A Copyfighter’s Musings

Having seen this around the office and in Siva’s new book, I wanted to link to this piece from Harper’s Magazine.  A German customer writes to EMI, complaining that his newly purchased Toto CD can’t play because of copy-protection. EMI responds by insulting him, accusing him of supporting piracy, and by saying, “Should you legitimately have a playback problem with the CD that you complained about, we would ask that you specify the exact CD player model for us. The scenario you put forth–multiple players failing to play the CD–can only be the stuff of fairy tales, given our experiences.”  EMI’s letter concludes by telling him that they are going to force copy-protection onto consumers no matter what.  Read all of “Toto Recall.”

Filed by Derek Slater at 10:53 pm under General news
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Seems like a pretty interesting choice.  Don’t know much about him, but he’s not an insider, or a lobbyist, and he doesn’t seem to have much of a Hollywood connection.

Filed by Derek Slater at 10:49 pm under General news
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• A nice article from News.com on P2P users shifting away from KaZaA, primarily to eDonkey.  It covers a couple interesting issues, including how this might make it easier to acquire movies and software.  It also might lead to greater privacy protections and perhaps spoofing countermeasures.  From what I know (and I haven’t investigated this thoroughly enough), Sharman has not added any sort of proxying and encryption into KaZaA, nor a peer-rating system that could help defeat spoofing.  Systems like Morpheus have been much more willing to add proxy support.  I don’t know the extent to which eDonkey or other systems have added these features or are willing to.  I also don’t know the extent to which users are seeking out systems with these features; regardless, if they migrate to the systems simply because they are more efficient for sharing files, they might also adopt privacy protecting features if they happen to be available.
  
• More on taking advantage of the mobile market and turning cell phones into digital music players.  As if the silliness about the ring tone market weren’t enough, now this: 
  

  
  

  “Michael Nash, a senior vice president at Warner Music, says his company is already in discussions with its constituent labels about having studio producers create mobile mixes–such as the abbreviated 90-second or two-minute versions of songs used by T-Mobile-type download services–at the same time as the full versions of songs are created. This could help create a new market for music, in which people listen to PC-based and phone-based songs differently, he said.

  
  

  “From our perspective, it is a much more desirable outcome to have the mobile channel and online channel be differentiated,” Nash said.

  
  

  Yes, from your perspective, indeed.  It ain’t gonna happen.  You will, however, lead people to circumvent or route around your DRM (burning to CD and ripping, or recording from the soundcard), and to download from P2P rather than buy at all.

Filed by Derek Slater at 10:40 pm under General news
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Building off of its (recently updated) iTunes Case Study white paper and taking into account iTunes’ recent arrival in Europe, the Berkman Center’s Digital Media Project has produced iTunes Europe: A Preliminary Analysis.

“In its first week of operation in Britain, France, and Germany, iTunes Europe sold an impressive 800,000 songs –- outpacing its nearest competitor by a margin of 16:1.  While this initial success attracted attention from the recording industry, lawmakers, and business executives, a number of questions remain about the future of iTunes in Europe and its ability to adapt a business model based on U.S. law to the laws and cultural norms of different countries in Europe.

The following report, iTunes Europe: A Preliminary Analysis (June 2004), by students of the Berkman Center’s Digitial Media Project, considers the legal foundation of iTunes Europe and the interplay of the service with European law.  The report examines the implications of the expansion of iTunes on the future of digital media, technology, business strategies, and international law.”

Filed by Derek Slater at 10:25 pm under General news
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