Tag Archives | Sony

Sony Releases Major Album Solely To Extend Copyright Protection

By on January 12, 2013 in News 7

The New York Times on a dubious and surreal moment in the history of recorded music:

In response to provisions in a new European copyright law, Sony Music has released a compilation of early Bob Dylan recordings [subtitled] “The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1” — that was rushed to a handful of record shops in Germany, France, Sweden and Britain just after Christmas. Only about 100 copies of the four-CD set were produced, with sparse packaging.

The point of the release was to keep the recordings under copyright protection in Europe, where the laws are in flux.  A change extending copyright in the European Union to 70 years will be in effect by 2014. But recordings cannot benefit unless they were published before the 50-year term expired. The recordings on “Copyright Extension” were about to fall over that legal precipice.

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Soon Advertisements Will Involve Forced Interaction

By on September 10, 2012 in News 19

In the near future, television commercials will make you do things, such as throwing a pickle onto an imaginary hamburger, if you want to get back to your show. Via Electronista:

Sony recently filed a patent for a new method of ad delivery that would turn television commercials into “interactive networked video games.” The patent, uncovered by Game’N’Motion, details a number of interactive commercial possibilities built on the motion and voice technologies currently available in Sony’s PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, and PS Eye devices.

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Atari Teenage Riot Donates Money From Sony To Hacker Group

By on March 10, 2012 in News 34

Musically suspect Atari Teenage Riot sets a nice example. Here’s how to maintain your credibility when corporations knock on your door — accept their money and give it away to their most hated enemies. Pitchfork reports:

Alec Empire, frontman of the German electropunk group Atari Teenage Riot, has handed a large sum earned from Sony Entertainment off to FreeAnons, which is part of the pro-hacker Anonymous Solidarity Network [and] offers financial support to individuals facing legal trouble for alleged work with the Anonymous hacker group.

The money came from licensing the song “Black Flags” for use in a commercial for the PlayStation Vita console. It’s a particularly humorous move considering that Anonymous has in the past been in direct conflict with Sony.

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The Death Of The Walkman Finally Comes

By on October 28, 2010 in News 2

walkmanOne of the most important figures in the history of human civilization has met its end. If you have a Sony Walkman, hold it close and keep it in good working order. CrunchGear writes:

Truth be told, I wasn’t aware Sony was still producing cassette Walkmans. But the company today announced it will stop manufacturing and selling these devices in Japan – after 30 years. Sony says the final lot was shipped to retailers in April this year, and once the last units are sold, there will be no cassette Walkmans from big S anymore.

The first Walkman was produced in 1979. The picture shows the TPS-L2, the world’s first portable (mass-produced) stereo, which went on sale in Japan on July 1 that year and was later exported to the US, Europe and other places. Sony says that they managed to sell over 400 million Walkmans worldwide until March 2010, and exactly 200,020,000 of those were cassette-based models.

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Hugo Chavez Says Playstation Is “Poison”

By on January 19, 2010 in News 13

Hugo ChavezAnd who would argue with him? As reported by Yahoo News/AFP:

CARACAS (AFP) – Sony’s PlayStation video game console is “poison” and leads children down the capitalist “road to hell,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said.

Chavez, in his weekly radio-TV show “Alo Presidente,” called on Venezuelan manufacturers to make “educational” toys and dolls with indigenous peoples’ features to replace capitalistic counterparts like the Barbie doll that “have nothing to do with our culture.”

In expanding on his dislike of western toys and games — he already slammed Nintendo for promoting “selfishness, individualism and violence,” Chavez Sunday took on the world’s top selling game console, Sony’s PlayStation.

“Those games they call ‘PlayStation’ are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, ‘you’ve got to find Chavez to kill him.’”

The firebrand leftist president said any game that “bomb cities or just throw bombs,” are sold by capitalist countries to sow violence so they can “later sell weapons.”

They “promote the need for cigarettes, drugs and alcohol so they can sell them.

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