response 115 of 143:

May 18 03:45 UTC 2001

This all gets irritating.  How long before using terms from TV shows is
declared copyright infringment and payments asessed?

Drift of a sort.  All this DMCA stupidity has my brain making odd
conncetions.  It occurs to me that if the DMCA is not removed fairly soon,
then Microsoft has already won thier battle to illegalize open-source
software.  If the interface to the device is encrypted, it becomes illegal
to reverse-engineer it for writing non-vendor drivers even if you are
using the interoperability exception that has been used now and then.

Drifting back, the copyguards on new technology present the content
producers with an interesting dilemma.  If they turn on the copyguards too
soon, they risk wholesale rejection of the technologies.  Do they have the
patience to leave the guards turned off for the number of years that
saturation of a new technology takes?  Most consumers are not aware of any
of the nonsense under discussion in this item.  It literally falls outside
thier world for now.  Most people won't know that a device has
use-management built in until it bites them, by which time they've likely
no chance of returning the device.

If the public can find out about the copyguards ahead of time, the
question then becomes who can last longer in somethine like digital TV,
the manufacturers, who can coast for a while on accumulated money, or
consumers, who can use old technology for old recordings but cannot access
new programming when analog broadcasts become illegal?

There is no possibility of this actually happening, but I'd like to see a
truth-in-labeling applied to devices with use-management systems.  On the
OUTSIDE of the box.  Right now, the only warning most people get about
region control on DVDs is buried in the back of the instruction book,
after they have opened the box and hooked up the player.  Imagine how well
a digital recorder would sell if the box had to say "This device contains
rights-management technology that may prevent you from recording a
program, copying it after recording, or playing it back more than once."
Neutronium balloons, anyone?

response 117 of 143:

May 18 19:49 UTC 2001

Wired.com has a couple of entertaining pieces today.
 
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,43894,00.html

is essentially a boring press release from InterTrust about their new
copy-prevention stuff which is already in use by some customers.  But the 
killer is the last paragraph, quoting an InterTrust executive vice
president:

  ((The record companies)) "...also have to move away from the CD and into a
  protected medium with a disk with encrypted music on it.
  Right now, it's like putting out master recordings that can
  be immediately copied and traded on the Internet." 

Exactly how the record companies would survive a drastic phaseout of 
the CD is not explained.  :)

http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,43898,00.html

Essentially, the record companies are telling Congress that if there 
is going to be music on the Internet, then the record companies have 
to be able to run over the rights of songwriting copyright holders.
The record companies have now taken the place of Napster in arguing
for a mechanical rights formula, a solution they opposed when Napster
wanted it.

response 119 of 143:

May 21 16:17 UTC 2001

News item: mp3.com has been bought by Vivendi Universal.  mp3.com had been 
the largest source of legitimate music files from independent artists,
and Vivendi Universal is the world's largest music company.
 
News item: On the grounds of trademark infringement, Aimster has 
lost its URL aimster.com to AOL.

response 121 of 143:

May 21 20:04 UTC 2001

Perhaps it is slightly odd that if something called "Vivendi Universal" 
is the world's largest music company, I have never heard of it before.

Or perhaps not.

response 123 of 143:

May 21 20:21 UTC 2001

((David, Vivendi Universal might be of particular interest to you because
they control the biggest chunk of major-label classical catalog.
London/Decca, Angel, Deutsche Gramophon, Philips are just a few of 
the brand labels & catalogs which Vivendi Universal has ended up with.))

response 125 of 143:

May 22 23:01 UTC 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/22/technology/22MUSI.html

analysis:  "Vivendi Deal for MP3.com Highlights Trend"

"The upshot, industry analysts say, is that the
five major record companies could wind up
actually consolidating their power in an
Internet age that some analysts thought would
shake the labels to their core."     

We mentioned this before; the major music companies now seem to be 
on the verge of tightening their stranglehold on the distribution
of music.

----------

http://www.latimes.com/business/20010521/t000042593.html

"Net Music Services in Royal Bind"

Best summary I've seen of the controversy between the music publishers
and the online music business.

In today's world, music publishers get a "performance" royalty when a song is 
broadcast on the radio, or else they get a "reproduction" royalty when a 
physical disc or tape is sold.  On the net, these neat categories get blurred,
and according to this article the music publishers feel they should get 
both performance and reproduction royalties for music downloads.

response 127 of 143:

May 23 15:17 UTC 2001

Here's a very interesting review of what looks to be a very interesting
book:  DIGITAL COPYRIGHT, by Jessica Litman.

http://slashdot.org/books/01/03/28/0121209.shtml

response 129 of 143:

May 26 21:33 UTC 2001

From what I've read, Aimster has nothing to do with AOL Instant Messenger,
but rather is named after its creator's daughter.  That people (including me,
before I read an article about it a week or two ago) are confused by the name
and think it has something do with AIM is pretty much the legal test for
trademark infringement, if I understand trademark law correctly.

response 131 of 143:

May 27 01:41 UTC 2001

Yes. I used to actually used to have an AIM-65. I even had the BASIC 
interpreter in ROM.

response 133 of 143:

Jun 5 23:37 UTC 2001

  How lucky that we have analysts to tell us that..  :-p

response 135 of 143:

Jun 14 23:42 UTC 2001

A Cnet story about how ISP's are being pressured into helping copyright
holders hunt down their customers:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6221068.html?tag=st.mu.1652424.ncnet.1
005-200-6221068

ISPs argue that the DMCA covers having the ISP remove infringing material
from the ISP's machines, but it does not cover terminating customers 
who are infringing copyrights from their own machines.

The ISPs are worried that they will be found liable for their customers'
copyright infringements by courts in Europe; ISPs are generally 
protected from such liability by US law.

response 137 of 143:

Jun 17 06:55 UTC 2001

Telcos have clear protection in the law due to their status as 
"common carriers," who are obligated to carry the traffic of all 
comers.  ISPs have not generally been recognized as "common carriers"
since by Internet custom there are some activities of their users which
they are expected to police, such as vandalism of other systems and 
sending lots of spam e-mail.  ISPs had considerable & realistic liability
worries until the DMCA granted them protection in the early 1990s.
However, the protections of the DMCA cover American courts only, and 
many jurisdictions are now interested in extending extraterritoriality
in Internet cases.  My understanding of the trend in Europe is that 
European courts have been much more willing to bring ISPs into cases;
at a minimum there are the two cases where Germany prosecuted CompuServe
for transmitting pornography, and where France has pursued action 
against Yahoo over American-based sales of Nazi memorabilia.
 
So if I ran a Napster clone on my PC and offered up copies of material 
of European origin, or offered them so they could be downloaded in 
Europe, the European rights holder would want to take action against
my American ISP in European courts.

(I'm tired and babbling...)