COPYCENSE

"New digital technologies and the online environment pose significant challenges to the traditional business models of the music and film industries. The digital era threatens current revenue models by changing the environment in which copyright operates.

"To prevent unauthorized copying of their works, copyright holders have traditionally relied on practical barriers as well as their legal exclusive rights to control reproduction and distribution. The new technologies vitiating those practical barriers – peer-to-peer (P2P) services, digital compression technologies, and others – are demonstrating just how empty those legal rights may be and how poorly matched they may be with cultural norms and practice.

"Consumers are exploiting the exciting potential for greater interactivity and involvement with content, but also the opportunity to acquire content illicitly, and are thus finding themselves in conflict with many of those who make content possible."

Digital Media Project, Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Assessing the Impact of Policy Choices on Potential Online Business Models in the Music and Film Industries. (.pdf) Jan. 7, 2005.

Attribution: SNTReport.com first discovered news of this report which examines copyright implications for digital business models through a posting in beSpacific, edited by Sabrina I. Pacifici.

SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"New digital technologies and the online environment pose significant challenges to the traditional business models of the music and film industries. The digital era threatens current revenue models by changing the environment in which copyright operates.

"To prevent unauthorized copying of their works, copyright holders have traditionally relied on practical barriers as well as their legal exclusive rights to control reproduction and distribution. The new technologies vitiating those practical barriers – peer-to-peer (P2P) services, digital compression technologies, and others – are demonstrating just how empty those legal rights may be and how poorly matched they may be with cultural norms and practice.

"Consumers are exploiting the exciting potential for greater interactivity and involvement with content, but also the opportunity to acquire content illicitly, and are thus finding themselves in conflict with many of those who make content possible."

Digital Media Project, Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Assessing the Impact of Policy Choices on Potential Online Business Models in the Music and Film Industries. (.pdf) Jan. 7, 2005.

Attribution: SNTReport.com first discovered news of this report which examines copyright implications for digital business models through a posting in beSpacific, edited by Sabrina I. Pacifici.

SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"File traders who seed peer-to-peer networks with copyrighted material can be identified and traced, according to a US company.

"BayTSP, based in California, US, monitors peer-to-peer (P2P) trading networks using a technique called software ‘spidering’. The new software, called FirstSource, allows it to determine which user first uploaded a particular file for trading. It does this by mimicking the behaviour of a user on a massive scale – sending out multiple requests for a file extremely quickly. It deduces the culprits by assuming that only they will have the full 100% of the file, having uploaded the original."

Will Knight. Peer-to-Peer ‘Seeders’ Could be Targeted. New Scientist.com. Jan. 14, 2005.

No author. BayTSP Launches New Service That Identifies First Uploads To EDonkey, Bit Torrent P2P File-Sharing Networks. Mi2N.com. Jan. 11, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"XtremeMac on Tuesday released a gadget designed to let users listen to music stored on their iPods via any FM radio.

"The transmitter, dubbed the AirPlay, also works with the iPod Mini, Xtreme Mac said. The device transfers audio wirelessly from the music player to any FM radio, making it an attractive add-on, the company said, for people who don’t have casette or CD players in their cars.

"The gadget features a digital display that shows which frequency you’ll be transmitting on, and it does not require navigation of iPod menus. The display turns off after tuning to conserve the iPod battery, XtremeMac said. When the iPod begins to play, AirPlay automatically transmits on the last used radio frequency. The device costs $39.95, the company said."

Dinesh C. Sharma. Device Brings Your iPod Music to Any Radio. News.com. Jan. 12, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"As Americans commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy today, no television channel will be broadcasting the documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Produced in the 1980s and widely considered the most important encapsulation of the American civil-rights movement on video, the documentary series can no longer be broadcast or sold anywhere.

"Why?

"The makers of the series no longer have permission for the archival footage they previously used of such key events as the historic protest marches or the confrontations with Southern police. Given Eyes on the Prize’s tight budget, typical of any documentary, its filmmakers could barely afford the minimum five-year rights for use of the clips. That permission has long since expired, and the $250,000 to $500,000 needed to clear the numerous copyrights involved is proving too expensive.

"This is particularly dire now, because VHS copies of the series used in countless school curriculums are deteriorating beyond rehabilitation. With no new copies allowed to go on sale, ‘the whole thing, for all practical purposes, no longer exists,’ says Jon Else, a California-based filmmaker who helped produce and shoot the series and who also teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley."

Guy Dixon. How Copyright Could be Killing Culture. The Globe & Mail. Jan. 17, 2005.

See also:
Katie Dean. Bleary Days for Eyes on the Prize. Wired News. Dec. 22, 2004.

SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"A software company and its parent are claiming they hold patent rights to widely used Internet song-swapping technology, and they are demanding that several file-sharing networks obtain licenses in order to continue operating.

"Attorneys for Altnet Inc. and its parent company, Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc., sent letters to several U.S.-based file-swapping firms — including Lime Wire LLC, BearShare operator Free Peers Inc. and Mashboxx — claiming that the companies were using patented technology in their products. The letter doesn’t explicitly threaten a lawsuit but does invite the firms to ‘discuss licensing opportunities.’

"’You could call it a warning. We call it an offer to license our technology,’ said Lawrence M. Hadley, counsel for Altnet and Brilliant Digital.

"A valid patent would give the firm a tight hold on a popular means of identifying and trading digital copies of music, movies and software, just as a fledgling industry has sprung up to turn file sharing into a commercial enterprise."

David McGuire. Patents Pressed Against File-Sharing Networks. WashingtonPost.com. Jan. 13, 2005.

See also:
John Borland. Altnet Seeks Patent Royalties From P2P. News.com. Jan. 12, 2005.

(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.