COPYCENSE

Commentary by K. Matthew Dames, executive editor.

There was once this guy called Michael Jordan. He used to play basketball. He was pretty good.

A few years ago — April 20, 1986, specifically — this Jordan guy was in Boston, Mass. to play a basketball game. Jordan had missed most of that season (his second as a professional) with a foot injury, and rushed himself back so that he could play in that game. On that day, in that game, this Jordan kid proceeded to pummel the legendary Boston Celtics with an array of spins, pirouettes, fades, crossovers, and vacuum-inducing dunks that left the best team in basketball dazed and confused with admiration and respect.

Larry Bird, who at that time was probably the best player in the same league as Jordan said after the game, “I didn’t think anyone was capable of doing what Michael has done to us. He is the most exciting, awesome player in the game today. I think it’s just God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

Steve Jobs is on that kind of roll. “Unconscious,” is the term sportscasters would use.

Read the rest of this entry »

The shakedown is on.

In the aftermath of the dot-com bust, a new kind of business with a simple, yet potentially lethal, model has emerged. Call them the ‘patent trolls.’

These operators have no products or customers. Yet they wield the power to bring the companies that actually make and sell products to their knees. This makes them as threatening as the toughest competitor in the market.

Joe Beyers. Rise of the Patent Trolls. News.com. Oct. 12, 2005.

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

“In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple’s success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan’s music industry has a different idea: putting a fee on iPods.

“The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple’s iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, which will be probably be 2 to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for revenue lost from home copying.”

Martin Fackler. Japan’s Music Industry Wants Fee on Sales of Latest Digital Players. The New York Times. Oct. 10, 2005.

(Editor’s Note: The Times allows free access to their stories on the Web for seven days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archive.)

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

“A recent note on the govdoc-l mailing list provides a glimpse of the government restricting access to government information in the digital environment.

“The message is an invitation to review Library of Congress Subject Headings, 28th edition (‘e-LCSH‘).

“‘The Government Printing Office (GPO) and Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) are investigating options for electronic dissemination of CDS cataloging publications to federal depository libraries’ but notes that ‘the Library of Congress Subject

Headings is a CDS sale product for which costs must be recovered.'”

Free Government Information. GPO Details Onerous Restrictions on Digital Materials. Oct. 6, 2005.

See also:

Nathaniel Kraft. Review of E-LCSH. Oct. 5, 2005.

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

“Dear Recording Industry,

“You’re being had.

“Online music sales have soared. Millions of consumers are discovering the convenience of buying music online. There’s just one problem: if you don’t change your strategy, you’re going to give the store away to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. His iTunes Music Store is the industry leader, and thanks to digital rights management (DRM) technology, every customer who buys your products from the iTunes Music Store becomes locked into Apple products. If that’s not changed, that will soon make Steve Jobs the most powerful man in your industry.”

Brainwash. The Recording Industry’s New Clothes. Oct. 9, 2005.

“On Oct. 3, as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. presided over his first day at the Supreme Court, President George W. Bush was in the West Wing introducing the woman who might soon take her own seat on the court — White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

“One segment of American society is cheering: Big Business. The addition of Roberts, who spent years as a corporate litigator, was heartening to them. The prospect of Miers, who has defended the likes of Microsoft Corp. and Walt Disney Co. and has been a leading advocate for tort reform, has many executives downright giddy.”

Lorraine Woellert and Richard S. Dunham. Business May Get More Days In Court. BusinessWeek Online. Oct. 17, 2005.

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

"Continuing a pattern of kinder, gentler software licensing terms and relationships, Microsoft announced this week its simplified, virtualization-ready Windows Server
licensing that allows as many as four virtual instances of the software
on one physical server for the same price.

"Virtualization involves the use of server software in the abstract,
rather than a specific machine, and flows from hardware advances that
allow multi-core processing and enhanced capability to run these
‘virtual’ servers simultaneously.

"Industry analysts — who had mixed
reactions to the Microsoft licensing move — have long warned that with
dual-core, or other multi-core processors and increased virtualization,
companies face higher costs through software licensing."

Jay Leman. Microsoft Rolls Out Virtualized Licensing. TechNewsWorld. Oct. 10, 2005.

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