As part of my 30 Days of DRM series last summer, I called for the creation of a new collaborative body that would provide on-demand reviews for new circumvention rights. I argued that the U.S. DMCA process, which occurs once every three years, simply does not provide the public with […]
Post Tagged with: "drm"
The EMI DRM Announcement
EMI and Apple jointly announced today that EMI will be making virtually its entire music catalog available without DRM. Their plan is to offer a higher priced version without DRM and with higher quality sound. This is obviously an important development – there is lots of DRM-free music available from independent labels, but the addition of the world's third largest music label is a game-changer. A few random comments:
EMI Drops DRM
Following speculation earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that EMI will announce tomorrow that it plans to sell much of its music without DRM.
TPM Petition Presented in the House of Commons
NDP MP Charlie Angus yesterday presented a petition focused on TPMs to the House of Commons. The petitioners call upon Parliament to "prohibit the application of a technical protection measure to a device without the informed consent of the owner of the device and to prohibit the conditioning of the […]
DMCA Architect Acknowledges Need For A New Approach
McGill University hosted an interesting conference today on music and copyright reform. The conference consisted of two panels plus an afternoon of open dialogue and featured an interesting collection of speakers including Bruce Lehman, the architect of the WIPO Internet Treaties and the DMCA, Ann Chaitovitz of the USPTO, Terry Fisher of Harvard Law School, NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus, famed music producer Sandy Pearlman, and myself. A video of the event has been posted in Windows format.
My participation focused on making the case against anti-circumvention legislation in Canada (it starts at about 54:30). I emphasized the dramatic difference between the Internet of 1997 and today, the harmful effects of the DMCA, the growing movement away from DRM, and the fact that the Canadian market has supported a range of online music services with faster digital music sales growth than either the U.S. or Europe but without anti-circumvention legislation.
The most interesting – and surprising – presentation came from Bruce Lehman, who now heads the International Intellectual Property Institute. Lehman explained the U.S. perspective in the early 1990s that led to the DMCA (ie. greater control though TPMs), yet when reflecting on the success of the DMCA acknowledged that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful" (presentation starts around 11:00).
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