Category Archives: Copyright

MediaSentry loses RIAA contract

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Monday 5 January 2009: RIAA’s spokersperson Jonathan LAMY has officially confirmed that RIAA does not anymore use the services of MediaSentry. He informed that RIAA uses a Danish company DtecNet.

Many reasons may have driven this decision. It seems that the way the supposed infringing IP address were collected may not sustain the non repudiation of illegal sharing. This is an extremely tough issue. How do you legally prove (in an efficient way) that the peer really shared illegal content? MediaSentry was also using techniques to spoil (For an overview, see Fighting piracy in Security Newsletter #11). These techniques are somewhat controversial. This summer, a leakage of emails of MediaDefender, a competitor of MediaDefender, shaded some lights on the types of thwarting techniques. Furthermore, some mails described the results of competitive intelligence on MediaSentry. In other words, MediaDefender’s story generated very bad reputation for the sector. Is MediaSentry a collateral victim of MediaDefender’s leakage?

The toolbox of DectNet, at least as announced on their site, does only offer non controversial techniques: Cease and Desist Letter, Litigation Tools and Evidence, Prerelease Monitoring, and statistics. In other words, they do not announce any throttling or poisoning techniques, only monitoring tools. Far less controversial.

Does it mean a change in RIAA’s strategy? I doubt. It is probably a good communication movement. RIAA will continue to track illegal downloading, send Cease and Desist Letters, and sue infringers. RIAA will not sponsor any borderline activity (at least not openly :Wink: )

Music industry strikes for revenue

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In these last days, there were two main events in the field of copyright for music industry. First, Warner Music requires YouTube to remove all the music clips that “belong” to Warner music. It corresponds to the artists currently under contracts with Warner, but also songs whose rights belong to Warner although the artist is under contract with another company. Warner Music and YouTube negotiated for a long time. They were not able to converge on a repartition of advertising revenues. Warner Music estimates that the proposed value is ridiculous. This is a blow to the promises of free music through ad revenue sharing. What will be the next move? Another studio that sues YouTube? Another UGC site in target such as DailyMotion? Or an agreement between YouTube on a big music studio?

Second, MySpace has removed all the playlists of its members. RIAA is already suing the PlayList Project (see RIAA attacks project PlayList) Facing legal actions, MySpace stepped back. They removed the PlayList widget without prior notice to their users. FaceBook resists and refuses to remove PlayList. The battle continues.

2009 will be an interesting year. Will it be the year where UGC and studios will find some commercial agreements?

Digital Future Symposium (DFS)

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This event organized by the Center for Content Protection was hold with Asia TV at Singapore. Thus, the audience was rather large (140 people) and encompassed broadcasters, producers, and press.
The best presentations were:

  • Brad HUNT (former CTO of MPAA, and now consultant at Digital Media Directions) presented his four major trends in content protection
    • Use of fingerprinting to monetize content
    • Digital copy and managed copy for optical media
    • Domain based DRM
    • DECE with some emphasis on Marlin
  • Fabrice Moscheni (Fastcom) presented an impressive demonstration of DVB-CPCM. The demonstration raised a lot of interest.
  • Yangbin Wang (Vobile) explained how Vobile protected Olympic Games for CCTV

Conax, BayTSP, Verimatrix, Microsoft and Viaccess presented their products. Intertrust made a dull presentation of Marlin. I made two presentations:

  • A global approach of security explaining that using only fingerprint or watermark is insufficient, at least for tightly controlled distribution. The distinction between tightly controlled distribution and loosely controlled distribution was appreciated.
  • An introduction to DVB-CPCM before Fastcom’s demonstration.

Two main messages were conveyed during this symposium. Content Identification Techniques may allow monetization of content. Domain is the next paradigm in DRM.

Cutlery and counterfeiting

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The French town Laguiole is known for its famous knives. Unfortunately, the name “Laguiole” is not protected by a trademark. Thus, many low cost cutlers sell low cost and low quality knives with the name “Laguiole” embossed in the blade. Furthermore, genuine Laguiole knives have a metallic bee on the handle. In the mind of many people, the bee is the “signature” of the authentic knive. Of course, the “Laguile” knives that are not manufactured at Laguiole have also a bee. And it is totally legal.

Of course, Laguiole manufacturers wanted to stop this bleeding. they have registered the trademark “LAGUIOLE ORIGINE GARANTIE” (Laguiole guaranteed origin). The knives manufactured at Laguiole will display on their blade “LAGUIOLE ORIGINE GARANTIE” with a dedicated.
Will it change something? I am not sure. Many people will still trust the bee. Furthermore, I am not always sure that people are so naive to believe that they are able to purchase an authentic quality knive at 10% of its original price. As long as it will not be broad general knowledge that the authentic knives have to display the mark and the punch, it will change nothing, except for the initiates.

It is the same with the holograms on software package. How many people do test its presence? its actual “content”? Price is an awfully attractive selling argument.

Wizzgo: Last round?

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Last week, I reported the latest court decision that banned Wizzgo to offer its service for TF1, France Television and NT1 channels.

Latest episode occurred yesterday. Wizzgo has been sentenced to pay 480,000€ (about $600,000) in damages to M6 for infringement. They will soon have a similar sentence for TF1, France Television and NT1. The judge did not consider that Wizzgo was doing private copy. A private copy has to be done by the user of the private owner, and not by a third party.

The sentence is heavy and will probably sign the death of Wizzgo. Wizzgo stopped its service. They will have to provide to broadcasters the description of their advertisement revenues to estimate the losses they may have generated for broadcasters.

The message in favor of respect of copyright laws is also extremely strong.

The evolution of copyright

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Andy Oram published a very interesting document that describes the history of copyright laws. It explains how it drifted with time and what are the internal concepts of copyright. For instance, he highlights the difference between patent and copyright. Patent protects a function whereas copyright protects an expression. You have to fight to get the protection of patent whereas you have to fight to leave the protection of copyright (that is “on” by default)
The document is really interesting to read if you are interested to understand what copyright is, and how it arrived where it is. The only critic is that (as for many paper on this subject) is mainly US centric.

The address of the paper is How copyright got to its current state

Thank you Jean Jacques for the pointer. :Wink:

On the Death Of The Music CD Business

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An extremely interesting post on Techcrunch about the death of music (See http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/ian-rogers-on-the-death-of-the-music-cd-business-i-dont-care/)
Ian Rogers predicts no the death of music but the death of CD business. He predicts that the ecosystem will change. Distributors will earn less and artists may get rid of the distributors to directly sell to the public. Once more, we see the holy grail of disintermediation. Sell directly, earn more.
To prove his forecasts, he presented two artists Brian Eno and David Byrne who made money with direct sales. The problem with this holy grail is that we underestimate the value of the promotion done by distributors. Ian Rogers used as example already established artists. The same is true for Radio Head. But how many non established artists have made enough money to survive and are now widely known?
One thing is sure: the equilibrium point between artists, distributors and consumers will change. And probably a new breed of “distributors” such as Topspin (the company of Ian Rogers) will raise.