davidNeedham

Article 1

Amazon.com Plans Global Rollout of DRM-Free Music Store

http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205920539

Amazon.com is hoping to compete directly with the Apple iTunes and Microsoft Zune music libraries. They have signed with all four major record labels and says that their music will be free of any DRM whatsoever, and will be able to play on any MP3 music player. It seems that some of the online music sellers do offer DRM-free music, however none of those sites have been able to get agreements from all four of the big record labels.

Amazon.com hopes to compete with Apple directly by offering prices slightly below Apple's already reasonable prices ($0.89 per song instead of $0.99 and $5.99-9.99 instead of $9.99 per album). This is great news. My loyalty to Amazon rivals that of Google, and I believe that this should help them to increase revenue and attract many thousands more customers to their website. I'm curious to see how Apple will react to this. Will they get in a price war and begin lowering their prices too? They have been discussing plans to make all of their music DRM-free also, but such plans have been held up for many months with no visible action. Great job Amazon! I can't wait for this to be released!

This made me think a lot about our readings about IP law and copyright infringement using services like Grokster. Old users of Grokster and other "illegal" downloaders might consider using Amazon instead of their current method. They might have went to iTunes, but they didn't have DRM-free music like Amazon soon will. Now there's a better alternative at an even better price.

Article 2

Japan sets up intellectual property fund for Africa

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5itraBMIBoqeFXfWmQdwH5CJPnpWQ

Japan has set up a fund to help African countries set up and enforce intellectual property (IP) rights in order to help boost the economic potential in the continent. $1,000,000 has been donated to help train African government officials and legal experts in international IP law. Japan, a huge supporter of international IP growth and development, has seen positive results from their own use of this system, and has done their part to help other less fortunate countries in this development. Japan set up a similar fund for emerging economies in Asia in 1987 and have apparently seen improvement in their sister-countries.

Despite the fact that we haven't discussed anything about international IP law, Japan is a huge player in this discussion and should be taken into consideration when looking at the world market. The Japanese people have benefited economically by following these guidelines, so they must be doing something right. I don't know exactly how IP law is set up, but from what we've discussed in class and went over in the readings from McLeod and the speech, IP law in the US doesn't always make the most sense or result in what makes the most sense. Maybe we could learn from Japan's success and find some better ways to manage and protect our intellectual property.

Article 3

Aboriginal archive offers new DRM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7214240.stm

The Aborigines of northern Australia have been working with government officials to develop a more tribal sort of arrangement for DRM. Restrictions on content is based on profiles that users create - listing details such as sex, age, and community status. Based on those qualifications, access to content is either restricted or opened up to you. This stemmed from a slide show that a missionary presented to some Aboriginal natives. When certain images came up, different groups of people turned their head and wouldn't look at the screen (ie. men cannot view female rituals, the family of a deceased member cannot look at images of their dearly departed family member, and more). People's reactions to the content was carefully monitored and recorded, then applied to other media in an attempt to recreate the reaction.

I had no idea about these Aboriginal customs before reading this article. It sounds like a much better DRM standard than we we have, but I'm not sure how well it would work. I could see people abusing the system. They could easily lie about the details in their profile so that they can get additional content that would otherwise be off limits for them. Just as with the last couple articles, I think the speech and McLeod reading shows that our ways of regulating IP law and DRM is broken. I'm excited to hear about any new ideas and techniques that develop in hopes that we can adopt some new ideas that actually work.