February 13, 2001
SJ Mercury: Napster is just one battle in the war for control of digital content.
Dan Gillmor. While it's ostensibly only about traditional protections, it goes to the heart of what's permissible in the Digital Age. Once again, we discover that the owners of copyrighted material have essentially all the rights in their dealings with customers -- and that customers have essentially no rights.
Wired News: Windows XP Can Secure Music.
The Secure Audio Path adds "static" interference to media files that require video and audio cards to authenticate themselves with Windows software before they can be played. The company would be able to verify that a media player isn't playing an "unsecured" file...
Business Week: Digital Hollywood: No Resolution.
In complex negotiations over the past few months, the studios have been strong-arming the cable and satellite companies into decreasing the resolution of high-definition digital video and restricting consumers' right to record what's on TV.
Business 2.0: Peak Performance Pricing.
Clay Shirky. While common sense suggests using a "pay as you go" system, the average PC user actually pays for peak performance, not overall resources, and it is peak pricing that produces the excess resources that let Napster and its cousins piggyback for free.
Newsweek: Is It software? Or spyware?
Though it does perform a neat function—creating sometimes-useful links for words that aren’t already hooked up to related Web sites—its modus operandi is problematic, and only sketchily explained to users who install it from the NBCi portal.
MSNBC: Small start-up helps the CIA to mask its moves on the Web.
The technology is a clever piece of software called Triangle Boy that SafeWeb plans to post free this month on the Web. The CIA, through In-Q-Tel, is investing in a revved-up version of the software, which can bounce digital traffic around the Web anonymously...
eCompany: Parody Sites Prevail in Court.
Cybersquatting laws aside, our legal system veers toward the side of humor. Even the federal law against cybersquatting specifies that parody is a form of fair use that must be considered by a court as a mitigating factor for any defendant sued under the statute.
Lighthouse: Swimming against the stream.
Web video won't happen this way, not by 2005. In image quality, reliability and economics, streaming video lags far, far behind television. For the next few years, people betting on TV-style streaming video risk great disappointment and monetary loss.
Mediaweek: Online Publishers Tweak Model.
Subscribers to the popular Silicon Alley Daily e-mail newsletter recently received a curious pitch. In order to continue receiving the free daily update on media-industry news, the company said in a note last week, readers will have to accept one promotional e-mail a week from advertisers.
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