News

First Annual P2P Litigation Summit:: On November 3, the Northwestern University School of Law will host the one-day First Annual P2P Litigation Summit, sponsored by Privacy Resolutions, P.C. and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The summit will bring together public and private defense attorneys, clients, investigators, advocates, and academics to share their insights into "the latest developments in peer-to-peer litigation through panel discussions and presentations." Speakers will address issues including how the RIAA and MPAA go about identifying plaintiffs; the most effective legal strategies and tactics available to consumers; whether it is better to settle immediately or fight it out in the courts; the role of ISPs; and whether or not Congress should step in and, if so, what legislation is needed? Audience participation is strongly encouraged.

Registration/information is here.

He's really one of us: Zdnet.com writer David Berlind mostly writes about IT issues, but he recently wrote a great column about how DRM hits home for music lovers. His gripe? Well, it started out with his disappointment with not being able to play his legitimately purchased iTunes downloads through his $20,000 whole home-entertainment system, but when he began looking into the subject, he came to the conclusion that "DRM can be and has proven to be a Trojan horse." It's a good read and a great screed.

Best line of the essay? "The 'R' in DRM is much less about what we have the right to do and more about the Restrictions that can be arbitrarily and remotely asserted over something we paid good money for."

Gates growls at Stringer: In one of the more interesting news squibs of the week, Business Week online revealed that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer exchanged words at a July tech conference over Blu-ray's DRM. The reason this exchange became public at such a remove almost certainly has a lot to do with Microsoft's and Intel's September 27 endorsement of Toshiba's competing HD-DVD standard. Microsoft prefers HD-DVD because of its "Managed Copy" feature, which allows (mandates, actually) the option of making at least one copy of all optical data. Blu-ray does not mandate such copying.

What does this mean in the real world? There's no guarantee that Blu-ray will allow users to copy data to portable players or stream it over a home network or store it on a hard-drive archive. It's possible that Blu-ray could add a managed copy feature, but most experts predict that, if that does happen, it will be an opt-in feature, not a deal-breaker. However, just because HD-DVD mandates Managed Copy, that doesn't say that the feature will be free. In fact, www.arstechnica.com's Ken Fisher got Jordi Ribas, director of technical strategy for the Windows Digital Media Division, to admit that "while the feature is mandatory, the studios will have the option of charging for it." As www.boingboing.com's Cory Doctorow headlined an article, "Bill Gates shouts at Sony CEO that his crappy DRM is less crappy."

The long-term success of a high-def DVD may not ultimately rest on either DRM issues or battling formats, but rather on cost. We've heard reports that Hollywood might have to sell Blu-ray discs for way more than a DVD, perhaps as high as $50 a pop, and we're predicting right now that, as folks say where we was born, "That dog won't hunt." The Compact Disc sold because it offered convenience and portability and its prices dropped quickly to a level that consumers were willing to pay (a trend that may no longer hold true). The success of DVD had less to do with the format's quality, we suspect, than with the affordability of the product. Movies for less than $15—yowsah!. At triple that price? We'll pass—and we're probably more willing to shell out for mo' better than most.

Our big concern, however, is that all the hoopla over dueling formats and high costs will conceal the erosion of fair-use rights we take for granted now—and that are so obviously under attack. If we audiophiles don't speak up and speak out loudly now, even if it doesn't look like it's our ox that's about to be gored, we may be forfeiting our rights to do so in the future. And that doesn't sound good at all.