Archive for November 29th, 2004
U.S. to Anoint Copyright Czar
"Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar.
"Under the program, the president can appoint a copyright law enforcement officer whose job is to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at stopping international copyright infringement and to oversee a federal umbrella agency responsible for administering intellectual property law."
Reuters. Lawmakers OK Antipiracy Czar. News.com. Nov. 23, 2004.
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Rip & Burn Made Legal
"While the music industry attempts to shutter peer-to-peer services in court and in Congress, one company is using P2P networks to promote and pay artists.
"Shared Media Licensing, based in Seattle, offers Weed, a software program that allows interested music fans to download a song and play it three times for free. They are prompted to pay for the ‘Weed file’ the fourth time. Songs cost about a dollar and can be burned to an unlimited number of CDs, passed around on file-sharing networks and posted to web pages."
Katie Dean. File Sharing Growing Like a Weed. Wired News. Nov. 22, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.
Rip & Burn Made Legal
"While the music industry attempts to shutter peer-to-peer services in court and in Congress, one company is using P2P networks to promote and pay artists.
"Shared Media Licensing, based in Seattle, offers Weed, a software program that allows interested music fans to download a song and play it three times for free. They are prompted to pay for the ‘Weed file’ the fourth time. Songs cost about a dollar and can be burned to an unlimited number of CDs, passed around on file-sharing networks and posted to web pages."
Katie Dean. File Sharing Growing Like a Weed. Wired News. Nov. 22, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.
The Problem with U.S. Copyright Policy
"Imagine a process of reviewing prescription drugs which goes like this: representatives from the drug company come to the regulators and argue that their drug works well and should be approved. They have no evidence of this beyond a few anecdotes about people who want to take it and perhaps some very simple models of how the drug might affect the human body. The drug is approved. No trials, no empirical evidence of any kind, no follow-up.
"Even the harshest critics of drug regulation or environmental regulation would admit we generally do better than this. But this is often the way we make intellectual property policy. Representatives of interested industries come to regulators and ask for another heaping slice of monopoly rent in the form of an intellectual property right. They have doom-laden predictions, they have anecdotes, carefully selected to pluck the heartstrings of legislators, they have celebrities who testify – often incoherently, but with palpable charisma."
James Boyle. A Natural Experiment. FT.com. Nov. 22, 2004.
SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.
Actor Fined For Film Piracy
"Warner Bros. has secured a $309,600 judgment against an actor for allegedly making promotional ‘screener’ copies of ‘The Last Samurai‘ and ‘Mystic River‘ available for bootleg DVD copying and unauthorized Internet trading, the studio said Tuesday.
"Studio officials say Carmine Caridi, a former recurring actor on ‘NYPD Blue,’ has refused to respond to their civil suit for copyright infringement, forcing them to ask the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to enter a default judgment of $150,000 per film and $9,600 in attorney fees.
"Judge Stephen Wilson granted that request, adding that the defendant’s conduct was ‘particularly egregious’ because of the intentional and deliberate nature of the infringement."
Jesse Hiestand Actor Must Pay $309,600 in Film Piracy Case. WashingtonPost.com. Nov. 24, 2004.
(Editor’s Note: The Post allows free access to their stories on the Web for 14 days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archives.)
SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.
COPYCENSE 