COPYCENSE

“In 2013, copyright in the sound recording of the Beatles’ first album expires, as it will for recordings from Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and other performers of the same period. In the midst of an explosion in digital music sales, and a flourishing new music scene, industry executives are lobbying the UK government to extend protection for sound recordings from 50 years to 95.

“On the one hand, a powerful industry lobby, responsible for many UK jobs, says it needs this change in copyright law to survive. On the other, it is not the government’s role to protect one section of industry at the expense of innovation in another.

“It is what is sometimes called the Goldilocks problem.”

Kay Withers. Copyright Sings to a Different Tune. BBC News. Feb. 17, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“DRM (Digital Rights Management) has traditionally been thought of as a tool to enforce copyright. As such, it has failed spectacularly on several occasions. Practically every DRM solution with wide enough deployment for people to care was defeated within a short period of time.

“In this article, we propose alternative business models which would provide the participating parties with the right incentives to do what other participants expect them to do, irrespectively whether or not copyright is enforced. The proposed business models are based on several already successful business practices, which encourage creativity without relying on copyright protection.”

Daniel A. Nagy. DRM Beyond Copyright Enforcement – Alternative Models for Content Distribution. INDICARE. Feb. 15, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Two German Video-DVDs use a new copy protection scheme which creates a security risk on Windows machines. The copy protection mechanism called Alpha-DVD was developed by Settec, a Korean company spun off from electronics giant LG.

“When the disc is inserted into a Windows PC, a window boldly announces that the disc can only be played after installing copy protection software. When the user clicks on “I agree”, Alpha-DVD installs three files to the system32 directory and loads into memory. The copy protection hides from the Task Manager by injecting a library into all running user level processes. There is no simple way for Windows users to know whether Alpha-DVD is installed on their machines.

“This library can easily be misused by third-party software for malignant purposes. heise Security has developed a proof-of-concept application which can call on Alpha-DVD to hide itself from the OS. It takes only a few lines of code to make use of Alpha-DVDs stealth functionality.”

Heise Online. DVD Copy Protection Creates Security Risk. Feb. 14, 2006.

See also:

Joris Evers. Homeland Security Official Suggests Outlawing Rootkits. News.com. Feb. 16, 2006.

Robert McMillan. Sony Rootkit Experience May Lead to Federal Oversight. IDG News Service. Feb. 16, 2006.

Ryan Naraine. ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ DVD Ships With Rootkit-like DRM. eWeek. Feb. 14, 2006.

Settec. Entertainment Copy Protection: Alpha-DVD. No date.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Google Desktop’s new search-across-computers feature could put sensitive data at risk and violate federal data-privacy regulations, say IT administrators at a public university and a large manufacturing company. Both are banning it from their networks.

“Last week, Google unveiled Google Desktop 3, a free, downloadable program that includes an option to let users search across multiple computers for files. To do that, the application automatically stores copies of files, for up to a month, on Google servers. From there, copies are transferred to the user’s other computers for archiving. The data is encrypted in transmission and while stored on Google servers.”

Elinor Mills. More Worries About Google Desktop 3. News.com. Feb. 15, 2006.

Update:

Tom Espiner. Google Admits Desktop Security Risk. News.com. Feb. 20, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“When the first high-definition DVDs finally hit shelves this spring, a mad scramble may ensue–not for the discs themselves, but to figure out what computers and devices are actually able to play them in their full glory.

“Unraveling the mystery won’t be easy. Many, if not most, of today’s top-of-the-line computers and monitors won’t make the cut, even if next-generation Blu-ray or HD DVD drives are installed.

“That’s because strict content protection technologies may automatically degrade the DVDs’ picture quality, or even block them from playing at all, if the right connections and digital protections aren’t in place. Even the most expensive computers sold today mostly lack those features.”

John Borland. New DVDs Already Sparking Copy-Protection Confusion. News.com. Feb. 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Sony may have missed the boat in the digital music player craze, but it’s going to try to regain any lost credibility with its coming Sony Reader product. The Sony Reader sounds like a compelling product in a market that hasn’t been cracked yet — digital books.

“The Wall Street Journal reported on the device Thursday, but gadget fans already knew about it from January’s Consumer Electronics Show. The WSJ article points out the obvious idea that Sony may have ceded the digital music player market to Apple but that maybe it can make headway in the digital-book market, which is, arguably, very much untapped.”

Alyce Lomax. Sony Seeks Novel Success. TheMotleyFool.com. Feb. 16, 2006.

See also:

Bill Rosenblatt. Sony to Launch eBook Reader in U.S. DRM Watch. Feb. 16, 2006.

Amanda Andrews. Will Reader Do for Books What iPod Did for Music? TimesOnline. Feb. 4, 2006.

Jonathan Sidener and Diane Lindquist. New Display Technology Takes a Page — Make That Thousands of Pages — From Pulp-Based Predecessors. SignOnSanDiego.com. Jan. 23, 2006.

Dylan Tweney. Screening the Bestseller. Wired News. Jan. 20, 2006.

John G. Spooner. Sony Envisions New Chapter in E-Book Story. Publish. Jan. 16, 2006.

Alfred Hermida. Sony Reader Targets Book Lovers. BBC News. Jan. 6, 2006.

Update:

Candace Lombardi. Borders To Sell Sony Digital Reading Device. News.com. April 3, 2006.

BusinessWeek Onliine. Digital Books Start A New Chapter. Feb. 27, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.