Posts Tagged ‘Legal and Copyright’

A shinny new PC that won’t let me play a borrowed CD? Whazzup with that?

Friday, October 4th, 2002

A nice little article on Apple’s resistance (so far) to hardwired Digital Rights Management. What exactly is DRM and how does it affect me, you ask? Well:

The era of Digital Rights Management, commonly called DRM, is swiftly moving closer, thanks to the Intels and AMDs and Microsofts. They’re busy selling and creating the tools that give copyright holders the ability to tell users of copyrighted material — customers, scholars, libraries, etc. — precisely how they may use it. DRM, in the most typical use of the expression, is about owners’ rights. It would be more accurate to call DRM, in that context, “Digital Restrictions Management.”

This kind of “innovation” flies in the face of fair use which will become all the more important as we move further into a digital world.

Don’t swap files. It’s bad, m’kayyyy….

Thursday, September 26th, 2002

The RIAA is embarking on an ad campaign with superstars, public interest-style, lecturing the masses on how wrong MP3 swapping is. Now we get to see exactly which stars are completely in the pocket of the recording industry.

Is it any suprise that Britney Spears is one such puppet? To quote: “Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It’s the same thing–people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music.”

Maybe if you’re puppeteers weren’t asking $15 a pop for 3 decent tracks and the rest all filler crap….

Copyright infringment? Worse than a giant radio active lizzard?

Thursday, August 15th, 2002

What’s more fearsome than Godzilla? The lawyers of Toho, the company that owns his rights, that’s who! They are saying that the weblog Davezilla and it’s logo bare too much resembelance to the Tokyo-wrecking lizard and would be easily confused in the minds of their consumers, so they’ve had their lawyers issue a cease and decist letter to have the logo changed.

Are you kidding me? You would have to be completely brain dead to ever get the two confused. And I’m not the only one who thinks this is a travisty. Hey Toho! You fuck with one of us, you fuck with all of us!

Hope you’re not too attached to your digital porn collection

Wednesday, July 24th, 2002

Hope those of you who push pixels for fun and profit aren’t too attached to the JPEG standard, because the actions of one greedy little Austin, Texas based video conferencing company could get the standard pulled by the ISO. Bastards!

Forgent Networks came to own patents relating to the JPEG image format in 1997. The now 17 year old patents are set to expire in 2004, so what’s Forgent to do? That’s right — they’re going to screw over the public and milk those pieces of paper for all they’re worth. Assholes!

This has got a lot of people rubbed the wrong way, though it’s not set it stone yet. If prior art can be shown, then there’s a chance that this will all blow over. Still, this is another example of our flawed copyright system at work. JPEG committee member Richard Clark summed it up pretty well here:

“Originally patents were a bargain to protect a little man with a brilliant invention. Now they’re held by big corporates, and often extended beyond the lifetime of the product”.

Does anyone else think that’s a little bass-akwards, or is it just me?

Someone with a brain in Washington fights the good fight

Wednesday, July 10th, 2002

Finally, someone in congress that gets it! Representative Rick Boucher of Virginia is introducing one bill that would essentially restrict the record industry from selling copy-protected CDs and another bill to update the U.S. Copyright Office’s Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (which should makes webcasters extremely happy), among other changes to a broken system.

Some of the high points (as I see them) include:

  • Royalty payments would go direct to artists, instead of the current"shared among the recording companies and performing artists" system.
  • Allow back up copies of music on a hard drive. I don’t think this means having a back-up copy of your friend’s tracks on your hard drive, but it will make having MP3′s from the CD’s you own nice and legal.
  • Creating a kind of "rotalty deposit" that would let a user or potential licensee of older music operate while the federal copyright office makes its sometimes lengthy search for a copyright owner or publisher.

This is by no means a slam dunk, as the recording industry’s lobby has already pledged to fight this, but at least the effort is there. I have a good feeling that some of it will get through to the finish line. Let’s just hope that what does make it is substancial enough to make a difference.