“After winning the very expensive rights to the first photographs of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the editors at People magazine formed a publicity plan.

“Instead, days before their official publication, the pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt cuddling their days-old infant first appeared on Gawker, PerezHilton.com and about two dozen other gossip blogs and Web sites. Some photos were taken from a bootleg copy of Hello! magazine, which had obtained the rights in Britain to the photos for a reported $3.5 million. Others that appeared later were from copies of People that the magazine says may have been stolen before official distribution. Within an hour of the first postings, lawyers for the magazine began unleashing cease-and-desist letters to the offending Web sites.

“But did the Internet publication of the pictures really undermine People’s publicity plan?”

Julie Bosman. In Web Era, Big Money Can’t Buy an Exclusive. The New York Times. June 12, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“In September last year, I wrote about a very bad proposal being debated in the World Intellectual Property Organization. The proposal was to extend the length of an existing set of intellectual property rights for broadcasters, and even apply them to webcasting.

“Extending the rights to webcasting, despite the manifest differences between the economic structure and global reach of the two media, was a jaw-dropping move with obviously bad consequences. We should be focusing on rules about conduct, not rights over content.

“This proposal was so bad, so empirically threadbare, so unbalanced, that I had cherished a faint hope that the members of WIPO would abandon it. At least, I hoped there might be a comparative study of the nations that had previously adopted the protection and those that had not, to see if there was any need for such a change? What was I thinking!!?”

James Boyle. Constitutional Circumvention. FT.com. June 13, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• James Boyle. More Rights Are Wrong For Webcasters. FT.com. Sept. 26, 2005.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Responding to a lawsuit that Netflix leveled against it two months ago, Blockbuster said on Tuesday that it has filed an antitrust counterclaim alleging that its online rival is trying to use the courts to secure a monopoly for itself.

“Netflix, the first company to market a DVD-by-mail subscription service, sued Blockbuster in April claiming that its Blockbuster Online infringed on patents it held. Netflix maintained that when it launched in 1999, such a service was not obvious.”

Paul Bond. Blockbuster Counters Netflix Suit. WashingtonPost.com. June 14, 2006.

Related Stories & Documents:

• Ars Technica. Blockbuster Fires Back At Netflix With Suit of Its Own. June 14, 2006.
• U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Approach for Renting Items to Customers (Patent No. 7,024,381 assigned to Netflix Inc.). April 4, 2006.

CopyCense™: The law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Taking cues from earlier proposals in the House of Representatives, key senators on Wednesday said they too are pondering legislation that would police violations of so-called Net neutrality under antitrust law.

“The idea that network operators must grant equal treatment to all Internet content and applications that use their pipes is ‘very, very high on the agenda,’ Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter said at a hearing here. Internet innovators are understandably ‘concerned their access could be cut off, degraded or become an expensive barrier to entry.’

“Specter said he was working with Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who leads the Senate Commerce Committee, on a ‘coordinated plan’ to address the issue.”

Anne Broache. Senate Ponders Policing of Net Neutrality Offenses. News.com. June 14, 2006.