Kudos to three universities — Hofstra, Marquette and Syracuse — for agreeing on their own terms to do what only makes sense. (See Isabel Swift's summary.) Namely, they have crafted in conjunction with the publishing industry their own set of principles on proper use of digital materials for classrooms. One would think that whatever rules apply to the photocopying of a textbook apply to the digital reproduction of the same work. Even fair use fanatics should embrace this; they're always saying how a copy doesn't deny the original owner their content, and in both cases a copy is being made.

Global trade in creative industries' goods and services totaled $445.2 billion dollars in 2005, nearly doubling from $234.8 billion in 1996, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (see UN press release). This growth is not just from popularity of US artists, but from the growing market for creative works produced around the world. The UNCTD said that "[w]hile the concept of the creative economy is recent and still evolving,
it reflects the idea that creative assets can generate economic growth,
job creation and export earnings while at the same time promoting
social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development. The UNCTAD

NBC Universal General Counsel Rick Cotton addressed copyright issues at a discussion sponsored at his employer's booth at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, and that led him to be invited to participate in a week-long blog debate with Columbia Law School's Timothy Wu on the New York Times blog Bits. You can read the series here.

I had the pleasure of participating in a very interesting panel here at CES on licensed peer-to-peer services. It was moderated by DCIA's Marty Lafferty, and also included BitTorrent's Ashwin Navin, Digital Watermarking Alliance's Reed Stager, ContentGuard's Rob Logan, Pando Networks' Robert Levitan, Itiva's Jerry Pierce, and Gabriel Ramsey of Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe. As a whole, we were all in agreement that P2P has significant promise as a licensed commercial technology, with some (namely the ones running P2P networks) being more bullish than others. My basic points:

In recent years a very well-attended event at CES has been the hour-long Q&A with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. This year the room was again packed, although some were late, as it took a bit of time to get from a presentation by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts at the Venetian to Martin's talk at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Roberts talked about the cable industry, a frequent topic of his, but I picked up on his response to a question from CEA's Gary Shapiro on his "guiding principles" on copyright. Copyright generally is not a major part of the FCC's agenda, but in this interconnected world it has popped up now and then in notices of inquiry and rulemakings.

LAS VEGAS – See my title? I don't get to say that as often as I like. But I went to the CES keynote this morning, the one that Shapiro always uses to convey his policy agenda. I anticipated, well, in the spirit of unity I won't say what I expected. But what he did say was fantastic.

LAS VEGAS — Another January, another CES. And like last year, a big theme is the partnerships occuring between copyright owners, device manufacturers and online service providers. When I noted this last year, most of the news was coming from device manufacturers. This year, we're also hearing a lot from the copyright owners themselves, with executives from such major creative works makers as NBC Universal, Paramount, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. speaking at the show.

A new year means lists, be they lists of resolutions or lists of the top somethings of the previous year. Respected Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes joined the fun today, penning a top-three list of the most important technologies of 2007. Making the top three — and dominating in column inches — was piracy:

Piracy makes the list because of the vengeance with which it has returned. This happened in part because of the peer-to-peer software known as BitTorrent, now on as many college students' computers as Napster was in 1999. But the software is useless without directories of where to find movies, music and software to be downloaded.