I recently appeared on CBC's The Hour to discuss the move by the French government to legislate interoperability for Apple iTunes. The segment from March 22nd is available here.
Post Tagged with: "drm"
Music and the Market
In case you missed it, last week CRIA was back in the news claiming that Canadian copyright law is in need of reform, arguing that Canadian digital download sales have not met expectations. The copyright lobby group chose to focus on sales of Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl. In the U.S., the song has become the first to reach one million paid downloads. By comparison, in Canada it has hit 20,000 paid downloads. CRIA argues that based on population and broadband penetration rates, the Canadian figure should be 150,000.
I find this argument rather remarkable. CRIA is obviously hoping to convince Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda and Industry Minister Maxime Bernier that the Canadian digital music market has been hurt by the absence of anti-circumvention legislation, yet the notion that music sales are a function of population size and broadband access is certainly subject to challenge.
Australian Parliamentary TPM Report Accepts User Concerns
Kim Weatherall provides a quick summary of what is an exceptionally important Australian parliamentary report on TPM provision implementation. The report includes 37 recommendations with a long list of protections. Kim points to coverage of region coding (specifically excluded as TPM), linking access controls to copyright, and exceptions when the […]
Two From Yahoo
While much of the tech world's attention is focused on RIM (with the judge reserving his decision this afternoon), there are two Yahoo stories worth noting. First, add Yahoo to the list of companies that are coming out against DRM. Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg raised eyebrows Thursday at the […]
The Sony Rootkit Effect
While the blogosphere is understandably focused on the revelation that the RIAA now says that "creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use" (after telling the U.S. Supreme Court in the Grokster hearing that "it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."), I think two other stories out today merit attention.
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