Managing Rights Management

FTC DRM Workshop Draws 700 Comments

As noted here, the Federal Trade Commission will hold a public workshop in March on Digital Rights Management in Seattle. At least 700 comments have been file with the commission and have been made available to the public here. A preponderance of comments seem to have been submitted by individuals.... Read more →

RIAA Stops Suing Consumers - Not!

The NYTimes and other outlets reported that the RIAA is ending its lawsuits individual music downloaders. Not so, says Slashdot: According to a report on Wired.com, the RIAA spokesman claims that the RIAA has not filed any new lawsuits "for months"; according to the Wall Street Journal report the RIAA... Read more →

Judge postpones hearing in key RIAA lawsuit

CNet reports that a hearing regarding the RIAA initiated copyright infringement suit in Rhode Island federal court against Joel Tenenbaum has been postponed until January 6. As reported here and elsewhere, Harvard professor Charles Nesson and Law School students have intervened in Massachusetts Federal Court to get the copyright law... Read more →

Prof. Charles Nesson: The RIAA’s prosecution of copyright law is unconstitutional

As noted earlier, Prof. Charles Nesson has filed a suit in Boston federal court alleging that the RIAA's copyright enforcement campaign against music downloaders is unconstitutional. Now Mass High Tech has an article by Nesson in which he explains his views. The tension remains that our antiquated legal system has... Read more →

Will DRM Help E-Textbook Publishers?

DRM may help, at least for a while. That's the implication of Randall Stross' NYTimes article on evolving business models for college textbooks. The textbook publishers have abundantly good reasons to promote e-books. When Cengage sells an e-book version of “Organic Chemistry” directly to students, for $109.99, it not only... Read more →

Who Killed The Home Theater PC (HTPC)?

Writing in Ars Technica, Nate Anderson says the death of the Home Theater PC may be ascribed to several factors, including various rights management / copy protection / encryption technologies. While the recording industry has largely learned its lesson from DRM, the movie business still thinks it's a great idea.... Read more →

A Textbook Case of Piracy

The Boston Globe reports that textbook piracy is becoming rampant. "We think it's a significant problem," said William Sampson, manager of infringement and antipiracy at Cengage Learning Inc., a reference book publisher in Farmington Hills, Mich. Sampson said that in any given month, 200 to 300 of the company's titles... Read more →

What's Up With Home DVD Copying?

A survey funded in part by copy protection and DRM company Macrovision reports that home copying of DVDs in the US and the UK is up. Roughly a third of respondents in the UK (36%) and the US (32%) report copying DVDs in the previous six months compared with 25%... Read more →

Supremes Consider Taking MLB Appeal On Fantasy Baseball Licensing Rights

David Savage reports in the L.A. Times that the Supreme Court is considering whether to take an appeal from Major League Baseball concerning licensing rights relating to fantasy baseball. MLB has claimed that it owns the copyrights and thus is exclusively entitled to license baseball names and performance statistics. The... Read more →

Ad Blocking Poll: Norton Internet Security

It's not clear whether under copyright law consumers can strip advertising from web pages. One legal theory is that the stripped page is a derivative work. Under copyright law, rightsholders can reserve the right to create derivatives for themselves. As noted, Symantec has dropped the adblocking feature from the 2008... Read more →