So we are published: Copycats?

From the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones.

Oh no: another boring report about piracy by a strange body with an obscure title.

That was my first reaction on getting hold of Copycats? Digital Consumers in the Online Age [2.76Mb PDF] - a report for the Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property.

But when I read on, the report was full of fascinating insights into the way that we've all begun to think about the rights and wrongs of online piracy - or rather, "unauthorised downloading", which is how this report for the government carefully describes it.

I'll write more about the report, and what is means, later in the week. It's been instructive.

Boogle

According to media reports, BBC director general Mark Thomson is in negotiations with Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt about the possibility of hosting long-form BBC content on Google-owned video website, YouTube.

From Business Week.

On that Spotify/Apple showdown...

...

This week, European streaming music service Spotify demonstrated its Android app, which features on-demand streams of songs the user doesn’t own, as well as an offline synchronization and caching function that allows a listener to enjoy a song on the go, regardless of whether the phone is connected to a data network at that moment. That’s dangerously close to owning a song, and speculation is already rife that Apple won’t accept Spotify’s planned iPhone app because it’s too much of a threat to Apple’s iTunes music store.

From GigaOM.