Cyberlaw Central

Be sure to check out YouTomb, a research project of MIT Free Culture. It monitors YouTube for videos that are taken down pursuant to DMCA takedown notices. The site shows a screenshot of the video and information about the takedown. You can sort by the entity providing the notice, for example you can see all notices issued by Viacom International, Inc. here.

Fascinating.

Over lunch today, I had a nice chat with a fellow lawyer about digital rights management (DRM), among other topics. Then, later on, I came across this nice article from The Guardian entitled “How Apple is Changing DRM.”

DRM is a way for copyright owners to get around the rights the purchaser of a copy of a physical item would ordinarily have. These rights come from the “first sale doctrine”, whereby once the physical item is sold the copyright owner has no more control over what the purchaser does with the physical item. For example, if you purchase a book, you can tear it from its binding and put it into a 3-ring binder, or make paper airplanes, etc. DRM doesn’t let you do certain things with electronic media, such as put it on non-authorized hardware. Breaking the DRM usually means that you’re in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions. But, as the article points out, DRM doesn’t really stop piracy, it just frustrates users.

The trend is now to eliminate DRM from many files, but as the article points out Apple is less likely to get rid of it. The article’s headline is a little misleading, it’s really more about what Apple’s competitors are doing rather than what Apple is doing.

I’m interested to hear what you as users find to be the most oppressive DRM in your ordinary use of your computers and media devices. The comments are open.

I am excitedly planning to read Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. It’s out in a free Creative Commons licensed version, linked above, as well as one you can buy through places like Amazon.

If you don’t recognize Jonathan’s name, you haven’t been following Internet legal issues for very long. Here’s a link to his Wikipedia entry if you want to catch up on all he’s done in this area.

I will report back once I’ve had an opportunity to read and digest the thoughts in the new book.