Managing Rights Management

DRM, Photography, and Public Spaces

Some years ago, the Pebble Beach Association tried to assert that the lone cypress tree could not be photographed without permission since they claimed they used an abstraction as a registered trademark. For a while, the city of Chicago apparently prevented professional photographers from taking pictures of "the bean" statue.... Read more →

Podcast with Jake Ward, Digital Freedom Campaign

I spent some time during the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with people from the Digital Freedom Campaign, a group of innovators, artists, students and consumers who know that they also have rights in the copyright debate and who want to make themselves heard. Sponsors and partners of... Read more →

RIAA: $1.5 Million Per Ripped CD - It Won't Make Any Difference

While I believe that technical means can be useful in reducing piracy (e.g., Blu-ray's BD+ technology acquired late last year by Macrovision), I believe that the RIAA has been using litigation as a way of postponing the day when the major record labels are going to be forced significantly change... Read more →

RIAA Argues Riping CDs Illegal - Institutionalized Stupidity

As readers know, I'm favorably disposed to technical means such as DRM, watermarking, fingerprinting, conditional access, and encryption for protecting digital content provided that the technology is reasonably user friendly and that those who use it to protect content provide full disclosure to consumers. As reported by Marc Fisher in... Read more →

David Pogue: The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality

NYTimes columnist David Pogue asked his college audience about various use scenarios for music and video. Few found any moral or ethical problem with violating copyright. Pogue concluded this piece with: I don't pretend to know what the solution to the file-sharing issue is. (Although I'm increasingly convinced that copy... Read more →

Is ecomputerblog.com legal?

On Friday I reported that BD+ has attracted additional licensees. I use a number of Google and Yahoo filters to track various DRM related topics that are in the news or that have been discussed in the blogosphere. My filter found a link to ecomputerblog.com with my headline as their... Read more →

Wired Shut: copyright and the shape of digital culture by Tarleton Gillespie

Tarleton Gillespie is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. His recent book, Wired Shut: copyright and the shape of digital culture (MIT Press, 2007) may appeal more to students of media... Read more →

Monday Nite's Digital Rights Media Debate - What Should the Model Be - 11/26/07

The Digital Media & Telecommunications SIG of the MIT Enterprise Forum held a panel discussion Monday evening, November 26, 2007, on the topic, Digital Rights Media Debate - What Should the Model Be?, . Thanks to the organizers for including me as a speaker. My presentation can be downloaded from... Read more →

Microsoft blocks FairUse4WM v2

So says George Ou: Just over a year ago when hacker “Viodentia” wrote FairUse4WM and broke Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM scheme wide open, Microsoft responded with record urgency in a mere 3 days. But when Viodentia came back as “Divine Tao” and wrote a second major revision of FairUse4WM this... Read more →

Music Label Victory Case Appealed

A variety of news sources report that the verdict in favor of the major music labels in the Thomas downloading case will be appealed. Declan McCullagh has a good analysis of why they won. Among his points: 3. "Making available." Jury Instruction 15 is more important. It says that the... Read more →