Fry Up: Gold medal submission

Killjoy PRs

There will be plenty of medals given out at the Olympic Games for ‘sports’ like canoe slalom, but another sedentary sport - that of writing submissions - will not be recognised. And that’s a shame, because public comment on the business of government is vital.

Take the more than 30 submissions to the illegal peer-to-peer file sharing fee review discussion which were posted online yesterday. The debate was about whether content rights holders should pay ISPs a fee when they send out infringement notices to users 'illegally' downloading content like movies and music.

Fry Up has read every one of them and, as the International Olympic Committee appears unwilling to recognise writing submissions as a sport ,we have taken it upon ourselves to award the Gold Medal to Phil Steele.

Phil Steele’s Gold Medal submission

Steele writes that the infringement notice fee should be increased from $25 per notice to at least $25 billion (although he reckons even that is an under-estimate).

Direct quote: “Considering the 'rights owners' – or the cottage industry that has appeared due to the dying gasps of an industry that has dedicated the last 100 years to absolutely ripping off their artists using the best lawyers they can find – do not want to pay $25 right now, I would say my preferred option ($25 billion+) would cause the Act to be pointless, and something not so offensive to human rights will take place.”

Phil Steele's submission

Don’t hold back Phil

Steele claims the current anti-filesharing regime is ineffective “just ask the nearest computer geek.”

Direct quote again: “Do us a favour – crawl out of the pocket book of Hollywood’s corporate interest. This is not about helping artists, or saving jobs. Since file sharing has become widely used, my spending on entertainment has not decreased... Hollywood is doing fine. They are just greedy and self interested.”

Steele then cites the example of comedian Louis CK who he says made more than half a million dollars marketing his video online directly to fans rather than releasing it on DVD.

Louis CK and the future of stand up comedy

Here’s to you

We don’t know who Phil Steele is, but at Friday Fry Up drinks we’ll be raising a glass to this Gold Medal submission winner.

Then we’ll toast Amy Adams for stating the obvious (in a good way).

Adams says US pushing Hollywood agendas overseas

We will not be toasting Blue Coat

In our occasional series (which may or may not have begun today) on Press Releases that are Especially Irritating, we’d like to highlight this eeyore effort from Blue Coat Systems, which had as it’s email subject line: “Will your network take gold during the 2012 Olympics?”

We opened it up expecting a Pollyanna release, only to be confronted with this subhead: “Online video consumption set to steal IT budgets”.

It then warned: “Blue Coat Systems, Inc. a market and technology leader of Web security and WAN optimisation solutions, is today reminding businesses of the costs associated with the impact of Olympics video on their networks.”

Killjoys.

Horses for courses

Hat tip to Gawker dot com

Haiku for the Day

Go the NZ Olympic team

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