Graduated Response in the Post-Sarkozy Era May 24, 2012
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Europe, Events.add a comment
Now that Nicolas Sarkozy is no longer president of France, there’s some question about the future of the graduated response regime that was implemented during his tenure in the Elysee Palace through the HADOPI regulatory body. Although it wasn’t exactly the leading campaign issue, government response to online copyright infringement did get highly politicized during the Sarkozy years, to the extent that his opponents built campaign platform planks around graduated response repeal.
As an American, I watched this take place across the ocean with a sense of bewilderment — not only that an arcane issue like Internet piracy would be discussed alongside larger issues like unemployment and the European debt crisis, but also at the seeming political inconsistencies and opportunism that characterized other candidates’ responses on both the left and right.
That’s why I am proud to say that we will have a very timely opportunity to hear from Eric Walter, General Secretary of HADOPI, share his thoughts on his organization and its future at the Copyright and Technology London 2012 conference coming up on June 19th. France’s leadership on graduated response ensures that whatever happens with it under new president Francois Hollande will influence the rest of Europe and beyond. Hollande’s socialist party campaigned on a promise to replace the graduated response system with a system of flat taxes and statutory license; yet M. Walter is still at HADOPI.
M. Walter will provide the keynote speech at the conference and will then participate in a panel on “Policing Piracy” that will include speakers from all sides of this controversial issue. There will be no better place to learn about the future of graduated response than at the King’s Fund in central London on June 19.
Please join us — register today!
C&T London 2012 Conference Program Takes Shape April 30, 2012
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events, UK.add a comment
The program for the Copyright and Technology London 2012 Conference, to be held on June 19, now has most speakers confirmed, and I am quite excited about the lineup.
Graduated response is on many Europeans’ minds nowadays. We will have Eric Walter, Secretary General of Hadopi, speaking on the subject. M. Walter was appointed by French President Sarkozy to run the authority for administering the progressive response law that France enacted three years ago — and which many other countries are studying to gauge its effectiveness.
Our Conference Sponsor, MarkMonitor, is working with me to organize a panel on the collection and use of piracy data. The ground is shifting in the piracy monitoring field, from a focus purely on enforcement towards use of the data for business intelligence purposes. MarkMonitor will explore this trend and what it means for copyright owners.
I have been working with Nic Garnett, former Executive Director of IFPI and now an attorney at Simons Muirhead & Burton, on the legal track of the agenda. We have added a panel covering international perspectives on digital copyright, to be moderated by Nic himself. He’ll have panelists from the US, Australia, and continental Europe sharing developments and comparing notes.
We will also have a good discussion of developments in the area of rights registries, featuring representatives of the Linked Content Coalition and the WIPO International Music Registry.
Our speaker roster is almost full, though we have a couple of openings left. (In particular, we’d love to have someone on the skeptical side of the graduated response issue to balance things out.)
In addition, two sponsorship opportunities remain. Please inquire if you are interested in that.
Finally, the early bird registration offer will expire shortly… so register today! I hope to see many of you in London on June 19.
Webinar on Studios’ Content Security Policies April 24, 2012
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Conditional Access, DRM, Events, Video, Watermarking.add a comment
For those who couldn’t attend the breakfast event at the NAB trade show last week, I will be doing a webinar on Content Security Requirements for Multi-Screen Video Services, on Thursday April 26 at noon US east coast time/1700 GMT. I’ll be presenting a synopsis of the whitepaper I published last December on the topic. I will be joined by Petr Peterka, CTO of Verimatrix, sponsor of the webinar. Click here to register.
Copyright and Technology London 2012 Conference April 18, 2012
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events, UK.1 comment so far
I am proud to announce the expansion of the Copyright and Technology Conference to London after two successful years in New York.
We are partnering with Music Ally to present Copyright and Technology London 2012 on June 19, at the King’s Fund, located near Oxford Circus in central London. Online registration is available, with Early Bird discount through May 4.
Please see the conference page for the agenda and program. We are proud to have MarkMonitor as our Conference Sponsor, as well as Civolution and the law firm of Simons Muirhead & Burton as Partner Sponsors. Sponsorships are still available; please inquire to receive a brochure.
The conference program focuses on topics that should be of particular currency and interest to Europeans, including graduated response, rights registries, multi-platform content security, and content identification technologies. I am working with Nic Garnett of Simons Muirhead on the law and policy aspects of the program.
We are currently accepting proposals for moderating and speaking; deadline is April 30. Please send proposals with the following:
- Name, title, and organization
- Session(s) requested
- Brief summary of speaker/moderator’s point of view, perspective, and/or experience regarding the panel topic(s)
- Full contact information
Please note that personal confirmation from the proposed speaker will be required before we will put him or her on the agenda, and moderator proposals will receive preferential treatment.
I am excited about this event and hope that many of you will attend or participate! Watch this space for more details as they emerge.
CCC’s OnCopyright Conference April 4, 2012
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events, Law.add a comment
If you follow @copyrightandtec on Twitter, you may have noticed lots of tweets last Friday, when I attended the Copyright Clearance Center’s OnCopyright conference at Columbia Law School in New York. (Link to full video here.)
OnCopyright is a true open-ended and open-minded discussion about copyright issues. Apart from a welcoming speech by CEO Tracey Armstrong and neutral panel moderation by CCC executives, CCC does not insert itself into the event; it just invites speakers from across the copyright spectrum and lets them have at it. The concept is refreshing and bold.
It’s a terrific show, and this year’s edition served to point out some of the problems with copyright today. The best part of it was the featured speech by Robert Levine, author of the wonderful book Free Ride. Levine summed up current problems with copyright neatly when he said, “Right now we have the worst of all worlds: copyright is too long and too broad, but we’re not enforcing it.”
Levine’s speech contained several keen insights and rhetorical zingers. Two of my favorites, paraphrasing: “The MPAA claims that piracy is costing seventy-teen skadillion dollars. Google claims it is costing $2.56. (I’m only kidding… about the second one.)”; “Yes, I could do all the things that publishers do by myself, but then I wouldn’t have time to do the writing. I could also grow my own vegetables.” But he’s a journalist at heart and thus deals primarily in facts instead of theories or agendas. And he got himself an excellent factual corroboration of the statement above during the conference.
It came through Erin McKeown, a musician, Future of Music Coalition board member, and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. She served as a panelist (and performed some of her music). As an indie musician and Berkman fellow, McKeown reflexively follows the anti-Big-Media, copyright-too-restrictive line of thought. For example, she professed a distaste for the kind of “backroom deals” that led to the aborted SOPA and PIPA legislation.
Yet on the other hand, McKeown told a story of how her music was used in a commercial in eastern Europe; she wanted to be compensated fairly, but a lawyer told her that it would take one to five years (to say nothing of legal fees) to pursue the copyright claim.
As Rob Levine pointed out, whether a publisher or record label is “good” or “evil” is not the point. Here’s an artist whose work was exploited for commercial purposes with neither permission nor compensation. She wanted fair compensation, not punitive damages. And she was told that effectively there’s no way to get it.
In other words, the system is currently set up so that virtually the only way to enforce copyrights is to be able to enlist the services of lawyers over a long period of time and to be able to wait that long period before perhaps seeing any income after legal fees. (That’s why indie artists like collective licensing: they get something as opposed to nothing, and they get it fairly quickly and with minimal effort.) At the same time, when I brought up the idea that the copyright legal system’s lack of “bright lines” makes it too inefficient and difficult to enforce in the digital age — my usual lone-voice-in-the-wilderness complaint — I got nothing but pushback, mostly from lawyers, claiming that such “flexibility” is a benefit, not a drawback.
More than one content creator at OnCopyright confessed to having mixed feelings when they found their work on illegal sites: they were angry that their work was being taken without their permission yet happy and flattered that someone was interested enough to do so. Trouble is, flattery doesn’t put food on the table.
Breakfast Event at NAB April 3, 2012
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events.add a comment
For those who plan on attending the NAB conference in Las Vegas the week after next, I will be participating in a panel event that’s part of Verimatrix’s Multi-Network Solutions in the Real World series. I will be presenting a synopsis of the whitepaper I published last December on content security requirements for multi-screen video services.
In addition, the panel will feature other presentations from Spencer Stephens, CTO of Sony Pictures; Theirry Fautier of Harmonic; Will Law from Akamai; and Petr Peterka of Verimatrix. I’ll moderate a panel discussion, with audience Q&A, on the challenges and opportunities of multi-screen video content services.
The event will the the morning of Tuesday April 17. Space is limited but registration is free; sign up here.
Copyright and Technology 2011 Conference Recap December 1, 2011
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events.5 comments
Thanks to all who spoke, moderated, sponsored, publicized, helped out at, and attended Wednesday’s Copyright and Technology conference. Judging by attendance alone, the event was a success with over 25% higher attendance than last year’s event.
I was too busy running around making sure the show went smoothly to pay as much attention to the panels as I would have liked — and given that we had two parallel tracks going for much of the day, it would have been physically impossible anyway. I invite attendees to comment here on their impressions. You can also search Twitter for hashtag #ct2011 to see what attendees thought in real time.
For me, there were a few particularly memorable moments. One was the keynote address by Tom Rubin, Chief Counsel for Intellectual Property Strategy at Microsoft. I invited Tom because of his record of consistent, intelligent advocacy of an approach to copyright in the digital age that balances the need for unimpeded technological innovation with respect for intellectual property.
His talk “Copyright at the Speed of Light: Creative Content and Cloud Computing” did not disappoint. The main takeaway for me was Tom’s expression of the urgent need for global registries of content and rights, to ensure that commerce in legitimate content over the Internet can flow seamlessly across international boundaries. We didn’t have a panel on rights registries (The Future of Music Coalition’s Policy Summit back in October did), but this topic is getting much attention nowadays with the Book Rights Registry contemplated in the Google book settlement, the Global Repertory Database project, the WIPO International Music Registry project, and other efforts.
The other fascinating point for me was the panel on cutting-edge legal issues in the music industry, the last panel on the Law and Policy track. Hillel Parness, a litigator and adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, gave a rapid (in fact head-spinningly fast) tour of court decisions in the past that had to consider copyright issues with online services. These took place long enough ago that their judges’ bases of comparison were brick-and-mortar entities such as libraries and newsstands. Many of these older decisions said, in effect, that the Internet really is different: its scale and speed make it impossible for Internet service providers to examine every bit of content for such things as copyright violations.
Yet more recently, courts have decided cases involving services that do have just that ability (at least to some extent), and the areas of dispute have turned to whether or not the relevant technologies are being applied in ways that suit copyright owners or are effective enough. In other words, it seems as though technology has advanced since, say, the mid-1990s so that the Internet is not so different after all — at least from this legal perspective.
In some cases, a service provider can claim safe harbor (i.e., “I’m not liable”) because it does not implement any controls (or as a reason why it doesn’t implement them); in other cases, a service provider may be potentially liable because of the behavior of the controls it does implement.
When I asked the panelists whether this apparent “chicken and egg” issue sends mixed messages to service providers who are thinking of using, say, watermarking or fingerprinting technology to catch infringers, they said that it depends on how lawyers choose to interpret these decisions. This is another way of saying that the relationships between rights technologies and copyright liability will remain ambiguous for the foreseeable future – thereby keeping lawyers like those panelists (not to mention consultants like myself) very busy for the rest of their careers.
Finally, the panel I moderated on content security challenges in multi-platform distribution revealed some of the Hollywood studios’ thinking on this topic. Ron Wheeler, the head of content protection in Fox’s legal department, confirmed what many of us have thought to be the case: Hollywood has seen what happens when a single downstream entity achieves a market share large enough to dominate the economic terms — that is, Apple in music. And Hollywood is doing all it can to prevent a similar fate for film content by encouraging healthy competition in the video distribution space.
The UltraViolet standard is their way of lessening certain types of advantages that one online retailer can have over another, such as the ability to lock consumers into their systems; the scheme’s emphasis on interoperability potentially benefits consumers as well by giving them more choices of retailers, device types, and even delivery modalities (physical products, downloads, and streaming).
However, Wheeler revealed that the different Hollywood studios have varying degrees of enthusiasm for UltraViolet. The most bullish is Warner Bros., which has released some titles on Blu-ray bundled with UltraViolet “rights tokens” that enable buyers to get their movies as downloads or stream them, through a retailer called Flixster that Warner itself owns. Yet Wheeler said “We don’t expect Flixster to be the next Wal-Mart,” while adding that Fox is supportive of UltraViolet. (The least enthusiastic studio is Disney, which is not a member of UltraViolet at all and apparently is still talking about its “rival” scheme, KeyChest.)
My opening remarks, which set the stage for the conference by teeing up the issues to be discussed, are available on the conference page. Other presentations from the conference, as well as video highlights, will be posted on the conference page as we get them.
C&T 2011 Conference Program Finalized November 8, 2011
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events.add a comment
We have enlisted an impressive roster of speakers for the Copyright and Technology 2011 conference, which will take place in just three weeks (November 30) here in NYC. In the past few weeks, we have added executives from Universal Pictures, Fox, Verimatrix, NDS, and Getty Images, as well as several notable legal experts.
I will be moderating a panel on content security in multi-platform distribution. I’m also particularly excited about our legal panel on Digital First Sale, which will pit Paul Sweazey of the IEEE P1817 Digital Personal Property standards initiative against two legal eagles in a discussion of what it means to “own” digital content. We’ll also hear from a group of panelists who will debate the (harsh?) reality of implementing DRM. And I expect sparks to fly during our panel on the Google Book Settlement, where we will have panelists representing all sides of this ongoing saga.
We’re also doing some marketing testing, so I’m offering a limited-time discount on registration for those of you reading this. Go to the registration page and enter discount code 100GBRJYH to register for $100 (normally $399).
C&T 2011 Conference: Registration Now Open October 4, 2011
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events, Music, Services.add a comment
(Re-running this for those who may have missed it over the Jewish New Year last week.)
Online registration for the Copyright and Technology 2011 conference, November 30 in New York, is now open!
Take a look at the program and you’ll see that we have most of the panels filled out – though a few opportunities remain, particularly for moderators. Please contact me if you are interested.
I am also pleased to announced that the law firm of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz has become our latest sponsor.
We invite law firms with practices in the digital copyright area — like Frankfurt Kurnit — to sponsor the conference as well. We have an exciting lineup of panels in our legal track. We will attract a high-caliber audience of professionals from media and technology industries who are coming to grips with issues of intellectual property in the digital age. If you are interested in sponsorship materials, please contact me as well.
In other news, the long-expected consolidation of music subscription services has begun with Monday’s announcement that Rhapsody will acquire the assets — mainly the subscriber base — of Napster.
Rhapsody is the first of the on-demand streaming subscription services to have gotten licenses from all of the major labels. They did this back in 2002, when there were five majors and Napster was still trying to recover from being shut down by a federal judge. Napster re-launched the following year… that is to say, the Napster brand was used to re-badge a service originally called Duet, then pressplay, which was a joint venture of two of the majors.
A first wave of subscription services appeared in the mid-2000s. Rhapsody and Napster were survivors of consolidation that took place around 2007, with other players like Virgin Digital disappearing. Now, with the launch of a second wave of subscription services, another cycle of consolidation has been inevitable.
Rhapsody only operates in the US, whereas Napster runs in a few other countries. Rhapsody will retain the Napster brand name outside of the US. Once the deal closes, Rhapsody will have 1.2 million paying subscribers, compared to 2 million for Spotify.
It’s a two-horse race now: Spotify vs. Rhapsody. The value of press hype and the long buildup to its US launch have done wonders for Spotify, which — as many would argue, and notwithstanding its superior mobile client — has considerably less functionality than Rhapsody. As I’ve said before, the consolidation will continue over the coming months.
Legal Speakers for C&T Conference – Deadline Approaching September 15, 2011
Posted by Bill Rosenblatt in Events.add a comment
Just a quick reminder that the deadline for speaking proposals for the legal track of Copyright and Technology 2011 is the end of this week. In a previous post I said Friday, September 18. My mistake: September 18 is a Sunday. So we’ll make the deadline Monday the 19th. The legal speakers need to be confirmed early so that we can get materials in for New York State CLE approval.
I am excited about the following speakers whom we have confirmed so far:
- Andrew Bridges, Winston & Strawn
- Mary Rasenberger, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard (formerly U.S. Copyright Office)
- Christopher Kenneally, Copyright Clearance Center
…plus several speakers on the technology track, and our keynote speaker, Tom Rubin, chief IP strategist at Microsoft.
Please email proposals to me. Those proposing to moderate panels will be given first preference. Please include the following information in your proposal(s):
- Name and full contact info of proposer
- Name and full contact info of speaker (if different). Please note that if you are proposing on behalf of a speaker, personal confirmation from the speaker him- or herself will be required before we put him or her on the panel.
- Panel(s) proposed, as well as an indication whether a speaking or moderating role is desired.
- Brief statement describing the proposed speaker’s perspective on the topic(s) in the panel(s) proposed.
- Brief biography (two paragraphs or less) of proposed speaker (or URL of bio on website).
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