NotesWhen I went to Washington DC a few weeks ago with other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, one of those whom I had the pleasure of meeting and walking the halls of Congress with was David Ulevitch, the CEO of OpenDNS, the world's largest DNS and internet security service. His service protects over 30 million people every day, and is currently used to protect people in approximately one-third of every public K-12 school. Hearing his story and his concerns about PROTECT IP and SOPA was really eye-opening. He's someone who clearly understands DNS and DNS/IP blocking better than probably anyone. And he told me that if SOPA were in place when he was first creating OpenDNS, he wouldn't have bothered. The liability would be just too great. FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesAdobe's decision to stop developing mobile Flash shouldn't surprise: Adobe can see there's more money in preventing people watching stuff than enabling them to do so.
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Amazon's Kindle might be the biggest kid on the block, but just about all the other electronic book readers rely on Adobe's Digital Editions DRM to protect (and distribute) their content (which is laid out using the Adobe-owned-but-happily-shared ePub format).FeedUnfurl
NotesIn a Monday court filing, Warner Brothers admitted that it has issued takedown notices for files without looking at them first. The studio also acknowledged that it issued takedown notices for a number of URLs that its adversary, the locker site Hotfile, says were obviously not Warner Brothers' content.Unfurl
NotesFor years, the Motion Picture Association of America has been pushing legislation to ratchet up copyright enforcement. In 2008, the association helped push through the PRO-IP Act , which allowed the federal government to seize domain names used for copyright infringement and created a new federal...Unfurl
Notes"I think Congress got it right, but I think the courts are getting it wrong," Pariser said during a panel discussion at the NY Entertainment & Technology Law Conference. "I think the courts are interpreting Congress' statute in a manner that is entirely too restrictive of content owners' rights and too open to [Internet] service providers.
"We might need to go to Congress at some point for a fix," Pariser added. "Not because the statute was badly drafted but because the interpretation has been so hamstrung by court decisions." FeedUnfurl
NotesHere's a story that touches on a few different issues of importance around these parts. We'll get to the details of the legal ruling in a bit, but the background is really the key part. At the beginning of 2009, a company in Valencia, California, called L&M Optical Disc West, received an order from an authorized partner of the producers of the film Milk to manufacture the DVDs of the film. They began doing exactly that. On February 2nd, as part of a supposedly unrelated police raid, police saw those DVDs and found them "suspicious." They rang up the MPAA who sent over an "investigator," who falsely declared that the DVDs were unauthorized, leading the police to seize them (though, oddly, allowing the private investigation firm to hold them) and to declare to the press that they had found "pirated" DVDs of Milk. This happened despite multiple attempts by L&M staff to explain that they had a legitimate order, even offering to show the "investigator" the details of the order. FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes Many in the tech industry believe the Chamber is doing the bidding of Hollywood and other deep-pocketed members of the content industry. The Chamber believes the IP bills are needed to stop rogue sites from profiting off the content its members spend millions making.Unfurl
Notes"Things are going so "badly" that a major new report commissioned by copyright holders says that these "consistently positive trends solidify the status of the copyright industries as a key engine of growth for the US economy as a whole.""Unfurl
Notes"Itās unclear whether SOPAās authors intended it to cover these websites that are vital to whistleblowing and human rights. If they didnāt, they need to press re-set; and next time, consult with the numerous Internet communities the bill could affect, rather than exclusively Hollywood lobbyists. But the immediate need is clear: the bill must be killed. If you care about free speech and a free Internet, act now!"Unfurl
NotesIām all for sorting out the rules that govern the entertainmentās supply chain, but letās keep some perspective here: when we āāsolveāā copyright problems at the expense of the Internet, we solve them at the expense of 21st-century society as a whole.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesUltraViolet is a digital rights authentication system developed by the movie industry to give consumers access to the content they have purchased across a number of devices. It sounds straightforward enough, but when we bought a Blu-ray copy of Horrible Bosses in order to see how well UltraViolet is implemented, we found it to be too tied down to proprietary apps, its access limited in too many ways, and the viewing experience subpar. It's a hassle.Unfurl
NotesDownloading copyright material without the permission of rightsholders is often portrayed as a heinous crime and treated as such by many judges across the United States. But what is an appropriate punishment for this apparently increasingly wicked act? Multi-million dollar fines? Jail? For one sixteen year-old girl using file-sharing software KaZaA, it was a savage beating, delivered by the leather belt of her father, Judge William Adams. And it was all caught on camera.Unfurl
NotesAn internal MPAA fact-sheet obtained by TorrentFreak shows that the movie industry is preparing a full-frontal attack on the business model of what they call ārogue cyberlockersā. The document summarizes how these file-hosting sites offer affiliates cash in return for signing up new premium members. According to the MPAA these practices facilitate mass-copyright infringement.Unfurl
NotesYou love your Kindle, but you hate the DRM. What do you do? Well, if you like, weāll tell you how to strip the copy-protection from your e-books, leaving a plain, vanilla e-book file in the format of your choice. This doesnāt just work for Kindle book, either. The method, detailed by Apprentice Alf, will also remove DRM from Mobipocket, Barnes and Noble, Adobe Digital Editions and Fictionwise books, making these stores much more attractive to buyers.Unfurl
Notes"A tribute to "fair use" and the AP's misguided crusade against the hyperlink. All content on this site was generated automatically from the AP's own RSS feeds. (Sorry, we forgot to include your magic DRM beans.) ā„"Unfurl
Notes"Songs have always been shareable and shared. People, young and old, share songs with each other ā by singing or playing them - in a variety of ways and settings, through a variety of technologies and media or other manner of accompaniment (as well as a capella). Songs as recordings are not fundamentally different in this respect. Since the advent of recorded media, people have shared songs in this form as well: played for each other in private and public settings, on personally distributed mixes (mixed tapes / CDs), and, in the age of mp3s, as files sent via email, IM (instant message), torrent, third-party hosting site, or any manner of online sites and services. "Unfurl
Notes"the reality is that nowadays, one can choose between a game costing Ā£40 that will last weeks, or a Ā£10 CD with two great tracks and eight dud ones. I think a lot of people are choosing the game - and downloading the two tracks. That's real discretion in spending. It's hurting the music industry, sure. But let's not cloud the argument with false claims about downloads."Unfurl
Notes"A week and a half ago, Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton made some news for saying that nothing good had come from the internet, period. Plenty of online sites (including ours) took him to task for that, wondering how one gets to be the CEO of a major content company without understanding the internet. Today, Lynton hit back at critics -- not by saying he was quoted out of context or misunderstood, but by standing behind the statement and adding some gems to it as well. Let's take a look..."Unfurl
Notes"In one of RIAAās high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology."Unfurl
Notes"All those companies (cough Amazon cough Apple cough) that say they're only doing DRM for now, until they can convince the stupid entertainment execs to ditch it, heed this lesson: you will spend the rest of your corporate life paying for this mistake, maintaining infrastructure whose sole purpose is to lock your customers into a technology restriction that no one really believes in. Welcome to the infinite cost of doing business with Hollywood. "Unfurl
Notes"Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th. "Unfurl
NotesUhh... Yay? "Bassist Gene Simmons says the British rockers ā who gave fans the choice to download last year's album 'In Rainbows' for free or pay a sum of their choosing - says their decision is contributing to the demise of the record industry and insUnfurl
Notes"When music fans can say, āI have all the music from 1950-2010, do you want a copy?ā - what kind of business models will be viable in such a reality?"FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes"Companies that control various DRM schemes, as well as the content providers themselves, can yank your ability to play the content which you lawfully purchased (and now, videos) at any momentāno matter what your expectation was when you bought it."Unfurl
Notes"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998, set out a notification procedure that can be used to request an ISP to remove allegedly infringing material from a web page. However, there is a defense against this attack"Unfurl
Notes"But it might also be for the public good were Congress to allow the enslavement of foreign captives and their descendants (this was tried); the seizure of Bill Gatesās bankbook; or the ruthless suppression of Alec Baldwin."Unfurl
Notes"Key revocation doesn't work. Suing the Internet doesn't work. DRM doesn't work ... Pirates who download movies don't ever see DRM. Honest customers who buy media are the only people who ever get restricted by it "Unfurl
Notes"Although I don't spend much time in the blogosphere, I am awareāparticularly through emailings from various SFWA committee membersā that the use of the term "webscab" has touched off something of a firestorm."Unfurl
Notes"This happens much more quickly now, sometimes at head-spinning speed. The downside is more bad writing is making it out there onto the internet; the upside is that good writers can find an audience, too. The other downside, of course, is that you might nUnfurl
Notes"MySpace is "killing themselves with this -- castrating the ecosystem that built them," says Gerd Leonhard, founder and CEO of Sonific, a music-streaming company."Unfurl
OpenDNS Tells Congress Not To Create The Great Firewall Of America | Techdirt
Adobe's future is controlling what you watch, not delivering it ā¢ The Register
Warner Bros: we issued takedowns for files we never saw, didn't own copyright to
RIAA lawyer says DMCA may need overhaul | Media Maverick - CNET News
Newzbin defiant as block begins:BT is blocking access to Newzbin but the group behind the site say its members still have full access. : technology
Piracy problems? US copyright industries show terrific health
Proposed Copyright Bill Threatens Whistleblowing and Human Rights | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Locus Online Perspectives Ā» Cory Doctorow: Itās Time to Stop Talking About Copyright
Your movie on every platform, sort of, for a while: how the new UltraViolet DRM fails
Free Bieber: campaign to kill proposed law that would send you to prison for 5 years for singing copyrighted music on YouTube
RIAA-led mob threatens innovation, Senator warns
Mass Infringement Lawyer Complains About Too Many People Challenging His Lawsuits
If you are a pirate, this is what you get... but if you are a PAYING CUSTOMER, this is what you get
Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music | Music | guardian.co.uk
Revenge of the Sneakernet | Blog | Futurismic
DRM sucks redux: Microsoft to nuke MSN Music DRM keys
Do-It-Yourself Counter Notification Letter
Apple Launches iTunes Plus
Tech news blog - Gonzales proposes new crime: 'Attempted' copyright infringement | CNET News.com
