The new Wedia social network we’ve been working on these past six months is almost ready. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have an amazing web team work on turning Wedia into a space where non-profits, journalists, filmmakers and everyone else can connect to make meaningful media. You can check out the under construction page here to get a sense of what the new site will look like. Right now the map is linked to a fairly random news feed, but once we launch, non-profits will be able to locate journalists and film crews around the globe using the map, and the news they generate will also appear there.

We are expecting to have the real site up in about 4-6 weeks. We are looking for people and organizations interested in creating a profile and providing content for the launch. So, if you’re a non-profit and have video or photos about the work your organization does, get in touch. If you’re a filmmaker, a journalist (print or photo) or just a concerned citizen who wants to report about under-reported social justice, humanitarian or environmental news, or want to contribute in any other way, please contact myself or email emily[at]wedia.tv

“For somebody who has spent 30 years in the music industry, you instinctively know this stuff is going on. But when you actually sit looking at your computer and see a number that says 95% of people are copying music at home, you suddenly go, ‘Bloody hell.’”

Feargal Sharkey, former Undertones front man and British Music Rights chief

The Guardian reports this morning that more than half of young people in the U.K. copy the songs on their hard drives to friends and even more swap CD copies.

“Research carried out by the University of Hertfordshire suggests that for 18-24-year-olds, home copying remains more popular than file sharing. Two-thirds of people it surveyed copy five CDs a month from friends… Overall, 95% of the 1,158 people surveyed had engaged in some form of copying.”

Full story here.

Biryani: A form of payola in some circles

Billy Bragg’s op-ed on Bebo in The New York Times last sparked a really good debate online, in particular this one on The Stalwart in which Mike Masnick from TechDirt and Billy Bragg himself participated in, which is well worth a read. I’m a fan of Bragg’s music and impressed by his commitment to artists’ rights online, but his argument that musicians should get a cut of the sale of Bebo didn’t make any sense to me, especially when you consider how he got started in the music business.

Billy Bragg got his big break in 1983, when he heard British radio DJ John Peel mention on air that he was hungry. The quick-thinking Bragg rushed down to the BBC studios with a mushroom biryani, which he offered to Peel in exchange for playing a song from his first album Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy (Peel accepted, but later claimed he would have played the record anyway). Mr. Bragg is an incredibly talented artist who deserves all the success he has enjoyed. But when he was starting out, he was willing to exchange not just his music for airtime, but also mouth-watering plates of fine South Asian cuisine. So what doesn’t he get about the willingness of today’s struggling musicians voluntarily uploading their music to social networks like Bebo to get a little exposure?

I think the reason Bragg doesn’t get sites like Bebo and the value they create is because he’s generally frustrated about artists not earning money online, a point he conceded over on Stalwart, but also because he happens to be world famous recording artist Billy Bragg. As he sees it, “the claim that sites such as MySpace and Bebo are doing us a favor by promoting our work is disingenuous. Radio stations also promote our work, but they pay us a royalty that recognizes our contribution to their business.” The point Bragg is missing is that a transaction between artists and Bebo is taking place, and although no money changes hands, this transaction is as real and as useful to a struggling artist as giving a DJ a biryani.

The terms of using Bebo are clear, and the fact that millions of musicians use it, even though there are social networks out there that do share revenue with artists, suggests this is the case. This is because most artists are not in the same position as Mr Bragg is now. Musicians that enjoy his level of success are the exception, not the rule and this was true long before the internet. If Bragg were just getting started today, it is less likely he would be furnishing DJs with hot meals and more likely he would be happily uploading music to social networks.

The battle over the future of music appears to be coming to an end, but a new and hopefully smaller skirmish is about to begin between those pushing ISP taxes, and those favoring voluntary licenses.

The argument is no longer about whether or not the industry should compete with pirates or fight them, but how exactly the labels should compete. Last week it was announced that Warner Music Group had hired Jim Griffin to figure out a way to implement a $5 a month surcharge on your monthly internet bill, which has come under fire already from the tech community for being too much like a tax, or as Micheal Arrington put it, a protection racket. “The plan essentially comes down to telling ISPs that they can avoid any copyright infringement liability if they pay the fee on behalf of customers” Arrington writes, “and while the government wouldn’t be directly involved, the willingness of law enforcement agencies and the judicial system to enforce civil and criminal copyright infringement laws is the stick by which Griffin will convince ISPs to jump on board. It’s government endorsed extortion, nothing more and nothing less.”

One concern is this move would chill innovation in the music industry. Another objection is that the labels rejected this same idea years ago. “People were excited about this idea in the last days of Napster,” Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, told Frank Rose at Wired. “But the music companies were not only not receptive to it, they considered it treasonous. Now the music companies are desperate — and people are saying, ‘No, we had that conversation, and you said we’ll see you in court.’”

The other solution being put forward by the EFF, music lawyer Bennet Lincoff, and in fact, most of the file-sharing community, is a voluntary licensing scheme, which in my opinion makes a lot more sense. As the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann writes:

When need a solution that allows for many organizations to operate, at different price points in different markets and doesn’t concentrate power. File-sharing communities are already criticizing the tax suggestion, but are open to the idea of a free-market solution. This isn’t just an economic/technological fight anymore, it’s also cultural. Piracy has become a youth movement in its own right, and if the industry wants to win this fight, it needs to come to the table with this community in real and meaningful way.

Last week in San Jose, Attorney General Michael Mukasey made the claim that piracy is funding terrorism. “Counterfeiting and piracy generate huge profits, much of it flowing to organized crime” he said at the Tech Museum of Innovation. “Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities.”

Mukasey was widely criticized for this statement, partly because everyone is so bored of this administration using terrorism as an excuse for all kinds of ass-hattery, but mostly because he didn’t have any evidence to back up his claim. But he’s not the first person to say this, and he’s probably right, at least in part.

The revenue streams that fund terrorist organizations are both legitimate and dishonest, not to mention diverse, and trickle through complex financial networks that make Bear Stearns hedge funds look as sophisticated as a lemonade stands. Along with drugs, prostitution, slavery, identity theft, smuggling and all other forms of organized crime, it’s very likely that organized for-profit piracy is a source of funding for a number of terrorist outfits. Piracy is a low-risk illicit activity that can help all kinds of shady businesses save money. Why wouldn’t the terrrists be getting into it?

So ignoring, for a second, the poppy fields of Afghanistan, the flow of money from the oil industry, state sponsorship of terror, blood diamonds, the diversion of funds from suspect charities and all the other vastly more significant capers that fund terrorism, let’s assume piracy is the most threatening of all freedom-hating cash cows. If pirated software, DVDs and CDs are such a grave threat to Western civilization, then what Mukasey is really saying, without actually saying it, is that in the interests of national security and the American economy, not to mention freedom, peace and justice for all, we need to legalize file-sharing right now.

As Nate Anderson notes over at Ars Technica, General Mukasey “managed to make it through an entire speech on crime and intellectual property without suggesting that noncommercial P2P file-swappers are somehow equivalent to criminal gangs running huge Asian stamping operations.” Read between the lines people. What I think Mukasey is trying to tell us, without upsetting the RIAA, is that file-sharers are the good guys here. Freedom fighters. What he’s insinuating is that rendering pirate goods irrelevant by monetizing and legitimizing digital distribution in all its forms is a way to quash terrorist threats.

If we can use digital distribution legally the way we are using it anyway, who needs $5 DVDs and bootleg copies of XP? (no one wants to pirate Vista, which isn’t something Microsoft should be too excited about) Prohibition style wars don’t work, this we know. Repealing prohibition got rid of the racketeers in the 1930s, so by Mukasey’s logic, monetizing file-sharing should take care of the terrorists right?

I feel safer already.

The book was this month’s “must read” in Arena Magazine, which has long been one of the smartest men’s titles in the UK. Out now at a good newsagent near you (but only if you live in the UK, or by Universal News on Broadway in NYC).

The production team that interviewed me for Current TV a few weeks back also did this great spot on Ji Lee’s Bubble Project. Ji is the designer behind The Pirate’s Dilemma logo - who I met when I interviewed him about The Bubble Project for the book. Also, be sure to check out his latest caper, Parallel World, here.