The decision was a potential turnabout in a case that has helped define how copyrighted material is distributed over the Internet, who will profit from such distribution, and whether and how much consumers will pay.

Napster Wins One Round in Music Case

Two professors from MTSU authored this book, published in September 2001. 288 pages. (MTSU has a "department of recording industry"! Must be a Nashville/country music influence ...)

"This work presents 12 of the most volatile ethical issues facing the music industry. Real-life examples depict both sides of each controversy, and the list of resources provides tools for readers who wish to pursue the controversies further. Primary sources including court cases and excerpts from speeches help students build critical thinking skills in current issues, persuasive writing, and debate classes."

Here's the table of contents:

Money, Music, and Marketing: A Few Multinational Companies Dominate the Music Industry
From Hendrix to Cobain: The Drug Culture of Music
Music and Social Issues: Artform or Soapbox?
Parody and Sampling: Borrowing or Stealing Copyright?
Satanic Messages, the Promotion of Evil and Rock Music
The Glass Ceiling: Women in the Music Industry
Showdown at the Box Office: The Cost of Concert Tickets
Black and White Separation in Music: Marketing or Racism?
"I'll See You in Court": The Strange Relationship between Managers and Artists
Freedom of Expression: Filth or Freedom?
Radio and Records: A Love-Hate Relationship
Turn Up the Volume: Music and Hearing Loss

_Controversies of the Music Industry_

by Philip Aigrain, of the European Commission, and formerly of UC Berkeley. 14 pages.

Abstract: This paper proposes a reversal in how to consider the rights associated with information, media contents, software and other intellectual entities. Intellectual property, forgetting its original purpose, now mostly focuses on granting the ability to restrict usage of intellectual entities. It then defines a number of exceptions to cope with the adverse effects of such a restriction. On the contrary, the proposed approach sets as its basis a number of positive intellectual rights, defined as to enable wide societal production and exchange of intellectual entities. It then defines how granting of specific attributes of property is necessary as to ensure that the positive rights are not abused to the detriment of some basic values, and are implemented in reality.

Such a reversal allows [us] to exploit the benefits of information and communication technology, for instance the much greater plurality of creators and information sources, the much greater and quicker visibility and accessibility of intellectual entities, or new tools and processes for the assessment, the criticism and the analysis of intellectual productions. More generally, it [creates rights] for the technology of the intangible, whether biotechnology or other technologies based on the manipulation of information entities in complex processes. To derive practical features of intellectual rights, one has to differentiate in detail between varieties of intellectual entities (according to how they can be produced, used and exchanged) and between facets of intellectual rights. By doing so, one is able to propose a framework that truly serves creators without unduly restricting information exchanges.

(Forwarded throuh RRE; this document was translated/rewritten by the author from the original in French)

Positive Intellectual Rights and Information Exchanges [PDF]

Here is NYT's latest report on IP issues related primarily to the FastTrack-based P2P networks. The increase in video content is the focus of the story, with choice quotes from all sides, including this one:

"We're fighting our own terrorist war ... The great moat that protects us ... is lack of broadband access." -- Jack Valenti

This sort of thing is becoming increasingly common. Does anyone else find this behavior (that of invoking "terror" in all sorts of unrelated contexts in order to promote one's personal agenda) extremely annoying, troublesome, even downright rude? Does not Jack Valenti seek to equate DivX trading with sudden, massive, and tragic loss of human life?

Black Hawk Download

"To The Point", a Public Radio International (PRI) news program, discusses emerging intellectual property issues in the music industry. Guests include Peter Trimarco, President of Farenheit Entertainment, who released the first copy-protected CD in the US; Robin Gross, attorney for the EFF; Carey Ramos, legal counsel for the National Music Publishers Association, the Harry Fox Agency, and the DVD Forum; Paul Boutin, writer/editor for Salon and Wired; and Todd Boyd, author and USC professor of critical studies.

This discussion starts at about 7 minutes, 42 seconds into the 50 minute audio program.

Summary: Digital technology allows computer users to make and distribute exact copies of the music they get on CDs. While music producers have attacked the practice as "piracy," consumers insist it's "fair use." In an attempt to stop it, the industry has developed a hidden electronic lock that prevents CD owners from producing an exact digital copy and burning it onto another CD or uploading it onto the Internet. Has a new generation of listeners been spoiled by technology? Should the industry establish subscription services and other new models for compensating artists? We talk with industry insiders, civil libertarians and cultural critics about the recording industry's assault on the digital reproduction of music.

The Future of Copy-Protect Music | KCRW's 'To The Point' [RealAudio]

Drawing on legal, historical, and qualitative research, Corynne McSherry explores the propertization of academic work and shows how that process is shaking the foundations of the university, the professoriate, and intellectual property law. The modern university's reason for being is inextricably tied to that of the intellectual property system. The rush of universities and scholars to defend their knowledge as property dangerously undercuts a working covenant that has sustained academic life -- and intellectual property law--for a century and a half. As the value structure of the research university is replaced by the inequalities of the free market, academics risk losing a language for talking about knowledge as anything other than property. McSherry has written a book that ought to deeply trouble everyone who cares about the academy.

The full text of this Harvard University Press book is available for online browsing in PDF format. (287 pages)

Who Owns Academic Work? Battling for Control of Intellectual Property

...

'Harry Potter' Beats Copyright, Islamic Law in Iran

Both today (Wednesday) and Thursday, the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property held/will hold hearings on the DMCA.

I was unable to find any reports/minutes immediately available for Wednesday's hearing. Please report back on anything you can find.

Thursday's hearings (beginning at 10:00 AM Eastern) can be heard via live streaming audio at the URL below. (No archival copies are offered.)

http://judaudio5.house.gov/2141b

House Subcommittee Revisits Online Copyrights

On November 29, USC hosted a lively debate between author/professor Larry Lessig and MPAA president Jack Valenti. The debate begins approximately 55 minutes into the video.

In the new digital environment, what impact do intellectual property rights have on innovation and creativity? Do copyrights and patents hamper or enhance artistic life? How is our creative culture being shaped by changes in law and technology? A spirited exchange between Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, and Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law Professor and author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. The event is co-sponsored by the USC Annenberg School's Norman Lear Center and by the Center for the Public Domain, a Durham, North Carolina-based philanthropic foundation."

Lessig versus Valenti on Creativity, Commerce, & Culture [RealMedia]

The patent, number 4,873,662, was issued to BT in America in 1989 and expires in 2006. The company said it only discovered the patent in a routine trawl through its own patents four years ago. But the priority date for the patent is July 1976, which means that for the patent to be successfully challenged a company must show prior art before that date, according to Gregory Aharonian, editor of the Internet Patent News Service and a vocal critic of what he calls poor-quality patents.

Date set for BT hyperlink patent case