Managing Rights Management

Recently Issued Patents

The US Patent Office issues new patents on Tuesdays. Issued patents and published applications may be early indicators of the kinds of issues being addressed by inventors and/or the companies for whom they work. Assigned to ContentGuard, the first of today's patents discloses a protected content distribution system. Assigned to... Read more →

The Boycott Sony Blog

Tim Jarrett has established the boycott Sony blog, apparently to provide a forum for comment and discussion. Among the more recent observations is that the provider of the DRM technology that is the root cause of the Rootkit problem, first4internet, has apparently taken down their web site. As of yesterday... Read more →

Sony Turning Off Buyers In Canada

According to an article in Ecommerce Times, the Sony Rootkit chickens have come home to roost in the form of lower CD sales, at least in Canada. Snippets: It's becoming a regular occurrence in CD shops across the country [Canada]: an irate customer comes in complaining the CD they bought... Read more →

DRM In Your Next Car? Maybe

At least in the UK car market, DRM may be included in vehicle audio systems, this according to an article on NewCarNet. Consulting firm SBD reports that car manufacturers want to include DRM in association with allowing use of memory cards and flash memory drives. SBD commends against including DRM... Read more →

Recently Published Patent Applications

Every Thursday, the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes pending patent applications. Publication has no bearing on whether a patent will eventually be issued based on the application. Still, issued patents and published applications are often indicators of what people have been thinking about and the kinds of things that... Read more →

Lawsuits - Many

Numerous outlets, including this AP article in the Seattle Times, are reporting that the Attorney General of Texas has filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG. The EFF has also filed suit in California. The EFF complaint seeks monetary damages and constraints on future behavior. Read more →

Sony's Motivation? Revenue Says Ed Foster

Ed Foster says that Sony's behavior regarding its DRM is motivated by revenue opportunities. Snippet: But we shouldn't miss the fact that Sony's behavior with both its XCP and MediaMax implementations matches another pattern we've seen many times before. It's the serial DRM offender profile that Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit, and... Read more →

Recently Issued Patents

The US Patent Office issues new patents on Tuesdays. Issued patents and published applications may be early indicators of the kinds of issues being addressed by inventors and/or the companies for whom they work. Both of today's patents deal with watermarking (steganography or "hidden writing"). Assigned to Hitachi, the first... Read more →

Tape Defeats Sony DRM

Tom Sanders (and others) is reporting a Gartner note saying that a small piece of tape will defeat virtually any CD-based DRM technology designed to play on both computers and standard CD players. Read more →

How Extensive Is The Sony Problem?

[tip o' the hat to Dave Farber's IP list] In a not-to-miss piece of work, Dan Kaminsky has mapped the location of computers that have the Sony / first4internet rootkit installed. The Sony rootkit phones home (Sony servers) and Kaminsky is able to map the locations around the globe that... Read more →