IPcentral Weblog: June 2006 Archives

June 2006 Archives

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06.30.2006

Pirates and Pirates

The WSJ today (subscription required) has a piece on the next two releases in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Following up the success of the initial movie, Disney decided to make two sequels at once, for release this summer and next, at a cost approaching $500 million.

I quite enjoyed Black Pearl, and I am happy it grossed about $600 million, enough to persuade all the players to risk their time and money on the sequels. And, as the WSJ documents, it took a lot of effort and dedication on the part of all to commit to the follow-up.

Of course, soon after the film is released it will be rocketing around the Internet on Bit Torrent. The creators can make enough money to finance the enterprise largely because real broadband is still scarce enough and the computer movie-viewing experience kludgy enough so that people still prefer to pay see a film a theater or or buy/rent the DVD. But as Internet speeds increase and the home viewing experience shifts, this balance will change, and it is important to get some protections in place before it does. Otherwise, I will not get to see Pirates #4 and #5.

This is the concern behind the proposed broadcast flag, which tech objects to as a "tech mandate." All right, I have an alternative -- let the ISPs filter their traffic using digital fingerprinting to block copyrighted material. They can be paid for this -- we aren't socialists here. There are still glitches, of course, but the technology is improving steadily and such measures would avoid the tech industry's complaint about mandates; any technology could be used. It would not work perfectly, but incentive structures could be created to discourage abuse and encourage improvement, and it all looks quite promising to me.

Of course, tech companies may object on the ground that there is no problem. Today's WSJ has another entry:

Continue reading Pirates and Pirates . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 12:48 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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Custer's Revenge

More thoughts about American Indians and property rights: When you stand on the Crow reservation near the Little Big Horn, you are standing on 10 billion tons of coal, worth $5 to $10 per ton in the ground. There are about 7000 members of the tribe, so do the math -- if title to the coal were put into a company, the shares sold publicly, and the money distributed, each tribe member would get $7 million, minimum.

But around are you is mostly poverty, a result of 150 years of U.S. government policy of contempt for indiividual rights, incliuding the right to property, of BIA incompetence, and of third-world-style corruption.

The Crow don't even deserve this karma -- they provided the scouts for the 7th Cavalry who warned Custer not to go there.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:04 AM | Physical Property

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YouTube's 15 Minutes

In Internet time, Warhol's fifteen minutes seem more like 5 seconds. YouTube goes from nowhere to king, from NBC wanting content taken down to striking a business deal with them. But now the tide may be turning, reports CNET. Will its fans tolerate ads and further content control? Is YouTube history? Where else will I see reflections of our modern culture like a crab attacking a man's privates?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 9:45 AM | Media: Video, Music...

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American Indians and Property Rights

Perc Reports devotes its June 2006 issue to "American Indians and Property Rights." All of it is available online.

The topic is importan. American Indians are often held up as paradigms of a non-property society. It isn't so, by a long shot. And the PERC bunch are experts in the field.

The ToC:

Continue reading American Indians and Property Rights . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 8:22 AM | Physical Property

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06.29.2006

Ebooks, DRM and Pricing

DRM benefits several industries, including those related to traditional physical goods, such as ebooks. But wait, if I can pick up a book from the local bookstore, or go to an online book retailer, why would I buy an ebook? Well, as today's consumer, I'd probably get an ebook just to use cool breakthrough technology, and "not get left behind" so to speak. The question remains how much I'd pay for an ebook, and what can I expect to do with one...

Researchers from the NYU Stern School of Business recently found that ebooks make an especially interesting DRM study because digital rights for each ebook are determined by individual publishers rather than retailers, thus causing substantial diversity in ebook DRM schemes. Are Digital Rights Valuable? Theory and Evidence from eBook Pricing, CeDER Working Paper 06-01 (January 2006).

The NYU research is important because it suggests that the price and DRM protection of ebooks is determined by authors and publishers working under market dynamics: “In the absence of a threat of piracy, the price of a digital good is increasing in the level of each associated digital right, and a seller should always choose to grant the highest level of rights permitted by its DRM platform…”

Continue reading Ebooks, DRM and Pricing . . .

posted by Noel Le @ 2:21 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc.

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(Cable) Vision or Delusion?

which is my Progress on Point on Cablevision's proposed DVR service, is now available.

Conclusions:

(1) Cablevison will lose the case (and should);

(2) The Sony case does not provide nearly as much support as is commonly assumed for the propostion that time shifting is fair use; the Supreme Court rested almost entirely on the idea that harm had not been proven, and strongly implied that if the practice could be shown to harm content owners the decison would go the other way;

(3) As is true of most current copyright controversies, the long-term solutions will not be dished out automatically by some legal precedent; instead, market particpants are going to have to make their own deals. The function of property rights is to establish some clear ground rules that will let those deals get made, and as long as the structure of the market enables such deals to take place, fair use has little role to play.

posted by James DeLong @ 1:50 PM | Telecom

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Reports from Geneva: WIPO and Development

The need of commercial enterprises for uniform laws with a broad geographic spread is real. Every great commercial network I can think of--the Roman Empire, Admiralty law, the Uniform Commercial code, common law, the law merchant--unites actors from different jurisdictions under one set of principles with little local variation. Thus WIPO, and now, the Develpment agenda.

But at the same time, legal systems benefit from competition with one another. Federalism has done more than any other force to keep US (and Swiss) state tax rates low. In this competition between states and nations, there are winners. And not-yet-winners, but hopefully some day.

What do you get when you mix the winners and not-yet-winners in negotiations for uniformity? Well, it appears, a lot of demands from the not-yet-winners. They would do better to imitate the winners than demand things from them, including untested and unfounded policies. But... perhaps a tendency to demand rather than pursue other strategies is why they are not-yet-winners. Sigh. The danger is that the winners, seeking uniformity, will give up everything else.

Assorted reports from WIPO. Enjoy. Mark Schultz for NGO Watch. And Tom G. for IPI.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 12:08 PM | Big Tent , International

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"And We're Here To Help You"

Those who think the government should have the laboring oar on creating infrastructure -- whether that infrastructure consists of telecom connections or the fruits of creativity -- need to ponder on how badly the government is performing its responsibilties to provide efficient transportation networks. If you want to spend your life in Internet traffic jams while waiting to watch the latest movie produced by the Department of Education, just keep going.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:19 AM | General

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Click Ads & Trademarks

Did you know that Google has "a trademark policy, which prevents bids on other people's registered trademarks, and we do not allow people to advertise with AdWords for counterfeit products."

The basic issue is whether a competitor can buy a trademarked term as a keyword -- so that someone looking for "Ford" is taken to the General Motors website, for example. Trademark owners, being a touchy lot, think the practice clicks on "infringement," so Google has good reason to avoid the problem.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:52 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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06.28.2006

More Fun with eBay v. MercExchange

Here's something more, eBay from an infringer's perspective.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:44 PM | Patents , Supreme Court

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06.28.2006

S. 2686

posted by James DeLong @ 2:57 PM | Telecom

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