Category: Uncategorized
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Long DRM Article in Today's NYT
Today’s New York Times offers a long article by Amy Harmon on DRM, or “digital armor” on recorded media. It’s mostly a backgrounder for people less up-to-speed on DRM issues than most of my readers (probably) are, but there are a few new nuggets worth noting. First, Jack Valenti tries yet another analogy: “We need…
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NYT Changes Copyright-Expiration Story
On Thursday I critiqued a New York Times story (which appeared in the print edition on Friday) about the expiration of some European copyrights on recorded music. Joe Liu points out that the Times has changed the story to address one of the issues I raised. The original story said: Defenders of the copyright laws,…
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News Flash: Some Copyrights to Expire
An article by Anthony Tommasini at the New York Times (online) reports that the European copyrights on many musical recordings for the 50’s will be expiring soon. Some paint this as a disaster for the recording industry. This is one of those articles that just cries out for skeptical analysis. Several points leap to mind.…
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Everything Is Not Possible
Ted Shelton points out the unintended irony in HP’s new “Everything is Possible” ads running alongside articles about abuses of technology. Something else about the “Everything is Possible” slogan bugs me more. The slogan is, well, wrong. Technology does not make everything possible. Some things are impossible, and some cannot be done without harmful side-effects.…
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Happy Holidays
There will be few if any postings here until January 2. Enjoy the holidays, and I’ll see you here next year!
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DMCA Submission Site
The U.S. government’s Copyright Office has put up a site containing all of the requested exemptions from the DMCA’s ban on circumvention of access controls. There are fifty submissions in all, including mine. In January, the reply comment period will open. Anyone can submit reply comments, either opposing or supporting any of the requested exemptions.…
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Take It Easy on Donna Today
One of the apparent themes this week is the Conspiracy to Silence Donna Wentworth. First, Donna’s great blog, Copyfight, was apparently being blocked by the CyberPatrol web filtering software as “possibly inappropriate content.” Then two issues of Donna’s email newsletter, The Filter, were labeled by SpamAssassin as “probably spam.” (Seth Finkelstein diagnoses the latter problem,…
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Another Voice on Compulsory Music Licensing
Over at BoingBoing, Xeni Jardin discusses Ken Hertz’s speech accepting an ACLU Bill of Rights Award. Hertz advocates a compulsory license for online music sharing. (This is something I have discussed (but not endorsed) before.) The significance of this, according to Xeni, is that Ken Hertz has represented several big-name musicians, including Will Smith and…
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Movie Studios File DMCA Suit Against 321
According to an AP story by Ron Harris, Seven major motion picture studios filed a counterclaim Thursday in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California against 321 Studios, makers of DVD Copy Plus and DVD X Copy. The software sold at stores nationwide allows the user to make a copy of a DVD to a…
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My DMCA Exemption Request
Yesterday was the deadline for submitting to the Librarian of Congress any requests for exemptions from the DMCA’s ban on circumvention of access control technologies. I submitted a request, asking for an exemption for legitimate research study of access control technologies.