Today’s guest blog is written by Michael Gallagher, President and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). In little more than a generation, video games have evolved from a niche market into a mass medium, helping millions of Americans live, work, and, of course, play. As a result, the entertainment software industry has become an [...]

As readers of this blog likely know already, yesterday President Bush signed into law the PRO-IP Act of 2008. We were quick to praise the President and the White House, who joined with an overwhelmingly bipartisan coalition in Congress in support of this important legislation. Early next year the new president should be appointing an [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY — Ideas, fortunately, cannot be copyrighted. Ideas, however, are very important in the debate over copyright. Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig knows that, and is back with yet another book urging the reduction of rights of creators. This self-appointed pied piper of copyright dilution has given us a preview of his new [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY — The Popkomm Music Conference here wrapped up with a half-day conference on media and P2P hosted by the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA). It drew a good crowd, although by my panel (the last) we were getting into Friday evening and more than a few souls, understandably, had drifted off. It was [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY — Anyone own any Pink Floyd? Is there anyone who doesn’t? Fans will know their albums are thematic, some like an opera (“The Wall”) and others more in mood and sentiment with reprising tunes (“Dark Side of the Moon,” “Animals”). Several speakers at different panels at the Popkomm Music Conference wondered aloud here [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY — No, the title of this blog doesn’t refer to a new Windows Media service. Rather, it examines the possibility of the music industry adopting a digital version of the “windows” used by the motion picture industry to target consumers at the right price points. This notion, that popped up in various forms [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY — Recently I was chatting with Martha Reeves at the Copyright Alliance 2nd Annual EXPOnential. She showed me her new CD and was very proud of the fact that she produced it herself, even designed the cover art. She had cut the cord with the labels. Then she leaned in close: “The only [...]

BERLIN, GERMANY: It doesn’t seem to matter if I’m in Las Vegas (CES), Los Angeles (Digital Hollywood), Cannes (Midem) or Berlin — the big mystery before both creative industries and technologists is how on Earth to make money in the digital space. That was a recurring theme at the sessions I attended at the Popkomm [...]

MUNCIE, INDIANA: The folks here at Ball State’s Digital Economy Institute have put on an interesting conference called “Digital Policy in the Information Age.” I’ve already blogged on an interesting exchange I had regarding DVD replication with a student who attended the panel discussion in which I participated. What was my panel on? That’s kind [...]

After speaking on a panel earlier today at a conference here at Ball State University (apparently their football team is 5-0, or so everyone told me), a student asked me why he couldn’t legally make copies of his DVDs. I don’t know if the question was prompted by news of the RealDVD service by RealPlayer [...]