For years Hollywood has waged war on the open internet. It may have taken freedom of expression for granted and believed that only the open internet puts it at risk. Maybe it should begin rethinking its priorities. It if does, it may discover the open internet protects it as much as, and probably more, than stronger copyright law would ever do.
Michael Geist reports today that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and other business groups want to ensure that their members will be premitted to secretly install spyware on personal computers for a wide range of purposes. Specifically, they demand to be permitted to install, without individuals’ knowledge and consent, computer programs that are installed by or on behalf of a person to prevent, detect, investigate, or terminate activities that the person reasonably believes (i) present a risk or threatens the security, privacy, or unauthorized or fraudulent use, of a computer system, telecommunications facility, or network, or (ii) involves the contravention of any …
Yesterday I wrote a rather lengthy post about the “Effect on the Market” in fair use and fair dealing analysis. With the lengthy comments on it, is has become even more interesting, but long. And serious. So here’s a lighter version. Enjoy.
Last week, the Canadian Intellectual Property Council released a commissioned report on the effects of music file-sharing in Canada. The report, titled The True Price of Peer to Peer File-Sharing, is based on a study conducted by Dr. George Barker, director for the Centre for Law and Economics at the Australian National University. Dr. Baker revisited survey data gathered by Industry Canada between 2005 and 2008, which served the basis for a study by Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, titled Don’t Blame the P2P File-sharers: The Impact of Free Music Downloads on the Purchase of Music. In their study, Andersen and Frenz invested …
CIPC Study on P2P File-sharing Doesn’t support its Policy Recommendation Read more »
The Social Science Research Council submitted a Comment to the USTR about software piracy, as part of the public hearing process for the 2011 Special 301 Report. The submission cites, and largely echoes, my 2005 paper on network effects and software piracy. Nice. The SSRC provides the following summary of its submission: Unlike recorded media business models such as the CD and DVD businesses, piracy is not primarily a drain on the software business, but rather a critical part of the business model that allows the building market share in low income countries and the effective locking out of open …
The Social Science Research Council Comments on Software Piracy Read more »