Amazon.com Rumored Ready To Challenge iTunes
“In recent years, Amazon.com Inc. chief executive Jeff Bezos has explained his company’s deliberately paced approach to the digital-music business by saying he wants to avoid simply imitating the dominant player in the field, Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store.
“Now Amazon, the world’s No. 1 online retailer, is in advanced talks with the four global music companies about a digital-music service with a range of features designed to set it apart. Among them: Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs, not unlike mobile phones that are included with subscription plans as part of the deal.
“Music executives privately welcome Amazon’s plans, which they see as one of the only credible challenges to Apple’s hegemony in both digital music and portable players. Now the question is whether Amazon’s massive customer base is enough to offset a long delay in entering the online music business.”
Ethan Smith and Mylene Mangalindan. Amazon Plans Music Service To Rival iTunes. The Wall Street Journal Online. Feb. 16, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Google Desktop May Violate Federal Regulations
“Google Desktop’s new search-across-computers feature could put sensitive data at risk and violate federal data-privacy regulations, say IT administrators at a public university and a large manufacturing company. Both are banning it from their networks.
“Last week, Google unveiled Google Desktop 3, a free, downloadable program that includes an option to let users search across multiple computers for files. To do that, the application automatically stores copies of files, for up to a month, on Google servers. From there, copies are transferred to the user’s other computers for archiving. The data is encrypted in transmission and while stored on Google servers.”
Elinor Mills. More Worries About Google Desktop 3. News.com. Feb. 15, 2006.
Update:
Tom Espiner. Google Admits Desktop Security Risk. News.com. Feb. 20, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
DRM in Next-Gen DVDs Incompatible With Today’s Machines
“When the first high-definition DVDs finally hit shelves this spring, a mad scramble may ensue–not for the discs themselves, but to figure out what computers and devices are actually able to play them in their full glory.
“Unraveling the mystery won’t be easy. Many, if not most, of today’s top-of-the-line computers and monitors won’t make the cut, even if next-generation Blu-ray or HD DVD drives are installed.
“That’s because strict content protection technologies may automatically degrade the DVDs’ picture quality, or even block them from playing at all, if the right connections and digital protections aren’t in place. Even the most expensive computers sold today mostly lack those features.”
John Borland. New DVDs Already Sparking Copy-Protection Confusion. News.com. Feb. 16, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Sony Seeks to Regain Lost Ground With Reader
“Sony may have missed the boat in the digital music player craze, but it’s going to try to regain any lost credibility with its coming Sony Reader product. The Sony Reader sounds like a compelling product in a market that hasn’t been cracked yet — digital books.
“The Wall Street Journal reported on the device Thursday, but gadget fans already knew about it from January’s Consumer Electronics Show. The WSJ article points out the obvious idea that Sony may have ceded the digital music player market to Apple but that maybe it can make headway in the digital-book market, which is, arguably, very much untapped.”
Alyce Lomax. Sony Seeks Novel Success. TheMotleyFool.com. Feb. 16, 2006.
See also:
Bill Rosenblatt. Sony to Launch eBook Reader in U.S. DRM Watch. Feb. 16, 2006.
Amanda Andrews. Will Reader Do for Books What iPod Did for Music? TimesOnline. Feb. 4, 2006.
Jonathan Sidener and Diane Lindquist. New Display Technology Takes a Page — Make That Thousands of Pages — From Pulp-Based Predecessors. SignOnSanDiego.com. Jan. 23, 2006.
Dylan Tweney. Screening the Bestseller. Wired News. Jan. 20, 2006.
John G. Spooner. Sony Envisions New Chapter in E-Book Story. Publish. Jan. 16, 2006.
Alfred Hermida. Sony Reader Targets Book Lovers. BBC News. Jan. 6, 2006.
Update:
Candace Lombardi. Borders To Sell Sony Digital Reading Device. News.com. April 3, 2006.
BusinessWeek Onliine. Digital Books Start A New Chapter. Feb. 27, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
CopyCense Returns Tuesday, February 21
CopyCense will not publish on Monday, February 20, 2006. We will resume our normal publication schedule on Tuesday, February 21, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
NYC Loses Copyright to Ground Zero Photos
“A budding filmmaker that FEMA found in the yellow pages used his taxpayer-funded video of the smoldering World Trade Center ruins in a documentary featuring topless women chatting about their breasts.
“Provided with unique access in an NYPD helicopter, Gregg Brown was flown by cops over the restricted air space of Ground Zero daily for eight months beginning on Sept. 15, 2001, capturing countless hours of grim video while snapping 30,000 photographs.
“Red-faced officials at the city Department of Design & Construction concede that the stunning, gut-wrenching material was supposed to belong to the people who paid for it — the citizens of New York and the nation. But Brown, who was ultimately paid up to $302,000 in federal 9/11 disaster recovery funds, refused to sign a prepared agreement ceding ‘title and ownership’ to the city.”
Greg B. Smith. Shameful Abuse of 9/11 Footage. Daily News. Feb. 11, 2006.
See also:
Meredith McKeown. Gregg Brown’s Photographic Odyssey. LIFE. No date.
Gregg Brown. Above Ground Zero. No date.
Updates:
Greg B. Smith. WTC Pix Snafu Not My Fault. Daily News. Feb. 14, 2006.
Attribution: CopyCense first learned of this story via a post in The Trademark Blog, edited by Marty Schwimmer.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Copyright As DRM Antidote
“Copyright holders today increasingly find their rights and responsibilities dictated not by the explicit words of the copyright statute, but instead by the powers and limitations of what has come to be known as “digital rights management” technology. In this ten-page magazine-style piece, I consider how copyright law should respond.
“My argument proceeds in two basic steps. First, I argue that, while DRM might represent a powerful restriction, the constraint will never be Orwellian. Second, if all this is true, then DRM simply makes copyright law look a lot like every other area of legal endeavor. Put differently: as I show in the piece, criminal law, trade secret protection, First Amendment jurisprudence, and indeed every other legal regime is today implemented through a combination of powerful public mechanisms and less costly but weaker private ones. DRM, I argue, simply brings copyright law into the fold.”
Douglas Lichtman. Defusing DRM. SSRN. Feb. 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
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