Stephen Downes

In his talk at FediForum yesterday Anil Dash outlined a process whereby companies spend a lot of money to take over a niche where open content prevails, then slowly squeeze out all the openness, then monetize it as a closed proprietary sector. A classic case of this is Spotify, which bought up a bunch of podcasting companies, and has been squeezing ever since. This item is a case in point. Spotify has begun scanning podcast episodes for any spoken work content that might come from a commercial source. If it finds any, the episode is removed. There's no fair use or any legitimate way to even quote from a work. "This is just another example of the ruination of the legal concept of fair use. Fair use is not a copout or a loophole, it's a fundamental understanding that copyright law has limits, and quoting a work to criticize it can't be stifled by authors demanding that their copyright entitles them to prevent critics from quoting their work." See also Anil Dash, We are going to kill "unalive".