The dissenting judge wrote: "State law thus gives the copyright holder the ability to eliminate the fair use defense in each and every instance at its option."

"Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) yesterday (Jan. 28) reintroduced his Competition in Radio and Concert Industries Act, which he says will help consumers, small and independent radio station owners, and indie concert promoters by prohibiting anti-competitive practices in the radio and concert industries, Billboard Bulletin reports."

"Mix makers counter that they are not hurting the music industry and are perhaps even doing it a favor by helping lesser-known artists get heard. Some fear that in its zeal to stop piracy, the industry could take away freedoms that music buyers have enjoyed for years, possibly hurting itself in the process."

"But where will our next divas come from?" "Opera. Like before."

"Financial software and services company Intuit has pledged to make controversial product activation technology less obtrusive in future versions of its TurboTax software."

"Verizon Communications is asking an appeals court to block a court order that would reveal the identity of an alleged peer-to-peer pirate to the music industry."

"In yet another example of recent patent disputes involving widely used Web user-interface practices, SBC Communications has contacted several Web sites regarding one of the most commonly used Web-site interface techniques of all."

"A streaming-media consortium set a schedule this week for finalizing technical specs for MPEG-4 security and rights management--components that are key to the open standard's adoption among content owners."

"The head of an Internet cafe chain pledged Wednesday to appeal a judge's ruling that the company broke copyright law by letting customers copy music from the Internet."

"[...] Eldred still holds that Congressional power is limited. However, the DMCA has no time limit. It makes it a crime to interfere with copyright management schemes even after the material protected passes into the public domain. If Congress has power to pass the DMCA, it is not under the Copyright Clause."

"According to an AFP report, the Finnish music industry is asking kindergardens to pay about 20 Euros per month in royalties for singing and performing copyright-protected songs."

"The website of the U.S. recording industry's trade group remained offline Tuesday, as federal officials probed the source of the hacking attack that has rendered the site unreachable since Friday."

"While Australian music sales dropped last year, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) concedes that online song-swapping and CD burning may not be to blame."

"The publishing industry has by no means given up, and they still hold some strong cards. [...] As we go to an appliance model, it's much, much easier to control users' behaviors."

"Hackers have once again disabled the Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America, a group of record labels that is leading the charge in the crackdown on online music piracy."

In the UK: "A High Court judge Tuesday found the EasyInternet Cafe chain guilty of copyright infringement for allowing customers to download music from the Internet and copy it onto a CD for $8.16."

"United States trade negotiators are pushing for Australia to sign up to a tough new copyright regime that could hold internet service providers liable for breaches."

"Sharman Networks, owner of the popular Kazaa file-swapping software, has launched a legal counterstrike against the major record labels and Hollywood studios, asserting they have 'obscenely' abused their copyright powers."

"If you've ever used a peer-to-peer network and swapped copyrighted files, chances are pretty good you're guilty of a federal felony."

"A January 17 report from Reuters news service notes that Sonicblue, Inc., the maker of ReplayTV digital video recorders (DVRs) and Rio digital music players, is considering selling the company to escape massive debt."

"A book locating/lending phenomenon known as the 'Dewey Decimal System' -- enabling users to get access to copyrighted text material for free -- has sent shockwaves through a panicked publishing industry."

"Judge Scalia, crusading Supreme Court Justice, who fights a never-ending battle to protect the powerful and wealthy. 'Go! Run back to your corporations!'"

"It's too early to place bets on what other wild misuses of the DMCA companies will come up with. But I'm not expecting that computer and consumer electronics companies find a way to handle the distribution of online and physical media that protects the rights of both the copyright holder and consumer anytime soon."

"Now the music companies don't have to litigate each and every case. Indeed, once they've proven a pattern of violations, they might not even need to obtain the offenders' names and addresses."

Hilary Rosen "said the trade body has no plans to develop compulsory licensing arrangements or impose fees on ISPs to recoup sales lost to file-trading."

"Echo is working with Microsoft and Real Networks to incorporate digital rights management software that will prevent songs from being copied or sent over the Internet."

"Playwright Wayne Frank's show can't go on. After failing to obtain stage rights to "The Sun Also Rises" beyond Milwaukee, Frank thought he only had to wait a few more years, when the book by Ernest Hemingway was to have entered the public domain. Instead, Congress extended copyright terms for another 20 years, a decision affirmed this month by the U.S. Supreme Court."

"The United States Supreme Court recently made it official: Music written 95 years ago remains under copyright protection. That's good news for living composers and the families of 20th-century music-makers no longer with us. [...] And not-so-good news for cash-strapped schools, conductors and musicians who pay royalties to perform those works."

"At York University's film school, students making their 8-mm short films are cautioned not to create any birthday party scenes in which participants sing "Happy Birthday To You." [...] It's just a small example of how the near-perpetual copyrights granted by U.S. law affect Canadian creators, be they filmmakers, authors, composers or visual artists, who naturally want to bust out of the relatively small Canadian market."

"Six of the largest music retailers plan to announce on Monday that they are joining forces to sell music that can be downloaded from the Web."

"The servers are in Denmark. The software is in Estonia. The domain is registered Down Under, the corporation on a tiny island in the South Pacific. The users - 60 million of them - are everywhere around the world. The next Napster? Think bigger. And pity the poor copyright cops trying to pull the plug."

"Microsoft has dropped the code name of its controversial security technology, Palladium, in favor of this buzzword-bloated tongue twister: 'next-generation secure computing base.'"

"Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether."

"A new lobbying group with heavy backing from the U.S. electronics industry is battling Hollywood over whether government-mandated technology standards are the best way to protect digital content."

"In a move that could make it easier for record companies to sell and promote songs online, the music distributor for Wal-Mart has agreed to buy some of the assets of Liquid Audio, the troubled digital music pioneer."

David Coursey on ClearPlay: "I understand that editing can sometimes change the "meaning" of a motion picture--but so what? This is supposed to be entertainment, and people shouldn't be forced to be offended when they want to be entertained."

"On Thursday, over 20 technology companies as well as taxpayer and consumer groups announced a new coalition, the Alliance for Digital Progress."

"Technology companies have joined forces with consumer groups to fight compulsory copyright protection systems in computers, CD burners and other products."

The Economist suggests a bargain -- accept copy-protection technologies in exchange for a dramatic reduction in the term of copyright. "Over the past 50 years, as a result of heavy lobbying by content industries, copyright has grown to such ludicrous proportions that it now often inhibits rather than promotes the circulation of ideas, leaving thousands of old movies, records and books languishing behind a legal barrier."

From the Center for the Study of Digital Property: "The Supreme Court's recent affirmation of the fundamental importance of copyright protection in its Eldred decision underscores the need to ensure that effective copyright protection extends to the Internet."

"A coalition of companies including Apple Computer, Microsoft, Dell Computer, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Intel said Thursday that they had joined together to oppose legislation backed by the movie studios that would allow the U.S. government to set antipiracy standards for PCs and consumer-electronics devices."

Felten: "A better rhetorical strategy is to focus on the entangling effects of copyright on everyday life, including ordinary creative work. The argument is simply that copyright has become a wide-ranging regulatory scheme that goes far beyond its proper role of protecting the legitimate rights of authors."

"Robin Gross thinks international copyright laws are out of step with the people. So much so that the former Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney is launching a new watchdog group called IP Justice."

"Zittrain said he believes the RIAA will use its subpoena power to demonstrate that large numbers of Internet users are downloading illegal materials. Then, he believes, the record producers will argue that under the act, Internet providers can be compelled to shut off service to any customer found swapping illegal files."

"Sense or nonsense, Rosen said during her keynote address at the Midem music conference in France that ISPs should pay a fee to the music industry to compensate for those losses. [... But] Even some music industry sources quietly dismissed the plan as unreasonable and unworkable."

"Verizon said it would appeal the ruling, which, if left unchallenged, would force Internet providers to surrender their subscribers' names, addresses and phone numbers without any subpoena -- without any kind of judicial review to determine whether the infringement claim is valid."

LawMeme notes that the Eldred decision is already being put to ill use, for example in the Verizon subpoena case.

"If I see one more news report claiming that it "allows people to pirate DVDs," I'll scream. You don't need DeCSS to pirate DVDs. But you do need DeCSS or something similar to view DVDs under Linux."

Wired cover story on the decline of the music industry: "Record labels are under attack from all sides - file sharers and performers, even equipment manufacturers and good old-fashioned customers - and it's killing them. A moment of silence, please."

"As industry figures urged her on from the sidelines, Rosen withstood a level of vitriol that stunned friends. In Washington, it was understood that she was a paid lobbyist. Online, she might as well have been the Unabomber in a pantsuit."

"Hilary B. Rosen, who as chief executive of the Recording Industry of America fought illegal Internet file sharing, will quit at the end of this year, the organization said yesterday. It will end a tumultuous time for Rosen, in which she became the public face for an industry struggling to protect its market."

"Some technology companies and consumer organizations are planning to announce today that they have formed a lobbying alliance to oppose technology regulations that are favored by the motion picture industry."

Interview: "Lawrence Lessig explains how the corporate obsession with intellectual property threatens our scientific and creative future."

"About all that's threatening to push the pause button on the growth of DVD-Rs, in fact, is Hollywood and the government."

"Rosen's departure comes as the organization sought to soften its image among Internet consumers, many of whom viewed the RIAA -- and Rosen personally -- with antipathy over incessant pressure for crackdowns on sharing digital music over the Internet."

The EFF is collecting stories about the impact of anti-circumvention technology for submission to the Library of Congress.

"Smoothing the way for the entertainment industry to pursue people who trade music and movies online, a federal judge ordered Verizon Communications yesterday to give a record industry trade group the identity of an Internet subscriber suspected of making available unauthorized copies of several hundred songs."

"It was a warm and fuzzy occasion by Washington standards, but the deal reached between music and tech groups last week may only signal more turmoil in the coming months as old and new rifts surface."

"While the DMCA theoretically has an exception that permits limited reverse-engineering for the sake of compatibility, in practice its broad anticircumvention prohibitions have created a litigation third rail too dangerous for most would-be competitors to touch. In effect, the DMCA has become the magic key -- not to opening the doors of competition, but rather to keeping them tightly locked shut."

"A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Verizon Communications to disclose the identity of an alleged peer-to-peer pirate in a legal decision that could make it easier for the music industry to crack down on file-swapping networks."

"Recording companies won a victory in their fight against online piracy on Tuesday, when a U.S. court ordered Verizon Communications to turn over the name of a customer suspected of downloading more than 600 songs in one day over the Internet."

"ClearPlay Inc. plans to market a new DVD player that automatically skips past graphic violence, gratuitous sex and profane language. [...] 'This is an abomination,' said Robert Giolito, general counsel for the Directors Guild of America."

"But the truce [between the RIAA, BSA, and CSPP] actually highlights the fact that a power shift has taken place between the media moguls and big tech. And guess what. Tech won. [...] From here on out, the future of digital music is largely in the technology companies' hands, and the details are likely to become devilish. The techies must design products that give truce-mandated deference to the RIAA's antipiracy demands without alienating consumers."

"Major music and technology companies on Monday announced the return of a promotion they tried six months ago that involved giving away music to attract customers to their nascent Internet music businesses."

"Norwegian authorities said on Tuesday they would appeal against the acquittal of a Norwegian teen-ager in a landmark trial on Hollywood movie piracy charges."

"In a development that could signal new limits on copying of store-bought music, Microsoft Corp. has come up with software tools that let recording companies restrict unauthorized reproduction and sharing of music compact discs, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported."

"Canadian regulators ruled Friday that it is illegal to put broadcast TV signals onto the Internet without permission, dashing the hopes of entrepreneurs hoping to create new Net TV businesses."

"We have proposed a tiny tax designed to move unused copyrighted work into the public domain."

"The [Eldred] decision has added impetus to a brewing rebellion against the increasing restrictions, prompting public-interest groups to stress the importance of the Creative Commons, a project Lessig chairs."

"It doesn't take a cynic to realize that the Court has allowed the fox to guard the henhouse: Congress will always be lobbied by, and have incentives to listen to, wealthy copyright industries seeking extensions."

"It is simply unfair that companies who made their fortune taking works in the public domain and reformatting them for new technology are now preventing others from following the same business model. Congress took from the public and gave to Disney."

"Kranich worries that everything that libraries can do today for free — loan a book to you or to another library, or allow you to photocopy a page — will cost money in the future, each and every time it happens. During a budget crunch, a library might not be able to pay the "rent" on a digital book, so to speak. And so the book will disappear from the library's collection."

"But colleges and museums have found their efforts to share images stalled by the fair-use provisions of copyright law, under which institutions can freely re-use the images only within their own walls."

"Hilary Rosen -- Jack Valenti's RIAA female clone -- has now gone on record saying that as part of the fight against music piracy, ISPs should be held accountable for the actions of their users and charged a fee for giving their customer's access to services such as Kazaa or Morpheus."

"Congress has exceeded the traditional boundaries of copyright protection, superimposing a new form of intellectual property protection that undermines the 'built-in free speech safeguards' crucial to the holding in Eldred. Hence, under the logic of Eldred, the DMCA is constitutionally suspect."

"There really are copyright issues to discuss, but not as part of the kind of ideological romance that has grown up in the current debates. A problem is posed by technological innovations that allow easy copying and transmission; there are dangers to the incentives copyright establishes. So new forms of control develop and those controls, in turn, pose dangers."

"Singer Robbie Williams has said he believes music piracy is a 'great' idea."

"A top music executive said on Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites."

"A New York court has ruled that Network Associates, a maker of popular antivirus and computer security software, may not require people who buy the software to get permission from the company before publishing reviews of its products."

"Microsoft Corp. announced on Saturday the introduction of new digital rights software aimed at helping music labels control unauthorized copying of CDs, one of the biggest thorns in the ailing industry’s side."

"Imagine requiring copyright holders to pay a tax 50 years after a work was published. The tax should be very small, maybe $50 a work. [...] But if a copyright owner fails to pay the tax for three years in a row, then the work will enter the public domain. Anyone would then be free to build upon and cultivate that part of our culture as he sees fit."

Chronicles the ongoing efforts to close the "analog hole."

Mickey Mouse: "So yeah, they created me. But they don't want to let other people build on me when they make their own creations, the way they did when I was born."

"So as you can see, the RIAA may not - strictly speaking - be 'hacking you back'. But the industry is extremely active in many other ways, and unlike so much of the trade press which sees an RIAA denial as the end of the story, their activities are only just beginning to emerge."

"In an e-mail interview, Gobbles representatives admitted that they fabricated the RIAA claim to get attention."

"In this context, the Court's decision is resounding loudly in the halls of Congress. McCullagh says: 'The prospects for the Boucher bill look a lot worse than they did a week ago. [...] With the RIAA/BPA axis reemerging, the outlook for Boucher and his supporters is much more dim now--I suspect they will not be able to get legislation through this Congress.'"

Interview with Eldred: "I think copyright will lose its meaning in the future. Things will be locked up and unavailable to the public forever."

"In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer offered an economic argument that copyright holders achieve 99.8% of all possible benefit under the old law compared to what they'd gain from a perpetual copyright. [...] For Justice Breyer, giving the trivial worth of the extra 20 years was proof that the act could not 'rationally be understood to advance a constitutionally legitimate interest.'"

"Our view is that Congress should use the normal path to give out windfalls -- i.e. tax breaks or outright handouts -- rather than packing the windfall as restrictions of speech on the rest of us, by extending copyright's monopoly."

Glenn Reynolds: "While many people are unhappy with the Intellectual Property implications of this decision, its most striking aspect is the strict constructionists' abandonment of the principles of limited government. I predict that this will come back to haunt them in future cases."

Siva Vaidhyanathan: "Don't despair at the Supreme Court's gift to Disney, says one expert. The fight has really only just begun."

"Why should record companies and movie studios be allowed to sue people for breaking into their own music and film collections? This was certainly an unintended side effect of the DMCA. [...] An access control technology that times out a lawfully made copy so that the lawful owner or lawful renter of that copy has to pay the copyright holder to gain access is the same as a technology allowing copyright holders to charge a toll to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. It is ludicrous for the illicit toll-collector to argue that if people can learn how to cross the Brooklyn Bridge without paying the illicit toll, then legitimate toll collectors will be at risk."

"Sharman Networks Ltd., which distributes Kazaa software, on Tuesday said it would file a counterclaim following a recent court ruling enabling film and music companies to sue the file-swap service."

"Justice Ginsburg's opinion stressed that the court was not ruling Congress had acted wisely or appropriately in extending copyright life, but only that the 1998 law ''remains inside the domain the Constitution assigns'' to the national legislature."

Great legal analysis of Eldred: The majority opinion stated that "the idea/expression distinction and fair use are 'built-in First Amendment accommodations' that are adequate to preserve first amendment values. The problem with this argument is that the scope of fair use has been greatly contracted by years of judicial rulings and legislation like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). The expansion of derivative rights and the proliferation of new forms of copyright protection have shrunk the built-in first amendment protections Ginsburg speaks about."

"Now for the political battle. Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law professor who worked with Lessig on the case, says there are a growing number of would-be innovators who are discouraged and stifled by such a lengthy duration of copyright protection. They could lobby Congress to change the law--or at least prevent future copyright extensions."

"It was a defeat for those who oppose recent trends in US copyright law, which has consistently expanded the scope and duration of copyright at the expense of public access to copyrighted works. The 1998 law extended copyright protection to 95 years for most existing copyrights and 70 years after the death of the author for most new ones."

"In his dissent, [Justice] Breyer used economic data to show that the copyright extensions in the Bono Act would grant copyright holders 99.8 percent of the benefits they would get from a perpetual copyright. In contrast, he noted, the costs to researchers of locating and purchasing copyrighted works are prohibitive."

"The Supreme Court today upheld the 20-year extension that Congress granted to all existing copyrights in 1998, declaring that while the extension might have been bad policy, it fell clearly within Congress's constitutional authority."

"The Supreme Court's decision to uphold a 20-year extension on the copyright term handed a major victory to the entertainment and publishing industries, which stand to make billions of dollars by keeping control over lucrative properties for up to 95 years. But the public domain advocates who had challenged the constitutionality of the 1998 law might claim a measure of success in the court of public opinion."

Industry lawyer Carey Ramos "mocked the idea that people would even notice the court decision. 'Millions of people are not going to say, "Let's have a day of protest where we stay home and download music." It ain't going to happen. If three people do it, I'll be shocked.'"

Bipartisan support for Eldred ruling from the House Judiciary committee: Chairman Sensenbrenner said, "I am pleased the Supreme Court defended the Constitutional prerogative of Congress to pass the Copyright Term Extension Act. The law provides writers, musicians, and other artists with greater incentive to create and disseminate their works which ultimately benefit the American public."

"'We are not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments of this order, however debatable or arguably unwise they may be,' Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the court's majority opinion."

"The 7-2 ruling in Eldred v. Ashcroft gives Congress free reign to hand out copyright extensions as long as media companies are around to lobby for them -- all while rejecting most arguments brought by the plaintiffs to the contrary."

"The losers are researchers, archivists, Internet publishers -- anyone who wants to use, adapt or republish a creative work without tracking down and paying royalties to the creator's heir or a company that acquired the rights."

"In effect, the Supreme Court's decision makes it likely that we are seeing the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of copyright perpetuity. Public domain has been a grand experiment, one that should not be allowed to die."

"The major recording companies said yesterday that they would not seek government intervention to prevent digital piracy, in a compromise with computer companies that may hurt the movie industry's efforts to win support for its own anti-piracy plan."

"The thieves are the members of the copyright cartel. Hollywood, the music industry, publishers and their vassals in Congress have continually heisted what you should already own: the words and songs and films and more of people, long dead, who have already been richly (and justly under copyright law's original intent) rewarded for their creations."

Felten points out that the RIAA/BSA/CSPP agreement endorses mandates that enforce a consensus between companies.

Fred von Lohmann: "I don't think this agreement marks any particular global settlement of the debate ... The agreement doesn't mention "fair use" at all. I think that it's a great example of why letting interindustry negotiations dictate our rights is a bad idea."

"The recording and technology industries are touting a new agreement that calls for voluntary placement of copyright protection measures in digital products. [...] But many lawyers say the deal isn't much to cheer about, particularly since it doesn't include the 800-pound gorilla of content -- the motion picture industry -- nor does it address the issue of "fair use" of copyrighted material."

"The real intent of this coalition is to give up on a questionable fight for more laws and defend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions with a passion."

"The peace accord was designed to show a unified front linking the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a pair of computer industry groups, thus persuading Congress that new regulations are unnecessary. But absent from the press conference were influential lobbyists who have been far more aggressive--and who show no signs of relenting."

"A new agreement between the technology and recording industries -- touted as a boon for consumers and businesses -- is not as rosy as it sounds, say some digital rights groups."

"It has often been said that movements gain by losing in the Supreme Court. Some feminists say it would have been better to lose Roe, because that would have built a movement in response. I have often wondered whether it would ever be possible to lose a case and yet smell victory in the defeat. I’m not yet convinced it’s possible. But if there is any good that might come from my loss, let it be the anger and passion that now gets to swell against the unchecked power that the Supreme Court has said Congress has."

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld lengthier copyrights protecting the profits of songs, books and cartoon characters -- a huge victory for Disney and other companies."

"A hoax message posted to two security mailing lists Monday suggests that the Recording Industry Association of America has hired a group of hackers who have developed a worm capable of infecting and shutting down peer-to-peer file-sharing software."

"As part of the agreement, the Recording Industry Association of America said it would oppose legislation that would require computers and consumer electronics devices to be designed to restrict unauthorized copying of audio and video material. [...] In turn, the Business Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project said they would not support legislation that seeks to bolster the rights of users of digital copyrighted material, which the recording industry has said is unnecessary."

"Transmeta said its Crusoe processors (which already feature Code Morphing software) would be slightly altered to tackle security and address requirements for securing sensitive data and intellectual property."

"Under the new agreement, lobbyists for some of America's largest technology companies, including Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Dell, will work together to convince Congress to abandon plans to amend laws that would broaden the rights of consumers, such as explicitly allowing viewers to make backup copies of DVDs for personal use or copy songs onto handheld listening devices."

"According to Chamberlain, its systems use a special security code designed to prevent burglars from recording the systems signals and playing them back later to trick the door into opening. Skylink's openers can interoperate with openers that use this code, and Chamberlain claims that violates the DMCA."

"The battle over who owns digital content and whether it is moral or even legal to download and distribute over the Internet won't be resolved this year, said some high-profile speakers at the Consumer Electronics tradeshow."

"So is this list of potential horrors just my way of keeping you up nights, or is there something you can do about them? As a matter of fact, there is. Consumer and watchdog groups representing your interests are in these fights, but they are few and poorly funded compared to the lobbyists from the software industry, the motion picture industry, the television networks, etc."

"Based on the patent application, Overpeer appears to be distributing so many defective copies of a given file on P2P networks that users have a hard time locating an undamaged copy. This technique, called "spoofing," has been used by disgruntled musicians and other anti-P2P saboteurs for years."

"Major players in the entertainment and technology industries plan to announce a measure of detente today in what are increasingly contentious battles over the best way to prevent digital piracy of music and video."

"I believe that it is important to recognize that publishers perform a valid economic function of filtering content and effectively distributing and selling it to consumers."

"Local Internet service providers (ISPs) have doused reported attempts by a US digital copyright solutions company to force them to terminate the Internet contracts of customers suspected of breaching copyright rules."

"An award-winning science fiction writer and digital rights activist has persuaded the publisher of his first novel to make the book available free online for anyone to read, print or even republish on paper."

"So now I'm kind of a gypsy downloader, filling my mp3 player where I can, always one step ahead of the man..."

"But most important, one veteran music executive said, is that the industry come to a decision to lower the cost of CD's to the consumer, a highly charged proposal within music companies these days. 'Now if you buy a soundtrack,' the executive said, 'you pay more for a soundtrack to a film than you pay for the DVD of that film. It is completely crazy.'"

"You can see the future. Already some auto parts have chips embedded in them. Imagine a day when you can only replace a Ford headlamp with another Ford headlamp, or the car will stop running. Or imagine buying a house with nothing but Whirlpool appliances, designed so that a Kenmore fridge won't work. Extreme? Sure. But perfectly legal, if Lexmark has its way."

"Maximillian Dornseif [...] points out, correctly, that encryption by itself cannot prevent copying, since encrypted bits can be copied just as easily as unencrypted ones. He wonders, then, how CSS can be called an anti-piracy measure. The answer is a bit subtle."

"Last week, a court in Norway acquitted teenager Jon Johansen on digital piracy charges. [...] The judge in the case, Irene Sogn, boiled down the issue nicely by observing the absurdity of convicting someone of breaking into his own property. Of course, Hollywood doesn't see a DVD as your property, except in the narrowest sense."

"Chris Hutchings, a copyright specialist with the law firm Charles Russell, said the Princess's executors could prevent reproduction of her letters, subject only to what is allowed under the defence of fair dealing."

"A copyright battle over gospel music is looming as churches square up against gospel artists who take church hymns without permission and rearrange them without crediting the composers or paying royalties to the churches."

"Ballard said the main impact of the suit has been to keep the company from adding some features to devices in development that he said would have been legal but may have invited further legal action."

"A federal judge has agreed to Static Control Components' offer to temporarily cease manufacturing a toner cartridge chip that drew a lawsuit under a controversial copyright law."

"Jonathan Taplin, CEO of on-demand movie site Intertainer, said every movie studio claims to have problems clearing music rights. But he suspects that this may be a convenient excuse to keep content out of the hands of companies that want to use networks based on the Internet Protocol, or IP, to distribute movies."

Great summary of the impact of the DMCA.

"A Los Angeles federal judge has ruled that record companies and movie studios can proceed with a lawsuit against the parent company of Kazaa--the most popular online file-swapping service--in the United States."

"While the TiVo Home Media Option gives consumers new flexibility and ease of use when enjoying content within the home, this new service release also features an advanced conditional access technology designed to protect the rights of copyright holders."

"Abandoning its quest to be the center of home networks, TiVo wants recorders using its service to simply be a part of the network. The digital video recording service company announced Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show here new software that essentially allows recorders to access and share content on home networks."

"If Powell's enthusiasm for digital recordings of TV broadcasts are reflected in FCC rulings, the entertainment industry could find it difficult to push in Washington its agenda for technical restrictions on making and sharing such recordings. [...] Powell said he intended to use the TiVo machine to record TV shows to play on other television sets in his home, and even suggested that he might share recordings with his sister if she were to miss a favorite show."

"There's a lesson in this example that executives in the content industry should think about before they sign away their businesses to lawyers. [...] The business of business is to make business, not to purify the world of copyright violations."

"Copyright protections are needed to encourage the development of content and ultimately the freeflow of information. Current attempts at enforcing copyright, though, if successful, would have helped twist its intent to make the global information village a ghost town ruled by the laws of the least free, such as Robert Mugabe."

"A leading television producer and two major advertisers have joined forces to present a live variety show with no commercial interruptions. Instead, the advertising messages will be incorporated into the show. [...] The experiment reflects growing anxiety among many advertisers and network executives about the rise of personal video recorders, like TiVo's, which make it easy for viewers to skip commercials."

"Proponents of MPEG-4 are decrying Microsoft's new licensing fees for rival technology, saying that the pricing poses unfair competition and threatens consumer choice."

"The second interesting claim is that the SC cartridge is "circumventing" the secret handshake. In fact, it is carrying out the secret handshake exactly as the handshake was designed. Is this a circumvention?"

"Illegal music download sites will never be eradicated, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has admitted."

"Internet and technology activists are hoping the acquittal of Norwegian programmer Jon Johansen in a digital piracy case signals a change in attitudes about copyright in the digital age."

"A new anti-piracy feature on Intuit's popular TurboTax software has triggered a backlash among consumers who are skewering the change as a major headache that will drive them to competing products."

In addition to their new watch, Microsoft introduced a media player that will "be able to store copies of broadcast and cable television programs recorded by Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition."

"In the latest move to court consumer electronics manufacturers, RealNetworks on Thursday is introducing content security technology that supports disparate digital media delivery standards, including MPEG-4 and MP3."

"Printer maker Lexmark has found an unusual weapon to thwart rivals from selling replacement toner cartridges: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." An EFF spokesperson says that "we have long said that the DMCA's potential use as an anticompetitive tool has been great."

"As head of the Motion Picture Association, Valenti has led the effort to criminalize fair use sharing and prop up the entertainment industry's fading business model."

"The law on this subject is a muddle. There is a long-recognized "fair use" right under copyright law for individuals to copy material for their personal use. But the DMCA allows copyright holders to use "technological measures" to protect the content and makes it illegal, and under some conditions criminal, to tamper with those protections."

"The deal calls for payments of as much as $20 for customers who bought CDs between 1995 and 2000. But so far, only a few people have signed up, and officials fear the money will go begging."

"Canadians are legally allowed to copy music for personal use. In exchange, a small fee is added to the price of recordable CDs to compensate musicians and music publishing companies. [...] But in the wake of the Canadian music industry's proposals for higher and broader levies in 2003, much of Canada's technology and retail industry is now calling for the levy's repeal."

"A teenage software programmer in Norway was acquitted of digital piracy in Oslo yesterday in a case that has drawn close scrutiny from the entertainment industry, which has been struggling to protect DVD's, online music and other forms of media from unauthorized copying."

Lessig summarizes the Johansen verdict: "As the chief judge said in reading the verdict, 'no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property.'"

"A difference between American and European copyright law threatens to carve out a free-swapping zone for popular decades-old music, hampering record companies' antipiracy efforts online."

"One issue that is sure to remain a flash point this session will be the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has been the focus of intense scrutiny and a number of lawsuits."

"The Copyright Act, like most of our laws, has been built on the premise that you go after the guy who actually breaks the law. Sure, sometimes we extend the reach of the law to get the wheel-man, too. But no one has ever suggested that Ford should be liable for every bank robbery committed with one of its cars."

"If you believe the speed bump analogy, then the DMCA anti-circumvention laws clearly need to be repealed. A ban on driving over speed bumps makes speed bumps useless as speed bumps; and a ban on making cars that can drive over bumps is even worse."

"Financial software and services company Intuit is facing a growing number of consumer complaints over anticopying technology included in the latest version of TurboTax, its market-leading tax preparation software."

"A Norwegian teenager was acquitted in a key test case Tuesday of violating computer break-in laws with his program that circumvents security codes on Hollywood's DVD movies."

"Most of the arguments against bootlegging have a way of self-destructing. The recording industry says bootlegs are bad because they cheat the artist and his label of revenue, then says it cannot release the material because it wouldn't sell in sufficient quantity."

"As digital file sharing, webcasting and other new technologies proliferate, artists and industry officials meeting here said the music business is in jeopardy unless artists, record companies and consumers stop fighting and start compromising."

"A Norwegian teenager was cleared of DVD piracy charges on Tuesday in a landmark trial brought on behalf of major Hollywood studios."

"The real deal-breaker is that a stand-alone player is the only kind available. By manufacturers' consensus, there won't be any network ports on the players, nor will there be any DVD-A or SACD drives available for computers. Some makers are promising a digital link from the player to a home-theater console, but it'll be deliberately incompatible with any of the jacks on a computer."

"In a bid to secure a central place for itself in the new gadgets that are increasingly the preferred platform for digital media, Microsoft said yesterday that it would license its Windows Media technology to consumer electronics makers at lower prices and better terms than its main competitors do."

An exhibition based on the idea that "music, visual art and video pieces in the installation are protected by the "fair use" provision in copyright law that allows for parody and commentary." The exhibition "takes the potentially illegal and makes it untouchable."

"The Cleveland Public Library is launching an eBook system that will let people download publications onto their PCs and personal digital assistants. [...] Only a limited number of each eBook will be available, and after a preset number of days, the eBook will lock out the current reader so another patron can check it out."

"A Norwegian teenager has been cleared of DVD piracy charges in a landmark trial brought by major Hollywood studios. [...] The [Oslo] court also ruled that it is not illegal to use the DeCSS code to watch DVD films obtained by legal means."

"Yet so far the entertainment industry bulldogs have stayed noticeably silent about an old model of TiVo recorder and a new flavor of Windows that now allow hackers to swap video. Why haven't TV executives mounted a similar defense against these potential tools for would-be pirates? Perhaps because their erstwhile partners, TiVo and Microsoft, all but invited the video swappers in."

"The last several weeks have brought good news on two fronts in the copyright war. An unjust prosecution has ended in acquittal, and some pro-freedom activists launched some useful new technology."

"[A]ccording to tech-industry watchers, the copyright wars between producers and consumers of digital entertainment products could provoke the most intense legislative action" of the year.

"The legal battle over sanitized versions of Hollywood movies has heated up with a software supplier announcing it will file a countersuit against leading filmmakers, the Directors Guild of America and the major Hollywood studios."

"The DMCA has not only undercut fair use but also stifled scientific investigations. [...] The legal system should try to achieve a balance between the rights of owners and users of copyrighted works. An incisive debate is urgently needed to restore that balance."

"Simply put, the digital flag is a bad idea and a serious threat to consumer privacy. Only Hollywood's interests would be protected. [...] If your right to read whatever you want is constitutionally protected, why should anyone -- especially Hollywood studios -- be permitted to invisibly track and record what you watch on TV? The broadcast flag would bestow the entertainment industry with just that power."

"Bootleg trading is not as widespread as Internet file sharing, however, and it does not provoke as much concern from the music industry, which worries more about piracy, as when counterfeit CD's and song-file downloads cut into the sales of official releases."

"A federal judge in Albany, N.Y., has granted a temporary reprieve to Madster, an online file-sharing system being sued for copyright infringement by the entertainment industry."

Author reports that prices for used copies of his book went up by 40% when he released the text under a free license.

"Lying dormant in virtually every digital cable box in America is technology that can prevent viewers from recording certain programs to watch them later. Soon, several Hollywood studios are planning to tell cable operators to flip the switch. People who have become accustomed to recording pay-per-view and video-on-demand shows will probably still be able to, the studios say — so long as they pay an extra fee."

"On Friday, however, O'Connor issued an order saying that she had reviewed the response from Pavlovich's attorneys and was vacating her earlier stay, essentially denying the DVD CCA further relief from the California Court's ruling, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Supreme Court."

"The high-tech industry plans to launch a sophisticated new lobbying campaign later this month to strike back against Hollywood in a battle to shape rules of the road for new digital technologies. The Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project -- two prominent high-tech trade groups representing Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley heavyweights -- are forming a new coalition and working to enlist support from consumer and business groups."

"The U.S. Supreme Court has granted Hollywood studios and electronics makers a temporary victory by stepping into a long-running dispute over software that can be used to copy DVDs."

"European copyright protection is expiring on a collector's trove of 1950's jazz, opera and early rock 'n' roll albums, forcing major American record companies to consider deals with bootleg labels and demand new customs barriers."

"Copyright extremists are working to control as much information as possible. Almost every week we see a new example of how they are thwarting the free flow of information."

"Under the agreement, HDTV programs from network broadcasters sent through cable or satellite companies will be completely unrestricted and recordable. Subscribers to pay services like HBO could be restricted from making more than one copy of programs from those services."

"Microsoft is set to release its first mainstream consumer software application protected by product activation, in what could be a first step toward expanding use of the antipiracy technology."