COPYCENSE

“[A] good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers — which doesn’t seem that outlandish at this point — then I guess we’ll all know the extent of the desperation. Investor, beware.” — The Motley Fool.

Alyce Lomax. We’re All Thieves to the RIAA. The Motley Fool. Jan. 2, 2008. The Fool, along with several other news outlets, reported the erroneous information that the RIAA argued ripping to CD is copyright infringement, an error we caught and explained in our Dec. 11 edition of Clippings. The key portion of this post is an investment Web site’s advice to readers to divest themselves of stock holdings in the four multinationals that include record companies among their holdings. If investment industry officials no longer have faith in your business model, that’s fatal.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings, and it was a Quote of the Week selection.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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Mike Elgan. I Want to Live in a Surveillance Society. Computerworld. Jan. 3, 2008. We’ve heard before the argument that one of the the best ways to limit privacy violations is to subject everyone (including government and law enforcement officials) to the very same surveillance they seek to impose on citizens. This article expresses a related view, namely when we discuss privacy and security, we should pay as much attention to keeping public what should be public as we pay to keeping private what should be private.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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Catherine Holahan. Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM. BusinessWeek. Jan. 4, 2008. This may have been news four years ago. Now it’s merely a reminder that the executives running the music labels are clueless. Meanwhile, Wired asks whether Sony’s downloads will be with or without watermarks.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2007, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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The Wired Campus (Chronicle of Higher Education). Bucking Music Piracy Accusations at the U. of Washington. Jan. 2, 2008. Another sign that universities increasingly are reversing their former stance on file sharing lawsuit subpoenas, which reflexively shuttled requested information to the RIAA’s local counsel. As the file sharing lawsuit campaign becomes less pro forma, we wonder when local counsel (which the RIAA uses to file these lawsuits) begins to balk at accepting the work because the litigation sucks up too many resources from their respective practices.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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The Patry Copyright Blog. What RIAA Has Said About Home Taping. Jan. 7, 2007. Yes, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher got the “RIAA says ripping to CD is illegal” story so very wrong. Unfortunately, what the RIAA has said about its stance on home taping (or ripping to CD) is clear as mud. Patry sifts through the RIAA’s stance on these issues, and gives credence to the contention that fuzziness in this area does consumers no good, especially since the RIAA has shown it will sue even if a rightful owner does anything that does not involve a paid license.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings, and it was an Article of the Week selection.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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The Patry Copyright Blog. What RIAA Has Said About Home Taping. Jan. 7, 2007. Yes, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher got the “RIAA says ripping to CD is illegal” story so very wrong. Unfortunately, what the RIAA has said about its stance on home taping (or ripping to CD) is clear as mud. Patry sifts through the RIAA’s stance on these issues, and gives credence to the contention that fuzziness in this area does consumers no good, especially since the RIAA has shown it will sue even if a rightful owner does anything that does not involve a paid license.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings, and it was an Article of the Week selection.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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TorrentFreak. Oscars Veteran Resigns Over DVD Screener Piracy Threat. Jan. 5, 2008. The film award season always is a special time of year for those that think such things have life significance. It also means bucket loads of DVDs will criss-cross the country, as members of the Academy screen the films and are feted “for [their] consideration” of an Oscar nomination.

Until recently, Oscar nominations or wins never factored into any sort of movie marketing. (We first recall a notable push to market a film’s quality based upon the number of Oscar winners when we saw trailers for the 2002 film Insomnia.) Now, every two-bit film that has a single nominee makes sure the audience knows that factoid. It’s as if the producers imply with this sort of marketing that “because we have this Academy Award winner and that Academy Award nominee, this film won’t be an utter and complete waste of $100 million (or more).”

But we digress.

Film distribution season also means that the films will get copied and, as always happens, find their way onto the Web. This is the first year we’ve heard about the Academy taking strong steps to halt the copying, and also the first time we’ve heard that an Academy member resigned in protest. We presume all the brouhaha is about protecting the nominated films’ lucrative downstream DVD market, but we’re sure screeners don’t like being made out to be criminals.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 8, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

Copycense™: Incisive IP.™

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