Post Tagged with: "drm"

Copyright Board Issues Online Music Decision

The Copyright Board of Canada this afternoon issued its much-anticipated decision involving online music services. The decision sets a tariff for the online music services to be paid for the reproduction of music. I blogged about the hearings in the fall, which pitted the CMRRA against CRIA and the online music services.

The Copyright Board was asked to choose between two benchmarks in establishing the tariff. CMRRA wanted to use the recent ringtone decision as the starting point, while CRIA argued that traditional CDs served as the more appropriate starting point. The Board sided with CRIA, ultimately arriving at a tariff of 7.9 percent of the retail price per "permanent" download (ie. a download from Apple iTunes) with a minimum payment of 5.3 cents per download. Note that CRIA also sought to become a sub-licensee of the CMRRA repertiore, but the Board rejected that request.

The decision also includes some important language with respect to private copying and DRM.

March 16, 2007 — 18 comments — News

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.

March 8, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — News

Evolution of the Music Industry

On the heels of my column this week on the music industry, there are several articles discussing related developments. The LA Times discusses efforts by one ISP to create a licensed, internal P2P service with agreements in place with both Sony and EMI, while the NY Times reports that the […]

February 20, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — News

The Recording Industry’s Digital Strategy Out of Tune

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) begins with the following:

Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make near-perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry emphasized a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing business environment. First, it focused on copy-control technologies, often referred to as digital rights management (DRM), that many in the industry believed would allow it re-assert control over music copying. Second, it lobbied the Canadian government for a private copying levy to compensate for the music copying that it could not control.

While the industry’s approach proved successful on the legal front – the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet Treaties established legal protections for DRM and Ottawa introduced a private copying levy on blank media such as cassettes and CDs in 1997 – the strategy’s effectiveness has long been subject to debate. The week of February 5th may ultimately be viewed as the beginning of the end of that debate. That week, which began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling on the industry to drop DRM and concluded with the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the collective that administers the private copying levy, applying for its dramatic expansion, leaves little doubt that the recording industry got it wrong.

The column proceeds to discuss the failure of DRM and the mounting pressure on the industry to drop it.

February 19, 2007 — 5 comments — Columns