Posts by billrosenblatt

Why the 'Dancing Baby' copyright case is just hi-tech victim shaming

As a practical matter, this won't change a thing.

Andrew,

As someone who understands something about the automated processes, conducted by third parties, that generate the vast bulk of DMCA takedown notices, I can tell you that this case is going to be much ado about nothing, despite UMG's grousing to the contrary. They'll just have their copyright monitoring agencies insert some additional boilerplate language into their DMCA notice templates that makes some mention of non-fair use. Even then, the notice will only be called into question if -- as was the case in Lenz -- it is challenged on validity grounds. 99.999% of DMCA notices never reach that stage.

Why the Apple-Samsung verdict is good for you, your kids and tech

It doesn't surprise me that the anti-IP activist crowd have "been conducting a rather a muted campaign." The notion of their cherished Apple as IP asserter, deviating from the purity of Silicon Valley principles, has made many of their internal hard drives short-circuit.

Mp3Tunes files for bankruptcy

Agree on the sentiment but not the facts

Much as I agree with the sentiment here -- I have always viewed Robertson as someone who is obsessed with goading the music industry through copyright law boundary tests disguised as startup companies (see http://copyrightandtechnology.com/2011/08/23/mixed-verdict-for-emi-against-mp3tunes-com/) -- I have to say that unfortunately you're not correct on the facts regarding Google and Amazon.

The truth is that while both of them have licenses from the record companies to sell MP3s, neither have licenses tat support locker services, i.e. users syncing their files among multiple devices. (Apple does, which is one reason why they do "scan and match" in iTunes Match, the feature that lets users sync their music files without having to upload them.) This is Robertson's central innovation; he was the first to market with sync via downloading -- as opposed to upload-and-stream which is what the likes of MyPlay offered earlier.

The record companies have chosen not to go after Amazon or Google for download sync... so far.