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The CEO of Intel, Craig Barrett, spoke about digital rights at the 2003 International Consumer Electronics Show. His comments sought to strike a balance between fair use rights for consumers who legally purchase digital services and media, and appropriate punishment for those “who grossly violate anybody’s content.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a redesigned website, and also published a new report, Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA. The conclusion of the report states, “Four years of experience with the ‘anti-circumvention’ provisions of the DMCA demonstrate that the statute reaches too far, chilling a wide variety of legitimate activities in …
For all of us who stream music from radio stations around the country (and may I add, support them with donations), times are bleak. The Net Radio Act that stipulated a new webcasting royalty rate has not secured the future of music webcasts. This Wired article indicates that humdreds of stations are dropping the feeds …
The source code for the Microsoft Reader e-book as been hacked and posted online by UK programmer Dan Jackson. The program is aptly named Convert Lit (for the .lit format), and removes Microsoft copy protections from files, thus allowing them to be read on competitiors’ devices. Here is a link to the EU Copyright Commission …
Via Slashdot, here is a link to an interview on digital IP issues with Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Senior IP Attorney Fred Von Lohmann, conducted by TechFocus. Topics covered include Kazaa, DVRs, the impact of the DMCA and the need for legislative reform of the act, and balancing fair use with the rights of authors.
Kazaa, the immensely popular P2P file swapping software that claims to have 163 million users worldwide, remains one-step ahead of law suits for infringement. The company’s catch me if you can business operations model is purposefully convoluted and complex, stretching across three continents, according to this interesting BizReport article.
According to this current Chronicle of Higher Education article, dozens of journal articles have been removed from databases on Elsevier Science since 2000 due to copyright disputes with the authors.
According to the Boston Globe, the DMCA will be the focus of increasing controversy and lobbying by industry and consumer advocates in 2003. The Business Software Alliance, one of the act’s powerful backers, is fighting any expansion of consumer rights concerning the use of music and movie industry products, including legislation introduced by Rep. Boucher. …
On January 3, 2003, Supreme Court Justice O’Connor lifted the stay she ordered on December 26, 2002 in DVD Copy Control Association v. Matthew Pavlovich (S 100609), and upheld the California Supreme Court decision that Pavlovich (a Texas resident who does not do business in California) cannot be forced to stand trail in that state …
Wired details a DMCA dispute that is pitting ISP Verio against veteran thing.net communications from New York, a hybrid non-profit (serving the arts community) and for-profit telecom service. Thing.net hosted a site that lampooned Dow Chemical, using the company’s trademark, resulting in the termination of their service by Verio.
JD’s Blog mentioned a new site, Protect Fair Use, that is championing the right to make backup copies of DVDs. The site provides background on the copyright law as it applies to digital media, links to related pending legislation as well as to the DMCA, and press about how consumers have been impacted when attempting …
The EU Directive 2001/29/EC (22 May 2001) “on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society” has only two signatories as the deadline for its adoption came, and went. Only Greece and Denmark agreed to implement the EU’s counterpart to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), much to …
