Author Archives: Bill Rosenblatt
Blockchain Solutions for Music Rights Processing
One aspect of the recent hype about blockchain applications for music is the spate of conferences and panels about it. I went to one of these last Wednesday: the Music 4.5 conference at the offices of the ReedSmith law firm in NYC. The event was cleverly organized: the first half was devoted to startups who touted the virtues […]
Readium LCP and Open Source DRM
In a recent exchange in the comments to an article in Nate Hoffelder’s The Digital Reader blog, I mentioned Readium Licensed Content Protection (Readium LCP), the standard DRM scheme for EPUB-formatted e-books that I’ve been working on for the past couple of years. I gave a talk on Readium LCP a couple of weeks ago at the EPUB Summit […]
Pre-Announcing Copyright and Technology 2017 Conference
We’ve decided to get an earlier start on next year’s Copyright and Technology conference — our eighth year. Save the date: Tuesday January 24, 2017. The venue will once again be the Kimmel Center at NYU, and my co-producers once again are the Copyright Society of the USA and Larry Miller of Musonomics and the Steinhardt […]
Watermarking and Blockchain Challenges
Last time I talked about blockchain technology and its potential to revolutionize certain types of copyright-related transactions. Now let’s talk about some challenges. Even though the potential for blockchain applications in the copyright arena is high, it’s inevitable that many of the schemes being proposed will not pan out; that’s the nature of technology hype. […]
Get Ready for the Blockchain Tsunami
Lately I’ve been hearing about blockchain-related solutions to copyright problems on practically a weekly basis. Perhaps this was inevitable, given the massive amounts of activity and hype surrounding blockchain technology, and the realization that it has applications well beyond cryptocurrency (and I’m sure others have been observing this same phenomenon in different industries at different times). But […]
Forbes: Music Revenue Figures Show Industry Running In Place
My latest column in Forbes is an analysis of the U.S. recorded music revenue figures for 2015 that the RIAA released last week. Total revenues are $7 Billion – a figure that has remained almost exactly the same for six years now. This would suggest that $7 Billion is the amount that the American public […]
Panel at NAB Will Consider the New World of Open Set-Top Boxes
I’ll be moderating a breakfast panel during the NAB trade show in Las Vegas in mid-April: The FCC’s Open-STB World: What Does It Mean for Content Security? Back in February, the FCC approved a proposal that will require pay television operators to let users choose their own access devices instead of using the set-top boxes (STBs) […]
Imagining the Future of the Copyright Office
The U.S. Copyright Office sits within the Library of Congress. It uses the Library’s IT infrastructure and is subject to the Library’s budget process, and the decisions it makes are subject to the Librarian of Congress’s approval, although that’s usually a rubber stamp. When James Billington retired as Librarian of Congress last September, many viewed it […]
Copyright Office Makes Making Available Available
You know the old philosophical conundrum: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Here’s an analogy in the world of digital copyright: if a file is made available online and no one is around to download it, is that evidence of possible copyright infringement? In […]
PTO Weighs In on Digital First Sale
A little-known fact about the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is that it advises the executive branch of government (the president and his administration) on copyright issues — just as the US Copyright Office advises Congress on copyright. Although the Copyright Office’s efforts over the past couple of years to overhaul the country’s copyright […]
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