COPYCENSE

“In a report (.pdf) presented at the World Bank on Friday, a group that includes senior government officials from 13 countries urged nations to adopt open information technology standards as a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation.

“The group’s work was coordinated by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, and the report is called a ‘road map’ for helping develop national policies on open technology standards.”

Steve Lohr. Nations Urged to Embrace Open Technology Standards. TechNewsWold. Sept. 14, 2005.

See also:

Open ePolicy Group. Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems. (.pdf) Sept. 9, 2005.

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

“The possibility that consumers will have to choose from two competing DVD formats next year is growing now that negotiations have broken down between the groups behind the different standards.

“Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp., which supports a format known as Blu-ray, and a bloc led by Toshiba Corp., which backs the rival HD DVD system, began discussions this year to see whether they could agree on a unified format. But the talks have been suspended indefinitely.”

Associated Press. Talks Between DVD Groups Break Down. SiliconValley.com. Aug. 23, 2005.

See also:

DVD Forum: An international organization composed of hardware, software, and entertainment companies that use and develop the DVD format. The group also licenses the DVD format and logo. DVD Forum is promoting the HD DVD standard.

Blu-ray Disc Association: An international organization composed of hardware, software, and entertainments companies that is promoting and further developing business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc, an optical disc format that has higher capacity (22 GB) than the HD DVD format (17 GB).

"The
digitization of life in our world is creating more and more questions in the
world of copyright and licensing. 

"The following information is meant to give
you a brief overview of some of the many issues you may encounter. 
Additionally, it is meant to provide you with some reliable resources to use in
your quest to obtain appropriate permissions for the use of copyrighted works."

Therese A.Clark Arado. Copyright and Licensing Digital Materials – A Resource Guide. LLRX.com. Aug. 19, 2005.

“Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans.

“Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.”

BBC News. Downloading ‘Myths’ Challenged. July 27, 2005.

“Campaigns to persuade people to stop downloading pirated games or software from the internet are not working, a report suggests.

“Two UK university researchers found that people did not see downloading copyrighted material as theft.

“The findings are unwelcome news for the games industry, which says it loses more than £2bn annually from piracy.”

BBC News. Software Piracy ‘Seen as Normal’. June 23, 2005.