fair use
When Dean recorded HBO's new Tom Hanks-produced miniseries "
John Adams"—which is
not a pay-per-view or on-demand program—he was surprised to see
it was flagged by Tivo's Macrovision software, which controls how many times you may watch a program and how long you can store it before it's automatically deleted. Now the question is, was this a mistake on the part of HBO or Dean's cable provider Comcast? Or—considering HBO's infamous
anti-consumer stance on time-shifted programming—is it the beginning of a sneaky "back-door" approach to locking down all their content, something Tivo's own people said would
probably not happen when they added Macrovision to their recorders in 2004?
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copyright
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling takes a dim view of independently authored reference books, it seems. She's joined a lawsuit to stop the publication of a fan-written reference book based on a website that she herself admitted to using while fact checking her writing.
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Media companies including CBS Corp., Microsoft Corp., News Corp.'s Fox and MySpace, Viacom, Walt Disney and NBC have all agreed to some über-pact of copyright "guidelines" to protect their work, and have said they will announce the details later today. "The agreed principles include using technology to eliminate copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites and blocking any material before it is publicly accessible." [
Reuters]
state of the backlash
You might remember
this story from a few days ago: When 19 year-old Jhannet Sejas taped a 20 second clip of Transformers on her Canon Power Shot camera, she probably didn't think she was committing a crime that calls for 1 year in prison and a $2,500 fine. If she did, she probably didn't think the movie theater would call the police, have her arrested, and then press charges.
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copyfight
The CCIA, an industry trade group representing the interests of the likes of Google and Microsoft, asked us to let you know they've started an online petition at DefendFairUse.org.
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fair use
Google, Microsoft, and others speaking through the Computer and Communications Industry Association or CCIA, have announced their intention to file a complaint with the FCC accusing copyright holders such as Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the MPAA and the RIAA of "overstating" their rights in various consumer warnings.
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drm
The RIAA and the DRM Nazis could have a new target besides small families, single mothers and MIT students. How about the President of the United States? From
BoingBoing:
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copyright
The music industry is getting ready to work itself into a lather over the salvation for modern human society, YouTube.
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Consumerist
