Tag: Copyright
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Microsoft to Pay Per-Processor License on Zune
Last week Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the major record companies, announced a deal with Microsoft, under which UMG would receive a royalty for every Zune music player Microsoft sells. (Zune is Microsoft’s new iPod competitor.) This may be a first. Apple doesn’t pay a per-iPod fee to record companies; instead it pays a…
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YouTube and Copyright
YouTube has been much in the news lately. Around the time it was bought by Google for $1.65 billion, YouTube signed copyright licensing deals with CBS television and two record companies (UMG and Sony BMG). Meanwhile, its smaller rivals Bolt and Grouper were sued by the record industry for infringement. The copyright deals are interesting.…
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PRM Wars
Today I want to wrap up the recap of my invited talk at Usenix Security. Previously (1; 2) I explained how advocates of DRM-bolstering laws are starting to switch to arguments based on price discrimination and platform lock-in, and how technology is starting to enable the use of DRM-like technologies, which I dubbed Property Rights…
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DRM Wars: Property Rights Management
In the first part of my invited talk at Usenix Security, I argued that as the inability of DRM technology to stop peer-to-peer infringement becomes increasingly obvious to everybody, the rationale for DRM is shifting. The new argument for DRM-bolstering laws is that DRM enables price discrimination and platform lock-in, which are almost always good…
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DRM Wars: The Next Generation
Last week at the Usenix Security Symposium, I gave an invited talk, with the same title as this post. The gist of the talk was that the debate about DRM (copy protection) technologies, which has been stalemated for years now, will soon enter a new phase. I’ll spend this post, and one or two more,…
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Bill Gates: Is he an IP Maximalist, or an Open Access Advocate?
Maybe both. On July 20, the Wall Street Journal reported: Frustrated that over two decades of research have failed to produce an AIDS vaccine, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates is tying his foundation’s latest, biggest AIDS-vaccine grants to a radical concept: Those who get the money must first agree to share the results of their…
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More on Meta-Freedom
Tim Lee comments: The fact that you can waive your free speech rights via contract doesn’t mean that it would be a good idea to enact special laws backing up those contracts with criminal penalties. I think you’re missing an important middle ground here. The choice isn’t between no tinkering rights and constitutionally mandated tinkering…
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CleanFlicks Ruled an Infringer
Joe Gratz writes, Judge Richard P. Matsch of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado [on] Wednesday filed this opinion granting partial summary judgment in favor of the movie studios, finding that CleanFlicks infringes copyright. This is not a terribly surprising result; CleanFlicks’ business involves selling edited DVD-Rs of Hollywood movies, buying…
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University-Purchased Music Services a Bust
When universities buy music service subscriptions for their students, few students use them, according to Nick Timiraos’s story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Students tend to download music illegally, or buy it from iTunes instead. In explaining the popularity of Napster and other file-sharing systems, commentators have often overemphasized the price factor and underestimated convenience.…
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Princeton-Microsoft IP Conference Liveblog
Today I’m at the Princeton-Microsoft Intellectual Property Conference. I’ll be blogging some of the panels as they occur. There are parallel sessions, and I’m on one panel, so I can’t cover everything. The first panel is on “Organizing the Public Interest”. Panelists are Yochai Benkler, David Einhorn, Margaret Hedstrom, Larry Lessig, and Gigi Sohn. The…