The IP blog of the Centre for the New Europe drifted off my radar screen over the summer, which is unfortunate, because it has lots of interesting posts.

One of them: Do It Yourself Enforcement, by David Carr:

[T]he problem with relying on the mechanisms of the state for enforcement is that the property-owner can find themselves twisting in the wind if the people who control those mechanisms decide that they would best be deployed elsewhere, e.g. who could blame the authorities for taking the view that keeping would-be terrorists from blowing up bits of the transport network to have a somewhat higher priority than EMI’s balance sheet?

But there are steps that rights-holders can take themselves and, not for the first time, Microsoft is setting an example which means that anyone downloading updates for the Windows XP operating system will be required to check whether the software is genuine or pirated. I suppose this is rather easier for software developers than for, say, recording artists but it does illustrate the point that there is nothing to stop rights-holders from thinking outside of the state police box.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:48 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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