All in Copyright
Do Health Data and Metadata Ownership Licenses Help or Hurt Innovation?
We see how the current web of licensing agreements is hobbling cable TV operators as they find themselves having to compete more and more with web based streaming services. Isn’t it also possible that similar restrictions regarding health data and metadata might provide similar challenges to creating new and beneficial products and services from shared data?
Thoughts on Project Goliath and the MPAA’s “War Against Google”
Once we allow one industry to carve out exemptions and then streamlinine how certain files can be removed from the web, what’s to keep other industries from proposing more categories of information that can be blocked in advance?
When Does a Public Data Good Become a Private Data Resource?
It may be that the greatest challenge facing private entrepreneurs in developing new and valuable information products and services based at least partially on public data will be public resistance to paying for information, no matter how new, innovative, or unique these producrts or services are.
I am experimenting with the Vudu beta software for in-home “upgrading” of old DVD’s to HD streaming movie files for selected titles from my DVD collection.
Apple, Samsung, Design Patents -- and Textile Design Piracy
Before folks jump all over Apple on the Apple vs. Samsung design patent case, read some background on design patents. You might find it amusing.
I just updated the copyright statement in the footer of this blog from
Content May Not Be King But It Still Behaves Like Royalty
One of my favorite media commentators is Jeff Jarvis. I especially enjoy his weekly converaations hosted by Leo Laporte on This Week in Google. Jarvis’ perspective always gets at the big picture of what’s happening with the web economy.
Google’s announcement of its Chromebook is more evidence of the shifting nature of technology-supported computing & communication ecosystems. It signifies more than just a continued “movement to the cloud.”
Before you get too excited about Apple’s recent decision to give up DRM on its iTunes music service, be sure to read Apple Shows Us DRM’s True Colors by Richard Esquerra which appeared January 7, 2008 on Electronic Frontier Foundation’s blog. Esquerra lists all the remaining uses of “DRM” being made by Apple.
Higher Education Act Reauthorization Requires Colleges to Subsidize Copyright Anti-Piracy Efforts
If you have recently written a check to pay college tuition for the coming semester, you will be interested to know that, if Congress has its way, part of the money you spend on your child’s college education will now be going to subsidize college-based copyright enforcement and anti-piracy efforts.
Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back together again: multilateral and trade agreements have ensured that, and quite deliberately.
Craig Thomler’s Make government data freely available neatly lays out, from an Australian’s perspective, a discussion of how the public can benefit if government agencies make raw data available for access by individuals and organizations who then analyze or present that data in a useful way. These points are from Thomler’s conclusions:
Given my longstanding interest in copyright, I’ve been following the AP anti-fair-use story with some interest (e.g., see this by Jason Kintzler, or this by Julian Baldwin; there’s also an interesting discussion thread ongoing at the Linkedin Bloggers group on Yahoo! Groups).
What the Heck is "Social DRM"?
When I first heard the term “social DRM” in the context of e-book anti-piracy efforts — the link is to the RSS feed of my del.icio.us bookmarks tagged “socialDRM” — I thought it referred somehow to group peer pressure not to copy files without permission.
Social Data Portability, Privacy, and DRM
When Bob Weber published his post-CES DRM 3.0 Has Arrived he made the point that, while DRM for music may be dying, the entertainment industry’s interest in Digital Rights Management is still quite strong. This got me to wondering whether this “next generation DRM” might have some relevance to current interest in social network portability.
Back in June of this year when I first learned that Lawrence Lessig had shifted gears I expressed some skepticism about the ultimate success of his decision to focus more on the underlying corrupting influences that are endemic to our legal and political processes.