Category Archives: Intellectual Property

BitTorrent goes legit

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Interesting times.

LOS ANGELES — Warner Bros.’ video unit will sell movies and television shows to BitTorrent for legal downloads from the website that was once blamed for aiding the swapping of illegally copied films and programs.

Starting this summer, Warner Bros. will make more than 200 films available at BitTorrent.com, including blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and TV shows like Babylon 5.

The pact marks a big step for Hollywood as it increasingly makes digital files of movies and TV shows available on the web because until last year, BitTorrent’s software and website were considered to be aiding piracy of major studio films.

But in November, BitTorrent agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood’s major studios, to help stem illegal swapping of digital movies and TV shows by removing links to pirated copies.

Executives from Warner Bros. and BitTorrent said the MPAA pact and new digital rights management software from BitTorrent were key elements in bringing the parties together.

“We’ve come to a point where you have sufficient consumer demand and we have the technology that is now mature enough,” said Jim Wuthrich, senior vice president at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

The content will be available on the same day and date they are put on sale in retail stores, but cannot be copied and burned onto a DVD. They must reside on a computer drive…

[Link]

Jeff Jarvis has a post about this on Buzzmachine.

GMSV is nicely acerbic:

This morning the studio, which has been fighting a bitter battle against file-sharing networks, announced a plan that on the surface appears to be a forward-thinking adaptation of a new distribution system. “We’ve been struggling with peer-to-peer technology and trying to figure out a way to harness the good in all that the technology allows us to do,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, told the New York Times. “If we can convert 5, 10 or 15 percent of the illegal downloaders into consumers of our product, that is significant.” It certainly would be. But I can’t imagine Warner will ever achieve conversion rates like that if the Torrented movies are priced the same as a shrink-wrapped DVD, yet encumbered with a robust copy protection that allows them to be viewed only on the computer to which they are downloaded. Leave it to Hollywood to “embrace” peer-to-peer distribution and all the economies and efficiencies that go along with it and then ruin it by using it to peddle an inferior and overpriced product.

Steve Jobs 1, Beatles nil, lawyers even richer

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BBC Online report…

The Beatles have lost their court challenge against Apple Computer over its iPod and iTunes download service.

Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of George Harrison and John Lennon control the Apple Corps label.

They claimed the US firm broke a deal aimed at ensuring there would not be two Apples in the music industry.

But Mr Justice Anthony Mann ruled that the computer company used the Apple logo in association with its store, not the music, and so was not in breach.

The ruling means iPods and iTunes will still be able to carry the Apple name and logo.

Needless to say, the Beatles will appeal. M’learned friends are delighted. Rubies in the skies with diamonds now on order for their floozies.

Piracy Cost Studios $6 Billion in ’05, Study Says

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Los Angeles Times report…

Hollywood’s major studios lost $6.1 billion to film theft in 2005, according to a Motion Picture Assn. of America study.The global survey of piracy, which examined how much revenue the studios lost through bootleg movies and illegal Internet downloads, found that the bulk of theft — about $4.8 billion — occurred internationally, with China, Russia and Mexico the worst offenders.

Of the $6.1 billion, $3.8 billion was lost to bootlegging and illegal copying, while Internet piracy cost the industry $2.3 billion, according to the study. Among the more notorious examples occurred last year when an illegal copy of “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith” appeared on the Internet before its big-screen premiere.The study by LEK Consulting is the first of its kind commissioned by the MPAA, whose previous surveys of the problem did not encompass Internet piracy.

So the studios’ legal campaigns are really working, then.

Spinwatch

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Here’s a really good idea — a website that publishes details of the organisations lobbying for a particular change in public policy — in this case nuclear power.

The Nuclear Spin website is designed to help people find out more about the key pro-nuclear advocates in the UK who are pushing for a resumption of nuclear power. It documents some of the public relations tactics being used by the industry to fool the public into believing that Britain’s future is nuclear.

We need to do one for the copyright thugs.

Quote of the day

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“It was never the object of patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax on the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of unknown liability lawsuits and vexatious accounting for profits made in good faith.”

U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Atlantic Works vs. Brady, 1882.

I love the sentence about the “class of speculative schemers”.

Gates mobbed in visit to Vietnam

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Hilarious report on BBC Online. Interesting (and significant) sting in the tail:

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong had earlier taken time away from the ruling Communist Party National Congress, the most important event on the political calendar, to meet Mr Gates.

Under an agreement signed Saturday, Vietnam’s Finance Ministry became the country’s first government office to use completely licensed Microsoft software.

A statement said the agreement “reaffirms the government’s commitment in copyright protection as the country integrates into the international community”, Reuters reports.

This is significant because it shows that Microsoft is making headway in stopping people pirating its software in the Far East. So the moment when that part of the world begins to realise the true costs of running proprietary software comes nearer. And I think that is good news for those of us who are working to provide a cheaper, more affordable and sustainable alternative.

The Chinese attitude to IP

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This morning’s Observer column…

The one phrase you hear very little of whenever China’s economic potential is discussed is ‘intellectual property’. This is because China is world champion in every branch of piracy known to man. I don’t think there’s a CD, DVD, computer game or software package that is not illicitly available for a dollar or two in virtually every town in China.

That’s why the top executives of Western technology companies are – to a man or woman – agreed upon one thing: that while they are more than happy to have their products manufactured by Chinese labour in Chinese factories, they will never, ever entrust their intellectual property to any Chinese organisation…

The Chinese approach to intellectual property

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

It’s taken Research In Motion years to bring its BlackBerry service to the Chinese market. It filed its first application to do business in China back in 1999 and since then has registered at least nine trademarks for the device and accompanying service. And now, just a few weeks before the company is to finally open for business in what’s expected to become one of the world’s biggest markets for wireless communications, China Unicom — the country’s state-controlled wireless network — has rolled out a rival service called … wait for it … RedBerry.

“China Unicom’s RedBerry brand not only incorporates people’s familiarity with the BlackBerry brand name, but it also fully embodies the symbolic meanings of China Unicom’s new red logo,” the company said in an announcement that no doubt had RIM CEO Jim Balsillie seeing red himself. A brazen move and one that’s got to be causing angst over at RIM. RedBerry is virtually identical to RIM’s service, albeit quite a bit cheaper. The standard e-mail account at RedBerry costs less than a dollar a month, plus a few cents for each e-mail sent. A typical BlackBerry account in Hong Kong costs up to $64 per month. Clearly, this is an ugly situation for RIM and one that’s almost certain to grow uglier still. “From RIM’s point of view, this is rather disturbing,” a Canadian business consultant in Beijing told The Globe and Mail. “It’s obviously a copycat name. It’s a fairly clever example of brand piracy.”

Clever? Blatant, more like. I’ve long thought that the key determinant of whether China becomes a real global player in the technology business (as distinct from just being a low cost assembly location) is whether its government decides to get serious about enforcing patents and respecting IP. Despite the Economist‘s recent story suggesting that there might be changes afoot, the RedBerry case implies that state-sanctioned piracy rules ok.

But wait — the plot thickens…

Reuters reports that:

China’s computer manufacturers must install operating software before their goods leave the factory gates, the latest effort to address the thorny issue of piracy before President Hu Jintao visits the United States.

The order was given in a notice issued jointly by the Ministry of Information Industry, the State Copyright Bureau and the Ministry of Commerce on March 31 and released to reporters on Monday.

Chinese counterfeiting is a major irritant in U.S.-China trade and American software firms have said they want to see progress on the issue at the 2006 meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Washington on Tuesday.

“Computers manufactured within the country’s borders should have pre-installed authorised operating software systems when they leave the factory,” the notice said.

Wang Ziqiang, director of the copyright management department at the State Copyright Bureau, said the notice was not about reacting to foreign criticism.

“This is not because of foreign pressure,” he told reporters. “This is about the country’s economic development.”

IP madness — on stilts

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This is complicated but Ed Felten’s post is worth the effort. It’s about the content industries’ submission to the US Copyright Office (which is currently pondering the question of what should be exempted from the DMCA). You really need to read the entire post, but here’s the nub of it:

In order to protect their ability to deploy this dangerous DRM, they want the Copyright Office to withhold from users permission to uninstall DRM software that actually does threaten critical infrastructure and endanger lives.

I’ve always thought that the arrogance and stupidity of the copyright thugs was extraordinary, but this really takes the biscuit.