"Who owns the words you’re reading right now? if you’re holding a copy of Bookforum in your hands, the law permits you to lend or sell it to whomever you like. If you’re reading this article on the Internet, you are allowed to link to it, but are prohibited from duplicating it on your web site or chat room without permission.

"You are free to make copies of it for teaching purposes, but aren’t allowed to sell those copies to your students without permission. A critic who misrepresents my ideas or uses some of my words to attack me in an article of his own is well within his rights to do so.

"But were I to fashion these pages into a work of collage art and sell it, my customer would be breaking the law if he altered it. Furthermore, were I to set these words to music, I’d receive royalties when it was played on the radio; the band performing it, however, would get nothing. In the end, the copyright to these words belongs to me, and I’ve given Bookforum the right to publish them. But even my ownership is limited."

Robert S. Boynton. Righting Copyright. Bookforum. Feb./March. 2005.

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"An influential congressional committee has dropped a political bombshell by suggesting that a tax originally created to pay for the Spanish American War could be extended to all Internet and data connections this year.

"The committee, deeply involved in writing U.S. tax laws, unexpectedly said in a report (.pdf) Thursday that the 3 percent telecommunications tax could be revised to cover ‘all data communications services to end users,’ including broadband; dial-up; fiber; cable modems; cellular; and DSL, or digital subscriber line, links.

"Currently, the 3 percent excise tax applies only to traditional telephone service. But because of technological convergence and the dropping popularity of landlines, the Joint Committee on Taxation concluded in its review of tax law reforms that it might make sense to extend the 100-year old levy to new technologies. The committee did not take a position on whether Congress should approve such an extension and simply listed it as an ‘option.’"

Declan McCullagh. Congress Proposes Tax on all Net, Data Connections. News.com. Jan. 28, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"After being locked out of the football market, game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software threw a curveball at the video game industry Monday by snagging semi-exclusive rights to Major League baseball.

"The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), the union representing players, announced it had reached a tentative agreement with Take-Two granting the publisher a seven-year license to portray Major League players in video games. Take-Two still needs to reach a separate agreement with Major League Baseball for the rights to portray teams and stadiums.

"The MLBPA license gives Take-Two exclusive rights among third-party game publishers. That means game console makers Microsoft and Sony could continue to make baseball games for their respective Xbox and PlayStation 2 game consoles, but companies purely in the software business could not. Most notably, that shuts out leading game publisher Electronic Arts, whose ‘MVP Baseball‘ was one of the top-selling baseball games last year."

David Becker. Take-Two Out to the Ball Game. News.com. Jan. 24, 2005.

Update: Curt Feldman.  Take-Two Bulks Up on Baseball. News.com. Jan. 31, 2005. (Take-Two announced Monday that they have entered into a long-term licensing agreement with Major League Baseball Properties, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and Major League Baseball Advanced Media for exclusive rights to publish and distribute officially licensed games for consoles, PCs and handhelds.)

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"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Thursday that it had filed 717 new lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including 68 unnamed people at universities."

John Borland. RIAA Sues 717 File-Swappers. News.com. Jan. 26, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"Yahoo has set up stakes in Southern California, forming a media group to house various entertainment properties and to court Hollywood, according to an internal company document.

"According to the e-mail, Yahoo has asked numerous employees from its Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters and New York office to join an already established team in the Los Angeles area. The move reinforces Yahoo’s ambitions to be an Internet entertainment powerhouse."

Stefanie Olsen. Yahoo! Heads for Hollywood. News.com. Jan. 25, 2004.

See also:
Chris Gaither. Yahoo Seeks Spotlight in Hollywood. LA Times. Feb. 8, 2005.

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"A Goldman Sachs report says online ads are becoming a ‘permanent component’ of major ad campaigns — a distressing development for older media. "The online market could have phenomenal growth doing nothing more than taking revenue from newspapers and TV," says Royal Farros, CEO of MessageCast, a developer of online news alerts.

"Demand for online video ads by Ford Motor, Colgate-Palmolive and others will contribute to a breakout year for online advertising in 2005 — and spell trouble for newspapers and TV, financial analysts say.

"A surge in text ads on search sites Google Latest News about Google and Yahoo  Latest News about Yahoo — combined with more high-speed Internet users — also will help push online ad spending over US$10 billion for the first time, analysts say."

Jon Swartz. Growth of Online Ads Hits High Speed. TechNewsWorld. Jan. 22, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ Covering the Intersection of Collaboration and Technology. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"Digital-music service Napster is considering remaking itself to offer movie downloads too.

"Speaking at the Midem music conference in Cannes this week, Napster CEO Chris Gorog said the company is considering offering movies alongside its current catalog of some 1 million music tracks.

"’We are currently considering moving into video, particularly to tap the younger video game generation,’ the Financial Times quoted him as saying. ‘I do think that while there are huge players in the delivery of movies like Sky, there could be a role for Napster.’"

Jo Best. Napster Eyes Movie Downloads. News.com. Jan. 24, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.