Hacker in Murdoch Trial Acknowledges Receiving Money from Murdoch Firm - Via Threat Level:
An American hacker who is at the core of a piracy trial against a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary, testified this week that he created pirating software for the company but did not use it to sabotage the company's rivals.
Earlier this week I laid out the case against NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm and a majority-owned subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corporation. The company is accused of reverse-engineering access cards created by competitor NagraStar in order to provide pirates with counterfeit cards. EchoStar's Dish Net used the NagraStar cards, and the counterfeit cards allegedly allowed pirates to access Dish Network pay-TV content for free. read more... »
How Crypto Won the DVD War - Via Threat Level:
Sony's victory in the DVD format wars was largely due to its embrace and Toshiba's rejection of a sophisticated anti-copying scheme that promises to be relockable should it be cracked at some point in the future.
Toshiba earlier this week announced that it will stop making HD DVD players, surrendering the field in a five-year battle with Sony's Blu-ray to become the disc format of the future.
Support from studios has been widely cited as the reason for Blu-ray's victory, but few consumers know that the studios were likely won over by the presence of a digital lock on movies called BD+, a far more sophisticated and resilient digital rights management, or DRM, system than that offered by HD DVD.
“The adoption of BD+ as part of the Blu-ray disc specification … was a key factor in our decision to publish on the format,” Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment executive Mike Dunn said in a 2007 press release. “This added layer of content protection gives Blu-ray yet another distinct competitive advantage.” read more... »
NFL Pulls Plug On Big-Screen Church Parties For Super Bowl - Via washingtonpost.com :
The NFL said, however, that the copyright law on its games is long-standing and the language read at the end of each game is well known: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
The league bans public exhibitions of its games on TV sets or screens larger than 55 inches because smaller sets limit the audience size. The section of federal copyright law giving the NFL protection over the content of its programming exempts sports bars, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. read more... »
Thou Shalt Not View The Super Bowl on a 56" Screen - Via Slashdot:
theodp writes
"For 200 members of the Immanuel Bible Church and their friends, the annual Super Bowl party is over thanks to the NFL, which explained that airing NFL games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright. Federal copyright law includes an exemption for sports bars, according to NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, but churches are out of luck. Churchgoers who aren't adverse to a little drinking-and-driving still have the opportunity to see the game together in public on a screen bigger than 55 inches."
(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot.)
Debate on Copy Protection - Via NYT > Technology: This week, Bits will host a debate about copyright issues and technology between Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, and Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School. See the entire debate here.
Monday’s Question
Should creators insist on technology that will restrict the copying and transmission of copyrighted works? Any lock can eventually be picked. Do these restrictions provide speed bumps to help keep honest people honest? Or do they create a permanent war between creators and users that may hurt everyone? read more... »
Internet Video Copyright Laws Recap: In light of the recent TVLinks shut-down in the UK, I thought we should take a look at the many other cases of lawsuits and shut-downs pertaining to copyright violations on video sites that we have covered here on WebTVWire.
Many sites which link to pirated and copyrighted material on the web have been threatened, and in most cases successfully stopped from the copyright violations they were involved in.
Here are a few discussions on the subject:- read more... »
TVLinks Owner Deserved to be Arrested: " There I said it! I know lots of people won’t agree with me and think the owner of TV-Links.co.uk is some sort of martyr who is fighting our cause against the big copyright Mongols but that is bullshit.
What is TVLinks & What Happened?
For those of you that don’t know TV-Links.co.uk is a site that was full of links to pirated TV shows on sites like YouTube, MySpace Video, DailyMotion etc.
Millions of people flocked to TVLinks each month to watch these pirated shows and can you blame them? Content owners have put so many barriers between people and the videos they want to watch: DRM, high DVD prices, not putting shows online… the list goes on. read more... »
Watermarking to replace DRM?:
Watermarking has been in the news twice in the past week. First, Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk revealed that Universal will insert watermarks in the DRM-free files it's distributing through Rhapsody, Amazon.com and other online stores.
Then, Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it's licensing audio watermarking technology developed by its research division to a company called Activated Content. (Microsoft Research used to be devoted entirely to building technology that would later be incorporated into Microsoft products, but a couple of years ago it began to license technology through its IP Ventures program.) read more... »
NBC Universal Fight For Network Filters To Stop Copyright Infringement: "Last month, NBC Universal filed comments in the FCC’s
proceeding on ‘Broadband Industry Practices.’
NBC asked that the FCC require that ISPs institute ‘bandwidth
management tools’, code for network filters, to try to stop the
Internet infringing copyrights. read more... »