I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple weeks now. There’s a video contest being run by the Insight Community (it’s affiliated with Techdirt a website where they publish information about copyright and other intellectual property issues, innovation, and more) with a $1000 US prize. From the Oct. 6 (?), 2011 posting,

A few weeks ago we wrote about a contest that NBC Universal was putting on, officially through New York City, asking students to make propaganda films, repeating NBC Universal/MPAA talking points about how copyright infringement was damaging NBC Universal.  In going through the fine print on the contest, we noted a few oddities.  First, you were not supposed to actually use facts or data and make a case.  Instead, the rules flat out told you what your position was.  You had to support the claim that “piracy costs jobs.”  Think the data shows that the real problem is legacy companies like NBC Universal not adapting to embrace new opportunities?  Too bad.

Even worse, the detailed fine print in the contest (which is pretty difficult to dig out), shows that if you win, you lose the copyright on your video.  Seriously.  It’s pretty amazing that a video contest promoting the supposed importance of copyright to creators involves requiring creators to give up their copyrights.  The prize?  A measly $500.

So we’re offering a competing contest, here via our Insight Community platform.  We’re asking people to create PSA videos showing the impact of technology on creativity today.  We’re not asking you to advocate any specific position at all, because unlike that other contest, we’re pretty secure in our beliefs and won’t melt like the wicked witch of the west should someone submit a PSA that challenges some of them.  We believe that the best videos will be both creative and have a factual basis.

Complete details and comments are available at the link I’ve provided. Note that the deadline is coming up soon.

Following on this theme of creativity being destroyed by new technologies and industry panics, there’s this from an Oct. 6, 2011 posting titled, Radio Is Killing Music, on Techdirt,

But what was a lot more entertaining about the article [in an August 1932 issue of Time Magazine] was the paragraph above this, in which it seemed to suggest that radio was absolutely killing music. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the refrain may be familiar:

Tin Pan Alley is sadly aware that Radio has virtually plugged up its oldtime outlets, sheet music and gramophone discs. The average music publisher used to get $175,000 a year from disc sales. He now gets about 10% of this. No longer does a song hit sell a million copies. The copious stream of music poured out by Radio puts a song quickly to death. The average song’s life has dwindled from 18 months to 90 days; composers are forced to turn out a dozen songs a year instead of the oldtime two or three.

Has there ever been a time, ever, in which the music industry’s established players weren’t complaining about the industry dying?