Archive for March, 2007

Apple’s DRM Dilemma

This is a terrific article on how Apple's DRM works and where its pressure points lie in dealing with regulators, consumers, and music industry.

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March 8, 2007 Comments are Disabled News

Canada’s Copyright Kyoto

John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail has a column today (unfortunately behind a paywall) on the copyright issue.  The column gets many of the issues right – the complexity of the file, the likelihood of greater U.S. pressure, and the fact that Canada is a net importer of cultural goods.  The piece also contains a couple of newsworthy tidbids including word that Industry Minister Bernier and Canadian Heritage Minister Oda met last week to work out a final agreement on a copyright bill but failed to do so.  It also confirms that U.S. Ambassador Wilkins recently sent a "stern letter" to Prime Minister Harper on intellectual property enforcement.

That said, it gets several things wrong.  First, Ibbitson says the issue boils down to:

Copyright owners, from garage bands to Disney, want strict prohibitions on practices and technologies that allow people to record, copy and download copyrighted works without paying for them. Their champion is the Heritage Minister. The Industry Minister, however, represents the ordinary user, the educator, the entrepreneur, who wants the greatest possible latitude in exploiting the knowledge and information available on discs, the Web and in databases.

Ibbitson gets it half-right. 

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March 7, 2007 2 comments News

CTV National News on Movie Camcording

On the day the MPAA reported record revenues in 2006, the CTV National News featured a story (video here) on the U.S. pressure on movie piracy.  The story included a brief interview with U.S. ambassador David Wilkins along with a short response from me and a comment from an RCMP […]

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March 7, 2007 5 comments News

Heritage Standing Committee on CTF

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage last week submitted its report on the Future of the Canadian Television Fund.  Its recommendation is short but potentially far-reaching: any structural and core policy changes directly affecting Canada's telecommunications policy or Canada's broadcasting policy be subject to votes in the House of Commons […]

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March 6, 2007 1 comment News

MSFT on Google

There is lots of buzz about today's Microsoft speech challenging Google's respect for copyright. Danny Sullivan does a terrific job of dissecting the Microsoft claims.

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March 6, 2007 Comments are Disabled News