In the News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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Baidu Sued Over Music Copyrights. By AP, February 29, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/yoa2ek

China's top search engine Baidu.com has been sued by a local music industry
group for alleged copyright violation, the second recent similar action from
the industry, the group said.

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Music piracy challenges. By Carlos Natera, Bangkok Post, February 29, 2008.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Business/29Feb2008_biz44.php

Last month, EMI Thailand, one of the four largest music labels along with
Sony-BMG, Warner, and Universal, closed its CD and DVD manufacturing operation
in Thailand. This is not good news for the music entertainment industry....

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1976 copyright law meets 21st century. By R. Robin McDonald, Daily Report,
February 27, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/22852k

National Geographic and freelance contributors argue over how to apply
three-decade old law to digital rights.
Kenneth W. Starr...is representing the National Geographic Society in a nearly
decade-long battle to market the National Geographic magazine archive as a
CD-ROM library without having to pay royalties to the magazine's freelance
contributors.

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News Release: Performance Right Would Harmonize Copyright Policy. By PFF,
February 27, 2008.
http://www.pff.org/news/news/2008/022708performanceright.html

A performance-right for recording artists would correct a needless exception
in U.S. copyright law, states Tom Sydnor in, "A Performance Right for
Recording Artists: Sound Policy at Home and Abroad," a Progress on Point
released today by The Progress & Freedom Foundation.

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And the band played on... By James Boyle, Financial Times, February 25, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2xucp2

Readers of these columns have heard me lament  in the past about the fact that
intellectual property policy is an "evidence-free zone".  It is the trickiest
of regulatory matters to get the right level of intellectual property
protection - giving incentives to creators and distributors, yet not overly
burdening future innovators or imposing unnecessary monopoly prices on
consumers. Getting this balance right should be a matter of empiricism, not
faith.

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Sometimes, the best ideas are free. By Stephen Pollard, The Times Online,
February 25, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/29hsrk

The revolution in intellectual property takes us through the looking glass.
More often than not, it's the seemingly obscure that has the most lasting
influence on our lives. In the 1960s a man called J.C.R. Licklider at MIT
started thinking about the esoteric subject of communication between
computers. That idea changed the world.

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Flash DRM could put Dramatic Prairie Dog on endangered list. By Ryan Paul, Ars
Technica, February 24, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/yw9eey

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has expressed concerns that Adobe's efforts
to develop a DRM system for Flash video content will be bad news for users
looking to remix and repurpose digital media content. Adobe's DRM will
principally be used in its new streaming desktop media player application, but
will also be supported in the Flash browser plug-in.

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China, U.S. launch short film contest to promote IPR protection. Xinhua News,
February 23, 2008.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/23/content_7654958.htm

China and the United States launched a short film competition open to Chinese
university students to promote intellectual property rights (IPR) protection
here on Saturday. The one minute film contest was jointly launched by the
China Film Copyright Protection Association (CFCPA) and the Motion Picture of
America Association (MPAA) during the 15th Beijing Student Film Festival.

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Blog: Open Rights Group Urges on Fight to Stop Copyright Extension. By
DrewWilson, ZeroPaid.com, February 23, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/yszg9v

Two years ago, copyright extension in the UK was shot down. Now copyright
extension is not only back in the spot light for the British, but it is also
drawing concern for digital rights activists as well.

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Blog: How to ensure eternal life for your open-source project? By Matt Asay,
CNET Blogs, February 23, 2008.
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9877204-16.html

A friend pinged me a few weeks ago with a Very Good Question, one for which I
still don't have a good answer and so I thought I'd throw it out to the larger
community. The question? How can a company best preserve its customized
code...when there's no guarantee that future management will support open
source?

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Copyright board stands by music royalty hike. By Canwest News Service,
Vancouver Sun, February 22, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2helzv

The Copyright Board of Canada has reaffirmed a hefty music royalty hike for
Canadian musicians whose music is played on the radio, ruling they should be
paid at the same rates as in 2005.

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Business coalition speaks out on copyright reform. By Rafael Ruffolo,
ComputerWorld Canada, February 22, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/26cuj2

The Conservative government's long-delayed copyright reform bill has hit yet
another roadblock, this time in the form of a powerful business coalition
comprised of corporate giants such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Rogers
Communications Inc. and Telus Corp.

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Star columnist earns digital pioneer award. By Tyler Hamilton, The Star,
February 22, 2008.
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/305876

Internet law professor and Toronto Star business columnist Michael Geist has
been named a digital pioneer by the highly respected Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a U.S.-based advocate of civil liberties in a high-tech world.

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British ISPs Could Be Punished Over File Sharing. By Jeremy Kirk/IDG News
Service, PC World, February 22, 2008.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142715-c,isps/article.html

The U.K. government said Friday it wants a new law by April 2009 obligating
ISPs to stop illegal file sharing on their networks, marking one of the most
aggressive stances yet in Europe to counter Internet piracy.

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Law Students Provide Counseling to Individuals Targeted by Recording Industry.
By University of San Francisco School of Law, February 21, 2008.
http://www.usfca.edu/law/news/stories/riaa.html

A new undertaking by the Internet and Intellectual Property Justice Project at
the USF School of Law aims to provide college students with the legal
counseling they need to make an informed decision on how to respond to the
RIAA letters. Law students in the class, led by Professor Robert Talbot, are
available to counsel students accused of music piracy.

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OpEd: Copyright this: Intellectual property's social value may trump copyright
law.  By Dallas Weaver, LA Times, February 20, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/2ttpc6

Jon Healey correctly points out that the debate over intellectual-property
theft is complex because we are often dealing with "non-real properties."
These properties cost nearly nothing to produce, and an infinite number of
people can use the same property at the same time. And yet, we still want to
treat them as if they were "real" property.

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Blog: Lessig, a copyfighter for Congress? By Salon, February 20, 2008.
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/02/20/lessig/

Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Stanford Law School and the most inspiring,
clever, and generally effective fighter of copyright abuse on the planet
(well, maybe he's tied with Cory Doctorow). But is Lessig a politician? Can he
get to Congress?

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(C)ollectanea Blog. Collected perspectives on copyright.
http://chaucer.umuc.edu/blogcip/collectanea/

(C) Monopoly: Playing the innovation game -- May 28-30, 2008
http://www.umuc.edu/CIP2008

Center for Intellectual Property, UMUC