Author Archives: Bill Rosenblatt
E-Book Retail Platform Offers Choice of Watermarking or DRM
EditionGuard is a “white label” e-book retail platform that, like many of its type, is based on Adobe technology, including Adobe Content Server DRM. This week the company added an option called EditionGuard Social DRM, which enables its customers — publishers, retailers, and independent authors — to use e-book watermarking instead of DRM. EditionGuard Social DRM […]
FCC to Vote Thursday on Open Set-Top Box Ruling
The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote this Thursday on a rule that would require pay-TV operators in the United States to make their services available on third-party devices in addition to the set-top boxes (STBs) that they currently require subscribers to rent from them. This week’s vote has more drama than usual because one of […]
Conference Registration Now Live; Call for Speakers
Online registration for Copyright and Technology 2017 on January 24 is now up and running, with earlybird discounts through November 24. Thanks to our friends at the Copyright Society of the USA! We’re looking for speakers. We have openings on every session at the conference. We are also looking for a moderator for the panel […]
Smith and Telang Usher In the Post-Copyright-Wars Era with Streaming, Sharing, Stealing
Michael Smith and Rahul Telang are professors at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of information technology and public policy. Their biggest claim to fame here has been their 2012 summary of research on the economic effects of copyright infringement on the media industry, which showed that the vast majority of peer-reviewed studies found harm from […]
Survey on E-Book DRM Licensing
If you have been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that I have been involved in the design and launch of a new open-source DRM scheme for e-books called Readium LCP (Licensed Content Protection). The formal launch of Readium LCP is expected to take place by the end of this year. As I’ve explained, […]
Announcing Copyright and Technology NYC 2017
I’m happy and proud to announce our next conference. It will take place on Tuesday, January 24, 2017. The location is Grand Hall at the Kimmel Center at NYU (same venue as last year, different rooms). The agenda is now posted. Our keynote speakers will be Michael Smith and Rahul Telang, who are professors of […]
A World Without DMCA 1201
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last Thursday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government (the Attorney General, Library of Congress, and Copyright Office), in an attempt to have Section 1201 of the Copyright Act found unconstitutional. Section 1201 is the provision that makes it a violation of copyright law to circumvent (hack) DRMs and other “technical protection measures.” The nominal […]
Copyright Office Opens Inquiry on Digital Rights for Libraries
Yesterday the U.S. Copyright Office announced that it is looking for input into revising Section 108 of the copyright law, the section that gives libraries and archives special rights to copy and distribute materials. Although much of Section 108 deals with making physical copies of materials for preservation purposes, some of it is supposed to apply […]
Music Rights Reporting, DDEX, and Blockchains
Last time, I discussed the need to automate and standardize rights and royalty transaction processing in today’s music market. At the heart of that market is streaming plays on on-demand services. As the latest RIAA revenue figures have shown, on-demand streaming is now the second-largest source of recorded music industry revenue and should overtake downloads […]
Quick poll: Is Medium the Message?
Much of the writing on blockchain applications for music and other media is on the blogging platform Medium. The platform has pros and cons compared to WordPress, the current platform for Copyright and Technology. Medium looks nice, has easy-to-use writers’ tools, and has great features for increasing readership, but it has limited flexibility, limits ways to establish […]
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