The Devil's in The Details: Intellectual Property and the Internet

This is a collection of what's been happening over the past several days in the Intellectual Property - Internet World.

1. US Dept of Commerce: "On July 17, 2002, the Technology Administration will host a Public Workshop on Digital Entertainment and Rights Management. This Workshop will bring together leaders from the information technology and content industries to address the status of technical standards that provide the framework necessary to enable legitimate digital media distribution and the present state of strengths, weaknesses and availability of current and imminent technological solutions to protect digital content, barriers that are inhibiting movies, music and games from coming online. In preparation for this workshop, the Technology Administration invites public comment." We need to get the REAL PUBLIC to comment on this now.
   
   
2. The Final Rule and Order of the Library of Congress Copyright office on the Determination of Reasonable Rates and Terms for the Digital Performance of Sound Recordings and Ephemeral Recordings was submitted to the Federal Register on Monday. As Doc says: "Here's the tea. There's the harbor. Have at it."  All I can add is: Amen.
   
   

3. Rep. Rick Boucher chided the music industry in his keynote speech from Jupiter's PlugIn conference. He spoke about multiple anti-customer initiatives, CD protection, DMCA, copyright extensions, etc. He rightly pointed out that all the technical and legal efforts are actually only serving to push people toward free file-sharing services.
   
   Of course, Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America disagrees. Why am I getting the opinion Rosen is so disconnected from the artists and the customers, she is hopeless? Or is she a victim of her own PR?  Jenny's got a good opinion on the situation here.

4. Doc has asked the question: Do these webcasting fees only apply to acts signed to RIAA labels?  The answer to this is actually not well known, but something I "found" during the Town Hall Webcast on CARP-- Sound Exchange was formed by the RIAA as a non-profit agency of the RIAA to act as a designated "agent" for the industry. Sound Exchange/RIAA made some arrangement with the Library of Congress to be named (designated) Agent to receive the CARP funds for all artists. It was also stated that Sound Exchange would be charged with the mission of trying to find every artist or their estate who was entitled to received the fees. This included artists who were unsigned with any record company/label,  minus a percentage for handling the transaction, of course.
   
   This leads me to ask two questions: 1. How much effort will Sound Exchange make to "find" the unsigned artists? 2. How long will the LOC allow Sound Exchange to sit on undistributed fees (earning interest of course) before they get to keep it? Or give it back to the LOC?

5. As I reported earlier Time Warner Cable in NYC is sending nastygrams to cable customers who are sharing their WiFi with their friends and neighbors. Who in the hell appointed AOL/TW god this month? Oh yeah, these are the wizkids who told us it was "stealing" to not watch the commericals when we Tivo shows. Tell 'em to go to hell. [See Mary Lu bite the hand that feeds used to feed her.]

John Robb's quote: Did a Time Warner VP really say this?

"By having an open transmission, it leaves you really vulnerable," Digeso said. "If you have a Wi-Fi connection in a public park, what would stop, God forbid, a child pornographer or, God forbid, a terrorist using that network?

Yep. And AOL used to get worried to when Steve Case opened his mouth in public, because it would come back to bite them in the butt. Looks like they have something new to worry about. 

2:45:23 PM    

Vivendi Universal To Allow Music File Burning
And the music companies said they weren't interested in allowing customers to burn their own CD's...

Even as media conglomerate Vivendi Universal struggles with its corporate issues, the company's music arm announced that it would work with its digital music operation to offer subscription music downloads, reports Reuters.

Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, said it would offer the content of about 1,000 of its albums, primarily from its back catalog, through EMusic.com, a unit of Vivendi Universal Net USA.

The titles from Universal Music would be integrated into EMusic's service, which offers unlimited access to over 200,000 songs in the standard MP3 format for anywhere from $9.99 to $14.99 per month.

EMusic subscribers gain full rights to burn the files they have downloaded onto CDs or to transfer them to portable music players, as opposed to some other subscription music services, which place restrictions on how and where the files can be transferred and used.

1:39:45 PM