home contact membership: join now | login

Archive for the ‘internet’ Category

The Long Tail and Venture Capital

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

Everyone by now must be familiar with the theory by Wired’s Chris Anderson that in the Internet age, there is more money to be made on the vast majority of creative works that are niche items than in the few that are very popular. He has depicted this through what is called a Pareto curve, [...]

A Half-Baked Idea for Monetizing Online

Monday, November 10th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

In The Graduate, the father of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) — after learning his son is driving to Berkeley to propose to Elaine Robinson, daughter of a woman Benjamin was having an affair with — says “Don’t you think that idea is a little half-baked?” Benjamin replies, “Oh no, Dad, it’s completely baked.”
The idea I’m [...]

LIVE FROM DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD FALL 2008: NEW HARMONY

Thursday, October 30th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

SANTA MONICA, CA — Every time I come to this show, I hear more technologists eager to make deals with copyright owners, legal deals rewarding both parties. Yes, one big obstacle remains — to date, returns from online distribution of creative works haven’t approached that of traditional models. But improvements are being made in that [...]

LIVE FROM DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD FALL 2008: It’s All About the Content*

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

* i know, I prefer the term “creative works,” but I’m speaking the lingo of the conference here and will use “content” in this blog entry.
SANTA MONICA, CA — Another Digital Hollywood, another amalgam of creative start-ups with bizarre Web 2.0 names, another set of panels where people continue to try to figure out how [...]

A Good Day for Authors

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

Just two weeks ago I gave a presentation where I said sometimes we needed a legal process to sort out thorny issues, and cited the Google Book Search case where publishers were suing the search engine giant for reproducing copyrighted works given to them by major university libraries without obtaining the permission of copyright owners.
Well, [...]

LIVE FROM THE P2P AND VIDEO SUMMIT: Licensing P2P

Monday, October 27th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

SANTA MONICA, CA — How can you host a conference 200 yards from the beach and expect people to attend your indoor, windowless sessions? Well, DCIA did okay today with their P2P and Video Summit, and I suspect Digital Hollywood will hang in there as well the rest of this week. I’ve spent a lot [...]

Copyright vs. Fair Use???

Friday, October 24th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

My oh-so-clever use of question marks in that headline is meant to convey that I find the very “battle” to be both absurd and non-existent, not unlike the so-called “copyright vs. innovation” battle. In both cases the subjects go hand in hand, in fact are symbiotic. But rarely are they portrayed that way.
This particular rant [...]

The Stifling Innovation Meme

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

How do you stop a viral spread of false information, for example the myth that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim or that a tooth left in Coca-Cola will dissolve overnight? Well, the fact is, you don’t. That’s the problem with these myths, they’re like Jason from “Halloween” – they won’t die.
That brings me [...]

The Battle of Ideas

Sunday, October 12th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

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 [...]

LIVE FROM POPKOMM: Legal v. Illegal, Round… I’ve Lost Count

Saturday, October 11th, 2008 by Patrick Ross

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 [...]


email updates

Sign up to receive monthly e-newsletters about the Copyright Alliance and general information about copyright.



Name

E-Mail