Darknet

DMCA chills German webcasting

Germany's Heise Online gives a blistering report on the effect of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on German webcasters. It ends with this:

In light of such financial risks many an operator of a private Internet radio is likely to simply pack in, especially in view of the fact that the new tariff scheme is, in addition, saddled with new conditions of use that also do not bode well. These implement the standards of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA), which enjoin operators of Internet radio services to take technical measures to prevent the recording of webcasts. By this backdoor route the phonographic industry, whose exploitation rights the GVL has set out to protect, could create an irresistible demand for free MP3 streams to be terminated in favor of a DRM-protected variant.

It's time for Hollywood to get creative, use the Net

Columnist Dan Gillmor in today's San Jose Mercury News writes about how it's high time for Hollywood to get creative and use the Net -- but studio execs aren't ready yet due to the copyright wars. Excerpt:

When I teach in Asia every fall, I can't legally watch my favorite American network TV shows unless I persuade someone to record them while I'm away. This is ridiculous.

Last November, staying in an apartment that included a broadband Internet connection, I just downloaded them -- yes, from a peer-to-peer file sharing system -- in a digitally compressed and therefore lower-quality format. I would have preferred higher quality, but even this was better than asking someone to tape the shows and mail them to me. ...

The Net is all about niches. And as the cost of producing professional-looking video drops, there are going to be some remarkable opportunities, and new kinds of middlemen who find the good stuff and help the rest of us find it. Even with today's ridiculously slow ``broadband'' connections, it's easy enough to deliver programming via peer-to-peer networks.

HDTV, DVD, hard drives and the future

Billionaire Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban -- whom I nearly interviewed for Darknet before the manuscript got too long -- blogs about the coming slow death of the DVD, musing:

What is the best way to distribute content? DVDs which will be limited in capacity to 9.4gbs on a single DVD for another year, and then after that 50gbs on a single disk for years to come after that, or rewritable media that can hold 2gb already in a device half the size of a pen, or in a hard drive that can hold 200GBs plus in a drive the size of your cell phone?

Personal video recorders, keychain hard drives and high-definition TV are the real future, he says. I think he's right.