COPYCENSE

Due to several other editorial commitments over the past seven days, we have an abbreviated version of CopyCense Clippings this week. We’ll return with a full version next Monday.

Clippings

• Katie Hafner. We’re Google. So Sue Us. The New York Times. Oct. 23, 2006. An inside look at Google’s legal department and a peek into its litigation philosophy.
• Mike Musgrove. A Messy Age for Music. WashingtonPost.com. Oct. 22, 2006. One of the nation’s most respected newspapers devotes a special Sunday section to copyright and downloading. Virtually none of the articles reveals anything new to regular CopyCense readers. What’s significant is that one of the nation’s most respected newspapers devotes a special Sunday section to copyright and downloading. (Make sure you read Rob Pegoraro’s brief history of recorded music.)
• Christopher Conkey. Libraries Beckon, But Stacks of Books Aren’t Part of Pitch. The Wall Street Journal. Oct. 21, 2006. This article outlines how libraries are transforming themselves into information centers on some college campuses. Unfortunately, this transformation still lags way behind the way information transfer has evolved, and the transformation has, by and large, failed to hit public libraries at all.
• Greg Sandoval. YouTube’s No Friend To Copyright Violators. News.com. Oct. 21, 2006. We’ve said this many times: always, always, always read a Web site’s terms (conditions) of use contract.
• Hardware 2.0. Controlling The Kernel — It’s All About DRM. Oct. 20, 2006. Adrian W. Kingsley-Hughes opines that Microsoft’s Vista DRM measures are about introducing a Windows-based media business model, not security.
• ArsTechnica. Boy Scouts Get MPAA-Approved Copyright Merit Badge. Oct. 20, 2005. Remember when Disney used an episode of The Proud Family to demonstrate to kids the evils of file sharing? This is merely an extension of that tactic. Since Big Content is comfortable that Congress is comfortably in check on the copyright front, they’ve turned their domestic attention to passing legislation and instituting related initiatives that influence a younger crowd at the state and local level. This is almost as bad as school districts cutting revenue deals with cola manufacturers.
• Alex Veiga. Universal Music Group Files Lawsuits Against Online Video Sites. MercuryNews.com. (via The Associated Press). Oct. 17, 2006. This could turn out to be a seminal case that, along with YouTube lawsuits, tests the boundaries of the DMCA.

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