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| 12 new of 143 responses total. |
krj
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response 132 of 143:
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Jun 5 21:43 UTC 2001 |
Two items today from http://www.sfgate.com , the website of the
San Francisco Chronicle:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/06/05/financial1
539EDT0235.DTL
(sorry about the wrapped URL) is an AP story reporting that Napster is
close to concluding licensing deals with the major labels in the
MusicNet coalition, which are AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann & EMI.
There are caveats that the labels are still not satisfied with Napster's
protections against copyright infringements.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/06/05/BU111061.DTL
"Battle over digital music moves to recordable CD drives."
EMI has acquired a partial stake in Roxio. Roxio, the maker of the
software program Easy CD Creator, was recently spun off from Adaptec.
"EMI Music, one of the big five record labels, plans to announce
a deal with Roxio Inc. of Milpitas today to develop technology designed
to control the burning ((of CDs by consumers)). Roxio makes CD-burning
software that is shipped with about 70 percent of the estimated 100
million recordable CD units in the marketplace.
"How that technology will work or exactly what it
will do is unclear, although executives at the two companies
said one example might be to program CD burners to prohibit
copying of a song unless the user pays a fee."
An executive of Roxio says the interest is not in controlling what is
done today with CDs, but what will be done in the future with downloaded
music files.
Analysts suggest that consumers will not put up with restrictions on
what they can do with their CD burners, or with downloaded files they have
paid for.
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mcnally
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response 133 of 143:
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Jun 5 23:37 UTC 2001 |
How lucky that we have analysts to tell us that.. :-p
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krj
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response 134 of 143:
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Jun 6 21:39 UTC 2001 |
Here's a more detailed article about the EMI/Roxio proposal to put
controls into CD burning software:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/roxio060501.htm
Emi's idea is that the consumer would buy a license to burn the downloaded
music file; they think one in four CD sales could be done this way in
five years. They say they view this as a new channel for sales.
And here are two articles on the shape of the new for-pay Napster service:
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?article_id=32416&pod_id=13
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,44322,00.html
The inside.com article, by Charles C. Mann, is better, but unless Salon
picks it up, the link will be broken in a day or three.
Napster is going to charge for one level of access for downloading
music from independent labels, and for another level of access to get to
music from their three major-label partners in the RealNet alliance.
The publishers are still a huge stumbling block in Napster's path towards
a July re-launch as a centralized downloading service; the technical
challenges are also seen as formidable, since no one has ever attempted
to stream as much music as Napster is expected to dish out from a few
central servers.
The description of how the two-tier Napster will work -- with two
separate pieces of user software, initially -- sound like another flop
in the making.
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krj
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response 135 of 143:
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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.
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other
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response 136 of 143:
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Jun 17 06:38 UTC 2001 |
That's like prosecuting telcos for their customers' harassing phone calls.
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krj
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response 137 of 143:
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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...)
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other
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response 138 of 143:
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Jun 17 07:56 UTC 2001 |
What jurisdiction would an EU court have over an American ISP?
Even the French Nazi/Yahoo Auction thing is being reviewed because of
jurisdictional concerns.
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krj
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response 139 of 143:
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Jun 17 16:57 UTC 2001 |
Another summary article on recent developments with the big record
companies seizing control:
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=656204
Note that the Universal/Sony "Duet" vaporware online service has
now been renamed "pressplay."
Quote on how the legitimate download systems may still produce a
substantial revenue squeeze for the labels:
"Even at $20-$30 a month, for unlimited downloads, the record
companies could expect a steep drop in revenues per track:
consumers in America now pay over $1 per track on a CD album,
which will often contain songs they would never choose to pay for."
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krj
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response 140 of 143:
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Jun 17 17:12 UTC 2001 |
As someone mentioned in party recently, Audiogalaxy is where it's at.
Here's a Cnet article summarizing recent developments in the music file
trading scene for those of us who are technological Luddites:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6282002.html?tag=tp_pr
The quick summary: Napster may be fading away but new services are
seeing explosive growth.
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scg
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response 141 of 143:
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Jun 17 17:16 UTC 2001 |
Yes, making it easy to download tracks probably causes people to download more
of them. That's a deceptive measurement, though, since it's the initial
production, not each downloaded copy, that costs the record companies
significant amounts of money. It seems to me that the real question in terms
of whether the record companies would gain or lose revenue from a $30 per
month unlimited subscription service is whether the typical customer of that
service would otherwise be spending $30 per month on CDs.
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krj
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response 142 of 143:
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Jun 22 20:07 UTC 2001 |
Eric in resp:138, on international jurisdiction over American ISPs:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5093109,00.html?chkpt=zdnn_tp_
This ZDnet story is about The Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and
Foreign Judgements, a proposed treaty.
"'In a nutshell, it will strangle the Internet with a suffocating
blanket of overlapping jurisdictional claims, expose every Web
page publisher to liabilities for libel, defamation and other
speech offenses from virtually any country, (and) effectively strip
Internet service providers of protections from litigation over the
content they carry," Jamie Love, director of Ralph Nader's
Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), wrote in a report after the
meeting."
...
"The Hague treaty differs... it is much broader, requiring participants
to agree to enforce each others' laws on a variety of topics.
As it stands, the treaty would require courts to enforce the commercial
laws of the convention's 52 member nations, even if they prohibit actions
that are legal under local laws."
"Delegates did not soften speech laws to provide for countries that value
the exchange of information. In addition, they strengthened some
intellectual property provisions--over the objections of consumer groups.
"'The bottom line is that it didn't go well,' said Barry Steinhardt,
associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union... He said that
although American delegates listened to free-speech worries, most others
did not.
"CPT's Love agreed. "We got our ass kicked," he said. 'It was a bad two
weeks for us.'
"Free-speech advocates fear US citizens could lose many of their rights if
all web sites have to ensure they are following the narrowest laws, such
as those of, say, China or Morocco."
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tpryan
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response 143 of 143:
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Jun 22 21:59 UTC 2001 |
I have a suspicion there are a lot of communists in China.
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