COPYCENSE

“To say that AT&T was once the nation’s largest phone company is a bit like describing the Pentagon as America’s leading purchaser of guns and bullets. Until its government-imposed dissolution in 1984, AT&T enjoyed a market dominance unlike that of any corporation in modern history, rivaling only state monopolies in size and scope.

“Now — after a series of acquisitions and re-acquisitions so tangled it would take Herodotus to adequately chronicle them — AT&T is back, it’s big, and according to consumer advocates and some of the nation’s largest technology companies, AT&T wants to take over the Internet.

“The critics — including Apple, Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo — point out that AT&T, along with Verizon and Comcast, its main rivals in the telecom business, will dominate the U.S. market for residential high-speed Internet service for the foreseeable future. Currently, that market is worth $20 billion, and according to the Federal Communications Commission, the major “incumbent” phone and cable companies — such as AT&T — control 98 percent of the business. Now many fear that the phone and cable firms, with their enormous market power, will hold enormous sway over what Americans do online.

“Specifically, AT&T has hinted that it plans to charge Web companies a kind of toll to send data at the highest speeds down DSL lines into its subscribers’ homes. The plan would make AT&T a gatekeeper of media in your home.”

Farhad Manjoo. The Corporate Toll On The Internet. Salon.com. April 17, 2006.

See also:

James S. Granelli. Phone, Cable May Charge Dot-Coms That Want to Race Along the Internet. LATimes.com. April 9, 2006.

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

“To say that AT&T was once the nation’s largest phone company is a bit like describing the Pentagon as America’s leading purchaser of guns and bullets. Until its government-imposed dissolution in 1984, AT&T enjoyed a market dominance unlike that of any corporation in modern history, rivaling only state monopolies in size and scope.

“Now — after a series of acquisitions and re-acquisitions so tangled it would take Herodotus to adequately chronicle them — AT&T is back, it’s big, and according to consumer advocates and some of the nation’s largest technology companies, AT&T wants to take over the Internet.

“The critics — including Apple, Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo — point out that AT&T, along with Verizon and Comcast, its main rivals in the telecom business, will dominate the U.S. market for residential high-speed Internet service for the foreseeable future. Currently, that market is worth $20 billion, and according to the Federal Communications Commission, the major “incumbent” phone and cable companies — such as AT&T — control 98 percent of the business. Now many fear that the phone and cable firms, with their enormous market power, will hold enormous sway over what Americans do online.

“Specifically, AT&T has hinted that it plans to charge Web companies a kind of toll to send data at the highest speeds down DSL lines into its subscribers’ homes. The plan would make AT&T a gatekeeper of media in your home.”

Farhad Manjoo. The Corporate Toll On The Internet. Salon.com. April 17, 2006.

See also:

James S. Granelli. Phone, Cable May Charge Dot-Coms That Want to Race Along the Internet. LATimes.com. April 9, 2006.

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

“A prediction: the world of copyright law is about to collide with the world of digital indexing and search, and the collision will be among the most important digital copyright issues of the next several years.

“A few weeks ago, the major movie studios filed a lawsuit against the operators of TorrentSpy. Although the TorrentSpy suit has been characterized as just the latest chapter in the MPAA’s attack on BitTorrent file sharing, on closer examination it looks more like a wholesale attack against Internet indexing generally.

“In the complaint (.pdf), the studios level claims of contributory infringement, inducement, and vicarious liability against TorrentSpy for maintaining an index of “dot torrents.” These files are functionally similar to links, pointing to files hosted by others. Unlike some other sites, TorrentSpy neither maintains a “tracker” nor hosts any infringing files.

“In its motion to dismiss the suit, TorrentSpy puts the question crisply: how is TorrentSpy different from Google?

EFF Deep Links. Copyright v. Indexing, Part 1: TorrentSpy. March 31, 2006.

See also:

John Borland. MPAA Sues Newsgroup, P2P Search Sites. News.com. Feb. 23, 2006.

U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. et al. v. Justin Bunnell, et al. (Complaint for Copyright Infringement). (.pdf) Feb. 23, 2006.

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

“Internet shoppers accustomed to tax-free purchases from Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store soon may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

“State legislatures and tax officials, eager to find new ways to boost government spending and curb budget shortfalls, are eyeing the burgeoning market for digital downloads as a potentially lucrative source of revenue. Digital sales of music tripled from 2004 to 2005, leaping from $400 million to $1.1 billion worldwide, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade association known as IFPI. The U.S. recording industry estimates that domestic sales totaled $503 million last year, but that figure doesn’t include movies, e-books, online video games and other forms of digital media.

“A CNET News.com analysis shows that 15 states and the District of Columbia now tax downloads of music, movies and electronic books. Some high-tax states such as California do not levy the same charge on iTunes downloads, but that could soon change.”

Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache. The Tax Man Cometh After iTunes. News.com. April 13, 2006.

See also:

Arik Hesseldahl. Apple Takes Its Bankroll to Reno. BusinessWeek Online. April 5, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.1

“As TV marketers scramble to try and figure out what do to about growing digital video recorder (DVR) usage, broadcasters are becoming concerned that increased DVR usage means that users are skipping ever more ads, and that the ads they do see could be out of date. A remote storage DVR system would allow cable operators like Cablevision to place new ads in video streams as they are watched, rather than replay advertising that’s days old. They could also limit and/or remove users’ abilities to fast forward through all advertising.

“Leaving aside concerns over advertising, the copyright issues are particularly craggy. While a user’s personal right to timeshift is enshrined in law (for now), the remote-storage DVR pushes on this arrangement because ‘personal use’ becomes much more murky when it involves a third party sending or “rebroadcasting” content to that user, on demand. When this third party is making money off of this service, things get cloudier still. When one starts to think about how this could compete against existing on-demand services—the very same services being tapped to monetize hit network TV shows—then the clouds give way to hurricane winds.”

Ars Technica. Remote Storage DVRs Pose “Gigantic Copyright Issues.” April 10, 2006.

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

“For a 41-year-old investment portfolio manager in Manhattan, the Web site with the whimsical name made perfect sense. Like many Americans, she found herself awash in CD’s, DVD’s and VHS tapes that were seldom if ever played anymore. They just took up valuable space in the Upper West Side apartment where she lives with her husband and two young children.

“Then a friend of a friend told her about Zunafish, a new Web site that matches people with discs and tapes to trade — and video games and paperback books, too. The site, which looks remarkably similar to a prototype Mr. Bloom sketched on notebook paper four years ago with Mr. Elias, trades only one-for-one items within the same category — CD’s, DVD’s, VHS tapes, video games, audio books or paperback books. No item is worth more than any another.

“Traders using the site determine the relative value of an item by choosing to swap or not. No one is ever forced to make a trade.”

Michel Marriott. Read It? Watched It? Swap It. The New York Times. April 13, 2006.

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

” Online DVD rental services that deliver movies by mail are growing quickly, with more than 5 million subscribers nationwide. Now the company that pioneered the business, Netflix, is accusing Blockbuster of trying to copy its patented Internet business model.

“Netflix launched its service seven years ago in response to the founder’s frustration with late fees at video stores. Netflix subscribers can keep DVDs as long as they want. As soon as one is returned, a new movie is sent out from the customer’s online wish list. Netflix says that Blockbuster duplicated key features of that service when it launched its own online offering 19 months ago.”

Scott Horsley. Netflix Challenges Blockbuster Over Online Rentals. National Public Radio. April 10, 2006.

See also:

Eric Chabrow. A Patent Blockbuster. InformationWeek. April 10, 2006.

Gina Keating. Netflix May Face Tough Fight In Blockbuster Patent Suit. WashingtonPost.com. April 5, 2006.

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