unexpected compliment it. I believe that a blog written authentically develops a relationship with the reader. When you achieve that, you will have achieved credibility.
So what is stopping Singapore law firms and lawyers from embracing social media? Nothing, I believe. The financial hurdle is low. What is needed is passion about the medium, a willingness to embrace change and the belief that the Internet can network people from the societal to the personal level.
The writer practises Intellectual Property and Information Technology law at TSMP Law Corporation. His firm disavows all his non-billable views which can be found at www.ghows.com and you can follow him at @bghows
Taking the subway to and from work gives me the opportunity to observe devices in use by commuters. The first observation is that smartphone adoption in Singapore is high with at least half the commuters (by my unscientific calculation) using smartphones to play games or listen to music.
And the second observation is that the type of smartphone used seems to be cleanly divided between Blackberry and iPhone users. The former are usually corporate/banker types or people who have to use a Blackberry because of a corporate diktat. The iPhone user is one who has made a personal choice. Having said that, Standard Chartered Bank is now permitting its bankers to use the iPhone instead of the Blackberry.
For the longest time I have wondered how a multitude of websites got away with publishing the lyrics of thousands of songs. Did I miss something in my understanding of copyright? Well it seems that my understanding of copyright wasn’t wonky (authors and publishers of the lyrics do own the copyright in the lyrics). It’s just that it was difficult for the copyright owner to enforce their copyright. The New York Times just wrote about this issue and how copyright owners are attempting to license lyrics to websites or enjoin them from unauthorized publication if they don’t obtain a license.
Over the last week I have been cogitating about the focus of this blog. So far the main theme has been technology and media law related issues. This has led to the blog being a bit of this and a bit of that. What I think I will do going forward is to focus on Singapore related intellectual property and technology issues since I am now based in Singapore. Same applies to my Twitter updates. Of course I reserve the right (since this is my blog) to depart from the above once in a while. :-)
I am going to try a more off-the-cuff form of blogging to see if that works for me and whether it results in more posts. Hopefully it won’t be a stream of consciousness ie a compilation of tweets. Note to self – check out whether I can incorporate tweets into this blog as posts. Seems obviously possible.
The tyranny of time sheets – as much as I have espoused in the past about alternative fee arrangements, time sheets aren’t going away any time soon. Even with fixed fee arrangements, time sheets are required to validate (either internally or externally) the time spent on the matter.
What’s more, there is this internal stress of having to at least do some billable work every day. And that competes with all the other stuff one has to do in a firm from marketing, research (not always billable), preparing ppts for talks, bouncing issues off colleagues, preparing bills (which take an inordinate amount of time) etc.
And so the weekend thankfully comes and it’s Labor Day which means, as a wit stated in a tweet “Labor Day …. a day to labour? :-p” @ongpeipei. The best witticisms have a painful grain of truth. That means I use weekends to catch up on my billable work. It’s not supposed to be this way!
But at least I get to listen to music when I work at home. Playing now.
That’s the most common question I am asked since starting work. And the answer it is that it has been going really well. The change for me isn’t the work itself but the lifestyle change. Having been used to a work style where being in a specific location most of the time wasn’t required, it was initially a shock to my system to be at 6 Battery Road everyday within specific times. Of course being a director/partner of the firm, I am given discretion within reason but there are certain expectations that I have to meet.
And Singapore and the practice of law is a more formally attired environment. No more software industry casualness of dress too. Boo hoo!
From a work perspective, there are many good things from the interaction with fellow professionals to being immersed in pleadings and cases. The latter has left me wiped out at the end of the day for the first few weeks which explains the silence of this blog. I did think of retiring this blog because of the time crush but having gotten some positive feedback, I think I will plow on.
It takes time to develop a work rhythm and I hope that I will be able to get into that. I am not there yet. The main challenge is always time because being in a time based profession, there is never enough time to do everything from marketing, administration, research, speaking engagements, and billable work, let alone blog. My other concern now is that my blogging may inadvertently reveal areas of concern I am working on for clients. In the course of research areas of law for clients, interesting nuggets of information or opinion surface and I have to be mindful of keeping it confidential.
Having said all the above, I am enjoying my colleagues very much and the work. Hallway conversations are totally underrated as a form of social networking and dissemination of information.
And so onto the next week!
A lot actually. Today I start work at TSMP Law Corporation. Yep, that’s right. After a year of running a solo IP practice in the US and Singapore, it became clear that to grow a practice, I needed to focus on one jurisdiction. Singapore became that jurisdiction. Also, feedback from potential clients was that it was impossible for them to send quality work to a solo practice. I needed to be in a larger law firm.
So the choice for me was to grow organically or to join an existing practice. Fortunately, the choice wasn’t a very difficult one after I had a long talk one evening with Stef and Shen Yi over a nice bottle of 1998 Chateauneuf du Pape. This was followed by numerous discussions with the other directors of the firm. I found that their vision of their practice coincided with mine. The firm wanted to build their intellectual property and technology practice along the same lines as I did. And the rest was history as they say.
In many ways this is a full career circle for me as I go back to work in Raffles Place which is the epicenter of downtown corporate Singapore. I started work in Raffles Place in 1983 and worked in the buildings next to the building I will be heading too in a couple of hours. Deja vu.
I’m excited by the opportunities that will open together and working with a team again. I missed the teaming aspect when I was running a solo practice.
Gotta run and get ready for work!
I read this interesting article about how Pink Floyd won their case against their record company which wanted to permit individual songs to be downloaded whereas Pink Floyd would only agree to the whole album being downloaded in its entirety as a complete musical work.
Personally I love the concept of albums having grown up listening to albums in their entirely, good songs together with not so good songs. To this day I have problems with creating my own playlist preferring to listen to an album whole. But I digress.
As I read the article, I started to wonder how Pink Floyd’s contract was drafted. How much control over “artistic integrity” did Pink Floyd have? Need to go find the law report now.
Read this blawg! I am super impressed by the effort made to link legal themes to books and movies in pop culture. Something I aspire to. Bravo!
I am a fan of the simplicity of Creative Commons and just wanted to highlight this article on how it works and how to use it.
In Ng Koo Kay Benedit v Zim Integrated Shipping Service [2010] SGHC 47, Justic Lai Siu Chiu nicely summarized the evidentiary requirements to prove a claim of defamation arising from statements published on a website and via email.
The fact that a defamatory statement is published on a website does not per se lead to the conclusion that there has been substantial publication of the defamatory statement. In fact in the above case, the judge did not find that there was substantial publication. The court may draw an inference of publication but in the end, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove publication.
Interestingly, there a challenge by the defendant that the plaintiff had failed to prove that the spreadsheet list of recipients of the alleged defamatory email was a “computer output” under s 35 of the Evidence Act. As I was reading this I was getting fearful that any electronic document produced in court would require “a certificate from the person responsible for the operation or management of the computer” per s 36 of the Evidence Act.
The judge rightly, in my opinion, agreed with the House of Lords in R v Shepherd [1993] AC 380 that it was “possible to discharge the burden by calling a witness who is familiar with the operation of the computer in the sense of knowing what the computer is required to do and who can say that it is doing it properly.”
Further, there was no allegation that the computer in question was malfunctioning or that the list of recipients was inaccurate. The judge found that substantial publication via email had taken place on the basis that there were 1,776 names listed and it was more than likely that not an insubstantial number of persons would have downloaded and read the email.
Over dinner with some friends a couple of nights ago, we had a short debate about what disclosures should be made by the author of a blog post. Anonymous blogging and the attendant comments have interesting ethical considerations.
It is possible to blog anonymously however if you become good at it, you will eventually be found out. Fake Steve was probably one of the funniest anonymous bloggers but he was finally outed by the New York Times in 2007. It is easier to comment anonymously. I do believe that if you have the strength of your convictions anonymity is not the way to go. I am of the school of taking responsibility for views expressed openly. If you are not prepared to stand behind your views, you should simply keep them to yourself.
I have come across a number of guidelines as to what constitutes ethical blogging. <Note to self: in a future post publish links to these guidelines> Some people are surprised that there is an unspoken code of conduct amongst serious bloggers. Some of this code is becoming institutionalized.
In the United States, the FTC recently published a guide regarding the endorsement of products in new media (aka blogs). It’s worth a read but if you want the Cliffs notes version, read the NYT article. In Singapore the Media Development Authority of Singapore is considering something similar.
With that in mind, I recently came across this apology by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch where it was revealed one the interns for TechCrunch has asked for and had received a Macbook Air in exchange for a post. The intern’s remorseful mea culpa is here.
That got me thinking as to why there are people who don’t seem to get that there are certain bright lines you do not cross. As I blog, I am always thinking about whether anything I write can be interpreted wrongly. Lawyers in particular run a higher risk of running afoul of issues pertaining not only to ethical issues but also considerations such as malpractice, advertising and disclosure of client sensitive information.
I do worry about everything I write publicly. This is harder than writing to a client since that communication is protected by attorney-client privilege. Once you say or do something stupid on the Internet, the genie is out of the bottle.
I ran across this article a month late but it’s still relevant and current. The article is headlined “5 Tech Entrepreneurship events that rocked SG in 2009.” I wanted to re-emphasize one point where the author states, with respect to the TechCrunch vs Fusion Garage dispute, “We have learned two important lessons from this whole fiasco: one, contractual agreements are necessary for a partnership; two getting investors who do not understand the tech space are (sic) a bad idea ….”
Having spoken to folks in the Singapore tech scene the TechCrunch vs Fusion Garage is indeed a wake up call to the fact that there is more to a start up than just coding. Intellectual property at the end of the day is what is being developed and if you don’t protect it, it’s pretty much worthless. Having done numerous deals with back to back agreements in place, there is still room for disagreement. What more if you don’t have agreements in place?
As for the last point, I can understand the point being made although it is an overstatement in my view. Having investors who really know technology can be debilitating if the investor tries to micromanage everything.
I read this blog post by Brian Krebs (who btw has deep insights into computer security issues) and at first blush I thought it was ridiculous that a bank would not only have the audacity to sue its customer after losing the customer’s money but would also ask the court to rule that its security procedures were compliant.
On further reflection, I started to think about the duty owed by the bank to its customers and the duty of a customer to keep his/her computer, passwords, personal information, network etc secure. The rights and responsibilities of a bank towards its customer in traditional banking models have evolved over many decades with courts and legislation fine tuning with the banks generally having the onus of protecting their customer,
I don’t believe that the law can ever match the specificity of each and every exploit and breach because of the pace of technology and daily efforts to devise new ways to exploit any vulnerability, human or otherwise. There are vulnerabilities in any network but the end user, bank or customer, is also personally susceptible to being exploited. Hence the trend towards social engineering ie phishing to extract your personal information. We all want to see <insert name of latest celeb> nude don’t we?
Laws should be written in sufficiently broad (but not in too broad terms) to capture the essence of the wrong doing and the courts should be able to interpret the law to fit the specific scenario.
I wonder whether different standards of responsibility should apply to individual consumers versus businesses. Should a small business expect to have the same network security as a multi-national bank?
At the end of day, it really pays to read the terms of use if you intend to undertake online banking. However it is more likely to snow in hell than being able to get a bank to modify its terms of use. But at least you will know where you stand.
Coming back to the headline, with due respect to the court, I don’t think the court can or even should be in the role of determining whether a computer network meets certain security standards. I don’t think computer security experts can even agree on this. But it is an aggressive move by the bank to shift blame for the loss to the customer. Let’s see how this plays out.
One of the challenges of blogging is doing it regularly. For the last couple of weeks, I have been laboring under a fair amount of guilt for not blogging. I had a couple of days when I felt meh (not good) and there were other days when I had to focus on getting client work out the door (good).
But there has been one thing on my mind for a while and it has to do with the music industry and how it needs to seriously re-invent itself. I love music in most forms. I still have my first LP (Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water) and still continue to purchase physical media. Paying for music is a given for me but clearly I am in the minority these days.
The Internet has clobbered many industries hard and the music industry is no exception. To my mind music piracy is so prevalent that the sharing of music files, in the minds of many, is not considered a bad thing ie an act of copyright infringement act.
In my past, I managed software anti-piracy programs in numerous Asian countries, and know the challenges of taking out legal suits against infringers. It’s one thing to sue businesses for using unlicensed software but it’s another thing, on a totally different scale, suing millions of downloaders of pirated music. There has to be a better way for the industry to increase revenue. The old top down approach doesn’t work anymore.
Having read Sting’s recent op-ed in the New York Times where he advocated that ISPs should monitor the downloads of their customers gave me an uncomfortable feeling. No one likes the idea of their ISP monitoring their use of the Internet.
Artistes have to realize that the Internet has changed the music industry and they must take control of how their music is distributed and marketed. Which is why I agree wholeheartedly with this excellent article by Jon Pareles where summarizes the evolution of the digital age in the context of music and how it was the canary in the digital coal mine (love that metaphor).
I see the Internet as a benign tool. Those artistes who have embraced it and used it to market their music have been able to reach an audience they would never been able to before. For example I discovered this band on the Internet via a NPR podcast and they are in my own Seattle backyard!
Visqueen, and yes, I am going to buy their CD!
The Opening of the Legal Year in Singapore is a tradition inherited from Singapore’s colonial past. I attended the Opening of the Legal Year on 9 January 2010.
In the past there was a fairly elaborate ceremony preceding the speeches including a march-past by the police. Unfortunately I cannot link photographs from the National Archives but to view photographs from the 1966/1967 Opening of the Legal Year, go here and in the search term type “legal year”, for the year range, insert “1966” to “1967” and check the box for photographs. You will be presented with photographs of the Opening from those years.
Below is a photograph taken at the 1966 Opening of the Legal Year (to the best of my knowledge). From left to right are Messrs Goh Heng Leong of Allen & Gledhill, Tan Boon Teik of the Attorney-General’s Chambers (who would become Attorney-General), Abdul Wahab Ghows also of the Attorney-General’s Chambers (my uncle who would become a High Court judge) and Abdul Manaf Ghows of Allen & Gledhill (my father). Unfortunately I don’t know the identities of the police officers to their left.
This photograph was taken a year after Singapore obtained full independence as a sovereign nation, and what fascinates me about this photograph is that within it one can see not only the last vestige of Singapore’s colonial past but also the transition of the legal profession to Singaporeans.
After the Opening, I reflected on the speeches made and felt a sense of optimism about how 2010 would turn out for the business providing legal services. 2010 will no doubt be a year of change for the local Bar as the Qualifying Law Firm Practices will have had a full year to make their presence felt. The fact that foreign law firms want to practice Singapore law must indicate that there are business opportunities. I cannot disagree seeing the success of practice areas such as arbitration, admiralty, intellectual property and general commercial work. It’s only a matter of time before corporate finance and banking work pick up.
As an aside, in his speech the Chief Justice made the comment that the high academic requirements required to be admitted to the local law schools and together with the minimum academic requirements required to be admitted to the Singapore Bar has resulted in a highly qualified legal profession. It was a simple statement of fact but that truism stuck in my mind as I had previously just taken the quality of work of my colleagues
for granted.
I read this article today and it brought back vivid memories from ten years ago. I was in IBM at the time and as the CFO of the division, I was responsible for ensuring that our business and customers didn’t crater when the clock struck 12.01 on 1/1/00.
The amount of work IBMers put into averting catastrophe was Herculean. There were layers of project teams remediating software, and when the software couldn’t be remediated, there were mitigation teams and so on. In many ways, it was IBM at it finest in marshalling its thousands of employees to focus on an urgent task.
Y2K was not viewed as a potential catastrophe but as a for sure event. We just didn’t know the extent of the catastrophe. If anyone knew about the Y2K problem, it would be IBM since they have been making computers since forever.
All our legal teams and outside counsel were alerted waiting for the flood of litigation. So there I was at a New Year Eve’s dinner at the Ritz Charlton. I was pretty anxious as the clock approached 12.00 and when it finally did, I was expecting my mobile phone to light up (we didn’t have smartphones ten years ago!). Nothing happened. Silence. In the end, I had to call the “war room” and there was a deflated voice on the other side. After a year of feverish preparation, nothing happened!
In the end, the outcome was good and it re-affirmed everyone’s trust in technology. To this day, I don’t know whether all those hours spent were wasted or not. Oh well, the world as we knew it didn’t end. All is good with the world.
Updated 1/14/10
I guess I spoke too soon as a Y2010 bug seemed to have impacted some 30 million users in Germany and Australia. Commentaries refer to the bug as the Y2K bug but I am not sure it had anything to do with Y2K other than poor coding.
Copyright Ghows PLLC
