INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Hollywood Heads Up Anti-Piracy Charge
Royalty Fees Killing Most Internet Radio Stations
INTERNET
How to Preserve Digital Art
Broadband Set for Global Boom
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Royalty Fees Killing Most Internet Radio Stations
ROYALTY FEES KILLING MOST INTERNET RADIO STATIONS
More than 200 Internet-based radio stations have shut down because of a
royalty fee that takes effect in September, and most of the estimated 10,000
radio Webcasters are expected to follow suit. On June 20, a copyright
appeals board set a rate of seven-hundredths of a cent per song, per
listener. Payments, which are due Oct. 20 for this year and are retroactive
to 1998, could add up to tens of thousands of dollars. For many stations
that works out to thousands of dollars more than they make. The fee applies
to both commercial and non-commercial stations; many non-profits have closed
their Web stations, including University of California-Los Angeles and New
York University. While many Web stations already pay copyright royalties to
songwriter organizations, this new fee - which traditional over-the-air
radio stations don't pay - goes to record companies.
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Jefferson Graham]
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2002-07-21-radio_x.htm)
HOLLYWOOD HEADS UP ANTI-PIRACY CHARGE
On Monday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Policy
Innovation sponsored an intellectual property conference. More than 100
congressional aides attended the conference which had a clear
pro-intellectual property agenda. Among the speakers were representatives of
Microsoft, Eli Lilly, and the Association for Competitive Technology. Intel
attorney Jeffrey Lawrence said that Senator Fritz Holling's (D-S.C.) bill to
require copy-protection technology in consumer devices has disrupted ongoing
negotiations between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA)
introduced a bill last month that would allow content owners to use
aggressive high-tech measures to "prevent the unauthorized distribution of
their copyrighted works via P2P networks." The MPAA's proposals, on the
other hand, seek to limit piracy by outlawing future consumer devices that
receive digital TV broadcasts unless they follow anti-broadcasting
standards, such as embedded watermarks that limit redistribution ability.
With only about five weeks before Congress adjourns for the year, it is
unlikely that either side will see success until 2003.
[SOURCE: CNET News, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-945691.html?tag=fd_top
see also:
LAWMAKERS SEEK RULES TO STOP REDISTRIBUTION OF DIGITAL TV
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Amy Harmon]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/technology/23DIGI.html)
(registration required)
INTERNET
HOW TO PRESERVE DIGITAL ART
"It took centuries to evolve a system of notation for musical scores," says
Richard Rinehart, director of digital media for the Berkeley Art Museum and
Pacific Film Archive. "With digital art, there's no room for things to fall
between the cracks. If you don't do something to preserve it within a span
of five years, it's not going to survive." Hence the launch of Archiving the
Avant Garde: Documenting and Preserving Variable Media Art. The project,
initiated by a consortium of art institutions, will propose a new set of
rules to document and preserve variable media art. The key, says Rinehart,
is to look at digital art and Internet art more as performance art rather
than as sculpture or painting. The project proposes four strategies for
preserving digital art: documentation, migration, emulation and re-creation.
Documentation of an art work and the artist's intent is the simplest and
most easily achieved goal. Not so with the other three strategies. Emulation
and migration can be costly and inaccurate. Many works will suffer greatly
from being transferred onto newer equipment. Most problematic is
re-creation, which requires artists to decide whether they want their works
to be completely translated into media that don't even exist yet.
{SOURCE: Wired News, AUTHOR: Kendra Mayfield]
(http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53712,00.html)
BROADBAND SET FOR GLOBAL BOOM
Technology analysts at In-Stat have released a report saying that more than
46 million people across the world will have high-speed Internet access by
the end of 2002. If this prediction holds true, it will mean a jump of 16
million subscribers in a year. According to In-Stat, Asymmetric Digital
Subscriber Line (ASDL) is set to become dominant in the broadband market.
But the report points out that obstacles remain in the growth of broadband,
mainly that much of the world does not have the telecommunications
infrastructure to support broadband. In the U.S., cable modems are more
popular than DSL for high-speed access. Satellite or wireless access
comprise a scant 5 percent of the world market.
[SOURCE: BBC News]
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2145402.stm)
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