Free Your Music with DRM Dumpster

Freeware Mac app DRM Dumpster automates the process of burning your DRMed iTunes Music Store purchases to CD, then rips them back to your computer as unprotected MP3s.

This has always been the unofficial method for stripping DRM from your music, but DRM Dumpster simplifies the process using a CD-RW, meaning that you can just insert one CD and DRM Dumpster will take care of your entire protected iTunes library. Handy.


Read more on http://www.burningthumb.com/drmdumpster.html

HP sues Acer over patent infringement

Litigation season is here! First it was Cisco dragging Apple to court. Oracle sued SAP over "corporate theft on a grand scale" last week. Now it's the US giant Hewlett-Packard taking Taiwanese major Acer to court over Acer's alleged infringement of five HP patents.

The lawsuit was filed today in a court located in the Eastern District of Texas. HP seeks to prevent Acer from selling some products in the United States, including desktops, notebooks, media centers and related products, due to the alleged use of HP-patented technology. HP contends that Acer infringed on patents ranging from DVD editing, power management, processing capabilities, clock switching, and other technologies from 1997 to 2003.

The patents relate to optical data storage, circuits and methods for lowering computer system power consumption, multiple processors in computer systems and an improved method for attaching devices to a digital serial bus.


Read more on ChannelsIndia.com

Anti-Plagiarism Service Sued for Copyright Violation

By David Johnston

In a strange twist of fate, the anti-plagiarism service TurnItIn has been sued by four high school students for violating copyright laws. The claim stems from TurnItIn’s policy of adding the text of student papers to its database when they are checked for plagiarism. However, the students noticed that requests that their papers not be added to TurnItIn’s database were ignored, violating their intellectual property rights.

They argue that TurnItIn should not be able to use student papers which it does not own in order to make money on its anti-plagiarism service. The suit specifies 6 papers that were copyrighted by the students before being handed in. The students are asking for $150,000 compensation per paper, though they claim to not want or expect the money.


Read more on RealTechNews

Netscape: no space left on device

Something wrong happened with Netscape.com server:




First of all, I can't sign in now. And the reason of this is on the screenshot above. Notice "no space left on device" error. This means that all netscape's harddrives are full now. Hey, what do you uploaded there, guys? :)

Sony reveals new DRM technology

Sony has announced that they have developed a new "block cipher algorithm" that is specifically designed to enable advanced copyright protection and authentication for distribution of digital media such as music, movies and images.

Sony says it plan to reveal more details about the technology, code named CLEFIA, at the Fast Software Encryption 2007 conference which begins on March 26 in Luxembourg. To date, Sony has revealed that the technology is "a 128-bit block encryption that supports key lengths of 128, 192 or 256 bits." They also say that CLEFIA is powerful enough to defend the digital media against "known cryptoanalytic attacks."


Read more on AfterDown.com

Change to patent tax law urged in light of EU demand

A patent expert has warned that if the Irish Government removes the proviso in its patent tax law whereby patents registered in Ireland are free of income tax if the research and development (R&D) was carried out in Ireland, as the EU has asked it to do, the floodgates would open and the country would be “in desperate trouble”.

Last week the European Commission formally asked Ireland to amend legislation where tax exemption of received patent royalties is granted only if the research leading to the patent was carried out in Ireland. The commission said the provision is incompatible with the freedom of establishment and the free movement of services guaranteed under European law.

It claims the law dissuades Irish companies and individuals from contracting out research to institutions established elsewhere in the EU or in the EEA (European Economic Area) and dissuades Irish undertakings and individuals from setting up research centres in other member states, thus infringing their freedom of establishment.


Read more on SiliconRepublic

Software sleuth hunts copyright abusers

By Michael Liedtke

Vance Ikezoye didn't set out to become one of the digital revolution's top copyright cops when he first began tinkering with the technology that launched Audible Magic Corp.

At first, all he was looking for was a better way to identify songs and advertisements broadcast on the radio.

But Ikezoye's ambitions have shifted with the media landscape, positioning Audible Magic to control what can and can't be watched on the Internet. Online video sites are adopting its filtering tools to prevent the kind of copyright trouble that provoked a legal battle between Viacom Inc. and Google Inc.'s YouTube.com.

"It's been an interesting ride," said Ikezoye, Audible Magic's 49-year-old chief executive.

"We are kind of in the middle of everything, where we are part mediator and part battering ram."


Read more on Canada.com

Torrents Not Guilty?

Sofia. The owner of the Internet site “arenabg.com”, Eliyan Geshev, was released from the arrest after the Regional Court of Sofia decided that there was no grounded assumption against him. No measures would be taken against Geshev. The court’s decision can be appealed in three days' term. If that happens the next sitting will be held on March 27 from 10 AM.

FOCUS News Agency has already reported that the owners of the Internet site "arena.bg" was arrested yesterday on the grounds of three accusations.
As soon as the decision was announced journalists were struck by the security guards while trying to interview Eliyan Geshev on his way out of the courtroom. The journalists intend to file a complaint.


Read more on Focus Information Agency

Viacom v Google: The $1bn battle for content

By Tim Luckhurst

When is copyright theft not illegal? In the struggle to answer this defining question of the internet age, one entertainment giant has declared war. Viacom, owner of the Paramount and Dreamworks film studios and television channels including MTV, Nickelodeon and the Comedy Channel, has launched a $1bn (£515m) copyright-infringement suit against Google.

The case, which accuses Google's YouTube video-sharing site of building "a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works", has the potential to redefine how content is used on the internet. "If it goes to court, this will be the biggest case since Napster [the music-sharing website shut down by litigation in 2002]," says Edgar Forbes, senior lecturer in media law and intellectual property at Bournemouth University.


Read more on The Independent

Patent battles could savage drugs giant

By Danny Fortson

Nearly a quarter of the turnover of AstraZeneca, the FTSE 100 drugs giant, could be wiped out by legal challenges to the protection on its best-selling drugs.

The company is fighting lawsuits brought in the US and Europe by makers of cheap generic drugs which are challenging the patents of drugs that represent at least $7.2bn (£3.7bn) in annual sales, according to SG Cowen, an American investment bank. That is equivalent to 27 per cent of the company's $26.4bn annual turnover.

AstraZeneca, like other drug giants, relies on patents that give it the exclusive right to make and sell the drugs it invents, often for 10 to 15 years. Generics companies make cheap copies of branded drugs once they lose patent protection. Increasingly, they are challenging the validity of these patents years before they expire, leading to a record number of patent lawsuits. Ken Cacciatore, one of the analysts who wrote the Cowen report, estimates that, in the US alone, 36 major patent challenges threaten more than $53bn in annual sales.


Read more on The Independent

Another brick in the copyright wall

By Steve Johnson

The news this week that Viacom is suing YouTube and its owner, Google, over alleged massive copyright infringement brings to mind some other lawsuits I'd like to see:

- FedEx sues Amazon for using boxes that are way bigger than the stuff inside. Tupperware, a leading proponent of accurate volume estimation, joins the suit.

- Users sue MySpace for being an inchoate mess where too many bands become so hot that you momentarily overlook how bad the music is. Also, your "friends" aren't really there for you when you need them.

- Microsoft sues iTunes because it "really, truly" had the idea for a hip online music store first and has the minutes from hundreds of hours of New Product Contemplation Committee meetings to prove it.

This is not to say the Viacom-GooTube lawsuit is a laughing matter. At stake could be, if the action is litigated to the hilt, nothing less than the future of copyright on the Web.


Read more on Chicago Tribune

Piracy Kills Adventure Games

The Longest Journey and Dreamfall are two successful adventure games that were developed by Funcom. Even though I could not bare to finish The Longest Journey, being on of the most buggiest and boring adventure games I’ve ever played, others have still loved it crazy and it got quite high reviews from the fans. It was followed by the anticipated part 2 Dreamfall game, and the company seemed to be doing quite well. Today however I read in the news that Funcom, the developer of the adventure game series have decided to abandon all “offline” games development, and will go for the MMO games instead. The main reason behind that decision they say is the high ratio of games piracy. They estimate that over 200,000 illegal downloads of Dreamfall were made before it was even released! They estimate also that for every copy they sell, 3 to 10 illegal copies are made.


Read more on BlogAllAlong

The EU’s ongoing joust with iTunes

By John Carroll

In what some articles have characterized as an EU that has backed down over iTunes, Meglena Kuneva, EU Commissioner for Consumer Protection, re-characterized her previous words that chastised Apple over its closed DRM model as merely a means by which to start the debate over ways "to develop this market and to have more consumers enjoying the really very important, very modern way of downloading and enjoying the music." She also dismissed comparisons of Apple to Microsoft, noting that Apple's share of the market is not very large. I presume she means Apple's computer market share is not very large. I wish Microsoft could point to their portable music player share (an area where Apple's share IS very large) as reason for the EC to call off their antitrust attack dogs.

Slight diversion aside, the cause of all this ruckus was Ms. Kuneva making a sharp point of the fact that we wouldn't accept CDs that didn't play on every device. That point was always a bit odd, however, as its like pointing out that doors in the middle ages rarely had locks as reason to oppose the proliferation of locks on doors. CDs weren't ever designed with the Internet in mind, where ripped music files can be sent around the world as easily as email.


Read more on ZDNet

Russian IT minister pledges piracy clampdown

Russia's IT minister said his country will step up its work to fight intellectual property violations, part of an effort to boost foreign technology investment in Russia and gain admittance to the World Trade Organization.

Last month the International Intellectual Property Alliance named Russia as one of the world's worst offenders for violating U.S. software and music copyrights, second only to China.

During a press conference Thursday at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, Leonid Reiman, the Russian minister for IT and communications, acknowledged the problem and said his country is stepping up its efforts to tackle piracy.

"I can assure you this is something very important that we are paying a lot of attention to, and we will continue working to solve the issue," he said, answering a question from a reporter.


Read more on ComputerWorld

New software removes DRM protection in seconds

Digital Rights Management (DRM) simply doesn’t work, and it makes media play on external devices a huge hassle. I would certainly be in full support of a system that worked; a system that would not prohibit media play on particular, external devices, or expire after a given length of time. A new software, SoundTaxi V2, changes all that.

Ramka announced today the second version of their highly popular windows-based software for removing copy restrictions on downloaded media. SoundTaxi Version 2 allows users to play downloaded music on any device, without having DRM compatible hardware, and it’s substantially quicker than its predecessor.

Released first in 2005, SoundTaxi’s conversion method allows users to play DRM protected music and audio books while recording them simultaneously.


Read more on tech.blorge.com

Copyright Law Is a Battlefield

Viacom sues Google for letting copyright-protected material slip onto YouTube. Brewster Kahle sues the federal government over a public-domain policy he considers restrictive. The recording industry sues college students -- and, some critics say, just about everyone else in sight -- for downloading music illegally. Lawsuits are the lingua franca of intellectual-property debate, and that's not likely to change any time soon, says Larry Downes.

Mr. Downes, a technology consultant and adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley, draws parallels between the current information wars and the Industrial Revolution -- which spurred the rise of communism and the progressive movement, both of them "rejections of a legal system that no longer functioned, and which could not adapt to changing realities."


Read more on Chronicle

Best of MacOS X Hints

by Kent Del Castillo

This is a summary of the presentation done by Rob Griffiths at the MacworldEncore Conference & Expo entitled "The Best of Mac OS X Hints - Tiger Edition." This is for everyone who wants the hints without the 98M download of the hour-long presentation.

#1: Get TinkerTool

It has a whole mess of useful tweaks in it and it's free. Just get it, you won't be sorry:
http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

#2: Use Go -> Go to Folder to jump to Finder folders

Shift-Command-G for quicker access, use Tab for auto-complete of folder names. Works in Open/Save dialogs but is case-sensitive there for some reason.

#3: Remap shortcut keys

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse and click the tab called "Keyboard Shortcuts." You have to use the exact name of the menu command you want to change. It's pretty simple, you'll figure it out from there.

You can also add commands that Apple left out (like Secure empty trash in Finder).

#4: App switching tricks

(more after the jump)



Command- ` will cycle backward, scroll wheel, arrow keys, mouse to pick an app. H will hide the highlighted app, Q will quit it. Home/End will jump to start/end of list. Command-Tab works in Expose mode.

#5: Dictionary tricks

Control-Command-D will give a dictionary popup when hovering over words in an app like TextEdit. If you assign the dictionary to a shortcut key like F7, it'll always come up with the popup.

You can nav thru the dictionary with double-clicks on other words. Also, check out the Preferences on the Dictionary app.

#6: Use Preview's powers

Open a whole folder of images by Command-Option drag a folder onto the Preview dock icon. Change the sort order by Control-clicking on a blank section of the drawer. Tools > Annotation will allow you to add annotations to PDF's. Adding a keyword to a pic will allow Spotlight to find it more easily.

#7: Open files in trash

If you drag something from the trash on to a dock icon, it'll open up.

#8: Take the PRO features out of my menus in unregistered Quicktime

On the option menu for Quicktime Player, click on "Show Package Contents," go into Contents > Resources and rename "ProMenuitem.tif" to something else and it'll disappear. You can change any of the images there, but be careful!

#9: Download from the internet without a browser

/System/Library/CoreServices contains "VerifiedDownloadAgent." Add it to your sidebar and you can drag/drop links into it and it'll download the file.

#10: Run widgets one time to see if you want to keep it

When asked "Do you want to install the widget..." , hold down Command-Option and the install button becomes a Run button. To install it, you'll have to run it again.

#11: Set login background

Go to Finder>Library>Desktop Pictures and replace "Aqua Blue.jpg" with your own image keeping the name the same.

#12: Set Login Window Info

Clicking on the login window with your mouse will give you more info. To make it stick to something like the time/date, you must type (case-sensitive) in Terminal:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo Time

and it'll stick.

#13: Spotlight hits in Finder

Command-Space searches bring up a drop-down menu. If you hover over something after a search in Spotlight, you'll see the path to it. To open a Finder window of that location, hold the Command key down and click it, and it'll open to that path.

#14: Advanced Spotlight searching and tips

The pipe characer | acts as an OR. Minus - is NOT, Space is AND. Example = cat|dog(-mouse) is cat or dog but not mouse.

You can remove Applications and System Preferences and Contacts from Spotlight which will also speed it up. Look in System Preferences > Spotlight to uncheck it from your searches.

Anything added to Spotlight's Privacy tab (in Sys Prefs) will not be indexed. If you add your mailboxes to it, Spotlight will speed up since it has less stuff to search.

When searching in Finder, you can add criteria much like an iTunes smart playlist. With it, you can view everything in a folder by using a "Size greater than 0" criteria.

#15: iPhoto selective import

Before importing, click return twice and you can preview all the images on your camera and drag/drop the images you want. Shift-Command and you can click as many as you want. You can not delete this way, it's a read-only thing. Might not work with every camera. Check the date on the photo too.

#16: iPhoto movie books

Create an iBook and then Share>Send to iDVD. It'll be in your Movies folder with all the transitions and stuff.

#17: Change the "Welcome to Darwin!" greeting in Terminal

Do the following in Terminal which will also make a backup:

cd /etc

sudo cp motd motd_ORIG

sudo pico motd

#18: Change iTunes' arrows

To change the behavior of the arrows to be a search within your iTunes instead of searching the iTunes store do the following.

In Terminal with iTunes exited, type the following line:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES

To reverse, repeat the above with NO at the end.

#19: Force plain text Mail

To display all mail as plain text, do the following in Terminal with Mail not running:

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

To change it back, make it FALSE

#20: Better Save dialogs

Make the expanded triangle the default for every program by typing this in Terminal:

defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE

#21: Make your screen saver run 24/7

It'll probably make your machine run slower, but if you want your RSS screensaver to run while you work, type the following in Finder:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Screensaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS
/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

This will return the job number, like 1411. To end it, type "kill 1411" and it'll stop running.

#22: Easily combine PDFs

Launch Automator. Click on Finder > Get Selected Finder Items and add to the right. Add "Sort Finder Items" too. Click on PDF>Combine PDF Pages and click "Appending". Then add "Open Finder Items". Save it as a Plug-In called "Combine PDFs".

After all that, select your PDFs with Contro-Click, then in your menu, you'll see Automator>Combine PDFs. Click that and you'll see your combined PDFs.

Man's Best Friends Help Movie Industry Crackdown on Piracy

By Kristi Mattes

The Motion Picture Association of America loaned Malaysia two black Labradors, the country's latest weapon to fight music and movie piracy. Lucky and Flo began at Malaysia's biggest international airport sniffing out shipments of contraband discs.

The MPAA says its members, including Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Universal, lost $1.2 billion to Asia-Pacific movie pirates in 2006.


Read more on News10.net

Sony exec: DRM should be ‘invisible’

By Matt Kapko

Digital rights management is an inevitable byproduct of the capabilies consumers now have to store and stream large amounts of information, but for it to function properly it must be virtually invisible to the consumer, Albhy Galuten, vice president of digital media technology at Sony Corp. of America, said in his opening keynote at the Digital Media Summit.

“We all hear the rumors about how DRM is going to be dead, it’s too complicated, it’s too confusing,” he said. “The goal is to have it invisible to the consumer.”

He squarely puts that responsibility on the industry. Media companies must allow consumers to enjoy the content they want on the device they prefer on their schedule, he said.


Read more on RCRWirelessNews

Video-on-Demand Patent Infringement Lawsuit Continues Against Various Cable Companies

DigitalMediaStocks.com, an investor and industry news portal for the digital media sector, presents an investor podcast with Andrew Huffman, in-house patent counsel for USA Video Interactive Corp. (OTCBB: USVO; TSX: US.V), to discuss the background and status of the Company’s Video-on-Demand patent infringement lawsuit filed against various cable companies including Time Warner, Charter Communications, and Comcast Cable. USA Video designs and markets technology for delivery of digital media and has held a pioneering patent for store-and-forward video since 1992.

There is a growing interest from Wall Street in the connection between patents as an asset, and market performance. Useful in the valuation of companies, patent portfolios are many times being utilized as a leading indicator on how dominant a company might or might not be in its specific market, making the protection of intellectual property rights a key priority.

Read more on NewswireToday

U.S. businesses laud 'season for patent reform'

By Susan Decker

Microsoft and Intel have urged lawmakers to overhaul the U.S. patent system for more than five years. They may get their wish in 2007.

A record $1.52 billion verdict against Microsoft last month, the Democrats' takeover of Congress and U.S. Supreme Court rulings are building momentum for the biggest changes in U.S. patent law since 1952. Proposals include legislation to make it easier for targets of infringement suits to challenge patents and limit damages if they lose.

"Things have happened that make this the season for patent reform," said Emery Simon, counsel for the Business Software Alliance, a Washington lobbying group whose members include Microsoft, Intel and Apple.


Read more on International Herald Tribune

id Software talks piracy (again) at GDC 2007

The GDC conference is always an interesting one to follow, even if some people think otherwise. It is one of those shows that is run by developers, presumably for developers, and doesn't always come off cleanly to the public. We imagine that must be the case for why the CEO of id Software talked about piracy - again.

It seems like just last year that Hollenshead stood in a panel of industry members to discuss piracy. Oh, wait, that's because it was. At E3, Todd and others from the industry went on to say how rampant piracy costs the industry billions, and game developers would stop producing games. A cautionary note was sung about developers moving to consoles, where piracy is nowhere near as rampant.


Read more on bi-tech.net

Why Not Leech Off of YouTube, Video Pioneers Ask

By Tim Gideon

There was nary an empty seat at Monday evening's SXSW panel entitled "What Does the Future Hold for Video on the Internet."

It opened with the moderator, Eddie Codel, producer and co-founder of Geek TV, announcing: "We have beer, we hope you do, too [sadly, I did not]. Whenever someone says the word 'paradigm', everyone drinks." This prompted an audience member to yell "paradigm", after which the rules were immediately revised. The panel consisted of Codel, Micki Krimmel of Revver, Kent Nichols from the wildly popular Ask A Ninja, Kevin Rose of Digg fame, and Scott Watson—the odd-man-out, not-so-indie rep from Disney.


Read more on PC Magazine

Space piracy coming to the Mac (don’t tell the RIAA)

By Dan Moren

I’ve never really gotten into playing Massively Multiplayer online games. I like the idea in concept, but I’m always reluctant when it comes to monthly fees. That, and I’ve never found an MMO that really grabbed me. Star Wars: Galaxies, which probably had the best shot, is by all accounts a rather abysmal failure.

But I’ve long been intrigued by the concept of EVE Online, a spacefaring MMO that reminds me a bit of Ambrosia’s old Escape Velocity series. And now that EVE Online is coming to the Mac, maybe I’ll finally give it a shot.


Read more on MacUser

Microsoft FAT patent fails in Germany

While the U.S. courts recently reaffirmed Microsoft's FAT (File Allocation Table) patents, the German Patent Federal Court has just dismissed the patent for use in Germany.

According to a report in the German news publication Heise Online, the court has denied the protection that the European Patent Office granted to Microsoft under EP 0618540 for a "common namespace for long and short filenames." This was based on Microsoft's US Patent No. 5,758,352. The German Patent Court stated that the patent claims Microsoft made are "not based on inventive activity."


Read more on LinuxDevices

The DRM threat to desktop Linux

By Jack Schofield

The growth of HDTV in the US threatens "the potential marginalization of Linux to older machines or servers," according to Brian Proffitt, Managing Editor of Linux Today, because of the DRM (digital rights management) system much high-def content may employ. Proffitt says:

If HD content will be king, then the manufacturers ... will either have to sign-up for this DRM scheme or they won't. Given that in three or four years, which is when such a DRM plan is expected to be implemented, Vista will have probably gotten itself installed on a majority of the world's desktops and there'll be even more broadband to deliver HD content, only a suicidal card manufacturer would opt out of this DRM scheme.


Read more on Guardian Technology Blog

Government may relax copyright law for educational purposes

On Feb. 27, Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and John Doolittle, R-Calif., introduced a new bill making it easier for scholars to access copyrighted material without impeding on copyright laws. The Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007, also referred to as The Fair Use Act, will limit the amount of control that content owners are granted by copyright laws over their work.

The act, which is supported by the American Library Association and the American Association of Law Libraries, "is intended to promote innovation, encourage the introduction of new technology, enhance library preservation efforts and protect the fair use rights of consumers," Boucher said upon introducing the new act to Congress.


Read more on Stater Online

Free Software Foundation to Jobs: Be First to Drop DRM

By Shaun Nichols

A branch of the Free Software Foundation known as DefectiveByDesign launched an online petition last week that calls on Apple CEO Steve Jobs to "set the ethical example" by eliminating DRM from iTunes. The petition, a response to an open letter on digital rights management Jobs wrote in February, reached its initial goal of one thousand signatures about five hours after going live.

The Free Software Foundation has begun an online petition urging Apple chief executive Steve Jobs to begin removing protections from the company's iTunes Music Store.

"As the largest purveyor of DRMed music, Apple carries a large part of the responsibility for the situation in which consumers now find themselves," the petition reads.


Read more on Mac News

Don’t Let Fear of Piracy Rob You of Profits

JK Rowling is famously known amonst online book circles as the highest profile author to refuse to allow digitization of her books. This has not deterred individuals from offering a home brew ebook version of every title in the Harry Potter series. In fact, Book 6 was released at midnight and online reports told of the ebook version available less than twelve hours later. Recently, the High Court of Delhi required eBay to halt four auctions on eBay India of illegal ebook versions of Potter’s book.

If one can get past the piracy issue, it is important to understand that there were purchasers of this illegal ebook version. Which means that there is a market for the ebok version and rather than the market being filled by a legitimate source, authorized by Rowling, the market is filled with illegal versions for which Rowling will receive no royalties.


Read more on Dear Author

When the Internet Radio Copyright Dust Settles...

I received over a dozen calls yesterday from webcasters and writers wanting my take on what the Copyright Royalty Board ruling means. Today's assessment is that this horse is at fast gallop, and it looks like only a few riders have their feet in the stirrups. If you've ridden a horse you know having those feet in the stirrup is required when you try to pull back on the reins.

Want to slow this doomsday scene down? Take a few hours to read through the 115-page CRB ruling. As reading it is more a cure for insomnia, maybe the Rip Van Winkle effect will take hold and when you wake up this copyright issue will be history - or, at the very least, still on appeal.


Read more on AudioGraphics.com

Paying for Piracy

On February 28, the Recording Industry Association of America announced a new policy to crack down on illegal music downloading on college campuses. The association sent 400 letters to 13 universities and asked that the universities forward the letters to the individual users. The letters will offer the recipients an opportunity to pay a discounted settlement amount in lieu of a potentially costly lawsuit.

And the RIAA has a warning to college students here in the Valley, and nationwide - this is only the beginning of a long-term effort to eradicate illegal downloading the only way that seems to be effective: by hitting you in the wallet.



Read more on College Times

Microsoft Stakes DRM Patent Claims

A smart guy wrote a while back that DRM has “negative value” with no way to motivate users to be interested in adopting it, let alone pay for it. So what should be said of the attempt to patent DRM methods? We noted that Microsoft was recently issued a patent on a method of managing DRM across devices and were curious about how much effort they have put into DRM.

In early 2001, Apple made a dynamic move signing major labels to deliver legitimate music downloads, albeit with a good amount of restrictions (FairPlay). Fair enough, a number of folks at the time thought that DRM was a good way to get the digital party legally started. While iPods sold and Microsoft worked on playsforsure and planned Zune, we pulled together more of the picture on DRM which adds insight to Steve’s Thoughts on Music.


Read more on CrunchGear.com

Music companies slap Yahoo China with copyright suit

Eleven music companies, including Warner Music Group Corp and Sony BMG, filed a lawsuit against Yahoo China for alleged copyright infringement by providing links to unlicensed music, an industry group said.

The suit, filed in January, was accepted by Beijing's Number 2 Intermediate Court on Tuesday, Leong May-seey, Asia-Pacific regional director for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said by telephone from Hong Kong yesterday. The IFPI represents companies such as Warner, Sony BMG, EMI Group PLC and Universal Music Group.

The case against Yahoo China comes about four months after Baidu.com Inc, operator of China's largest search engine, won a suit brought by music companies claiming the company allowed illegal song downloads on its Web site. About 85 percent of recordings in China are illegal, with sales of pirated music worth US$410 million in 2005, according to the federation.



Read more on Taipei Times

US Patent Office, Meet Social Networking

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has decided that in order to meet the public outcry against frivolous patent filings and keep their tradition of making patent applications public and available for the scrutiny of everyone, they're going to get into the business of social networking. They've announced a pilot project to open up the patent filing process to the internet, subscribing members who can provide insight into the patents being filed and allowing everyone to view and comment on the filings. The USPTO is excited about the prospect, claiming that it offers them a world of technical expertise that they simply may not have at the office in its patent examiners, but the new project marks a significant change in the policy of the office. In the past, even thought patent applications have been growing significantly over the past several years, examiners have been swamped with technical applications for which they have limited time and resources to research.


Read more on AppScout

DRM Security Startup: $13M

Arxan on Monday announced it has attracted $13 million from investors interested in its potential to protect digital media from piracy.

The funding includes new investors Legend Ventures and TDF, as well as existing investors EDF Ventures, Paladin Homeland Security Fund, Solstice Capital, and Trident Capital.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Arxan refers to its protection technology as “little modules of code” that can get inserted into a program. The company said its code works better than existing protections because it functions on a binary, or ones and zeros, level of programming.


Read more on redherring.com

Microsoft's Copyright Assault on Google

by Catherine Holahan

Hoping to convince publishers to back its own online book search service, the software titan comes out swinging against the search giant.

Microsoft threw a one-two public relations punch against Google, starting Mar. 5. The sparring got under way when Microsoft attorney Thomas Rubin publicly criticized Google's position on copyright—first in a newspaper editorial and then again the following day at a publishing industry conference.


Read more on BusinessWeek

Russia among top 10 worst countries for copyright piracy

The annual report by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) on global piracy has ranked Russia in the top 10 of the world's worst offending countries for property rights.

The report ranks Russia together with India, Pakistan, and Nigeria as the worst countries for piracy, with Bangladesh at the top of the list.

"Russia's economy is ingrained with high-levels of piracy", the report said, adding that the country had failed to protect property rights.


Read more on RIA Novosti

DRM, p2p and dead horses

Digital Copyright Canada's Russell McOrmond posted an article saying DRM is both a form of theft (of what you'd otherwise own) and a scam (pricing doesn't take the "rental" situation into consideration) that should be illegal.

His remarks were keyed to another post in Techdirt and he went on to quote a few thoughts he'd added to that discussion saying, in part:

What I am opposed to is calling a relationship a purchase that is really a "rental" (IE: the person receiving the content doesn't own the hardware - they are "renting" it from someone else).


Read more on p2pnet.net

Recording industry takes action against piracy on campus

By David Cabanero

The Recording Industry Association of America launched a new initiative Wednesday intensifying the crackdown on music theft on college campuses nationwide.

UT was listed in the association's top 25 university offenders in illegal file transfers.

The association, which represents 90 percent of U.S. recording industries, sent 400 pre-litigation settlement letters to 13 different universities Wednesday. Individual students were contacted with pre-trial negotiations, Sherman said.

The letters allow the infringer the opportunity to negotiate with the association before the lawsuit is filed for public record. RIAA sent 33 pre-litigation letters to UT on Wednesday, which they are requesting the University to forward to the students.


Read more on The Daily Texan

Microsoft wins wordy patent battle

A US federal judge has dismissed Alcatel-Lucent's patent claim against Microsoft over technology that converts speech into text, the two companies said.

The ruling made late last week comes after a jury found that the world's largest software maker infringed on audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and ordered the company to pay $US1.52 billion ($1.94 billion) in damages.

US District Judge Rudi Brewster in San Diego dismissed all of Alcatel-Lucent's claims in a summary judgment, meaning that the jury trial set to begin on March 19 will not take place. Alcatel-Lucent said it plans to appeal the ruling.


Read more on Australian IT

FAIR USE Act aims to clarify copyright limits

By Thomas Claburn

Calling the fair use rights of consumers of digital media "severely threatened," two congressmen on Tuesday introduced the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (FAIR USE Act) to restore balance to copyright law.

U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA) proposed the legislation to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 1988 landmark bill is widely seen by consumer advocacy and cyber liberties groups as favoring corporate owners of copyrighted content at the expense of consumers and fair use rights.


Read more on Electronics Supply & Manufacturing

What to do about music piracy?

Students are stealing music, but music bosses fell behind

The music industry is on rock-solid legal ground when it goes after people who steal their products.

But as the industry launches its war on piracy against college students across America, it needs to exert the same amount of energy to admitting that its slow reaction to technology has brought on its problems.

Illegal file-sharing is theft, pure and simple. It may sound preachy to tell college students that music, like money, doesn't grow on trees. But when the record industry points the finger at college campuses, where an enormous amount of illegal file-sharing is occurring, it is definitely on to a big part of the problem. In addition to tracing the illegal activity of college kids, the music industry should also look in the mirror. The business has done a lousy job of making young people understand the principles of intellectual property. In the end, it is threatening lawsuits against its potential customers.


Read more on Tennessean.com

Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You

By Bruce Schneier

Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry.

And you don't get to refuse them.


Read more on Forbes.com

RIAA launches piracy payment website

By Matt Chapman

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched a website to collect payments from those accused of music piracy.

P2Plawsuits.com is designed to cut back on the number of lawsuits filed by the RIAA, which it says will reduce the legal cost to those found guilty of downloading music illegally.

The RIAA has already sent 400 pre-litigation settlement letters to 13 universities and has asked them to forward those letters to the appropriate network users.


Read more on ITNews.com.au

Official BitTorrent Store: DOA with DRM

A recent comparison between an iTunes-purchased TV episode and a pirated copy showed that legit download services have a long way to go if companies want to keep users from gobbling up pirated wares. Early impressions of the official BitTorrent store are in, and this system also suffers from a rash of problems. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the issues are DRM-related, and they were predicted by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen before the official store launched. Cohen in December:

"We're rolling out with some content DRM'd, using Windows DRM, at the insistence of our content partners. We're very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces, and are educating our content partners about the lost commercial opportunity."


Read more on BroadbandReports.com

Berners-Lee offers thoughts on Net neutrality, DRM

By Grant Gross

Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, advocated that Congress protect Net neutrality and questioned the value of digital rights management Thursday.

Berners-Lee, speaking before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in the U.S. House of Representatives, said it was "very, very important" for lawmakers to protect the ability of users to access the Web content they want regardless of their Internet service provider.

Berners-Lee didn't endorse specific Net neutrality proposals largely supported by congressional Democrats, but he said the Web as a communications medium deserves "special treatment" to protect its nondiscriminatory approach to content.


Read more on ComputerWorld

Anti-DRM bill introduced to Congress

We can all get a little more excited about the prospect of DRM-free content, as a bill called the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (FAIR USE Act) was introduced to Congress Tuesday, February 27 2007.

The bill, which was introduced by John Doolittle (R-CA), and Rick Boucher, aims to allow consumers, teachers, and librarians (?) to remove DRM protection on audiovisual media from purchased content.


Read more on Tech.blorge.com

Kodak looks to patent edible RFID

Eastman Kodak has come up with an idea that some may find difficult to swallow--an edible radio frequency identification (RFID) tag.

The venerable imaging product manufacturer last month quietly filed an application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark office for a patent on an RFID tag that can be safely ingested.

A spokesman for Eastman Kodak declined Tuesday to discuss the tag, and noted that the company has no specific plans yet for the technology.


Read more on PC World Australia

Google: Anti-piracy a priority

Google´s chief executive has revealed that the implementation of anti-piracy measures to protect video content is a priority for the internet giant.

Eric Schmidt told Reuters that the company was preparing to make anti-piracy tools available to video copyright-owners to prevent unauthorised video sharing on the recently acquired YouTube site.

Read more on EquiMedia