The news cycle has been abuzz about digital music and iTunes‘ ascendance to a position as the country’s leading music retailer. Likewise, the mainstream press has continued to feed its desire for an iTunes-Amazon.com octagon-style retail death match, and steadily has been promoting Amazon.com’s mp3 download service as a worthy challenger to the iTunes hegemony.

(The music labels, long irritated with Steve Jobs‘ control of the legal download market, silently would approve of such a challenge.)

We don’t see what the big deal is. There are several problems with music downloads, and none of them have anything to do with three-letter acronyms that purport to “protect” the underlying content. The primary problem with downloaded music is that it sucks.

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Anna Ringstrom. Sweden to Charge Pirate Bay in Copyright Case. Yahoo! News. Jan. 28, 2008. Sweden’s involvement in enforcement efforts on the entertainment industry’s behalf is related directly to the Special 301 process and Sweden’s fear of being placed on a priority list (penalties for which include trade sanctions).

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Yahoo! News (via The Associated Press). MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study. Jan. 23, 2008; Inside Higher Ed. Downloading by Students Overstated. Jan. 23, 2008; Association for Computing Machinery. MPAA’s Data Oops: How Will Congress React? Jan. 23, 2008; News Blog (News.com). Why Did Colleges Stay Mum on MPAA Stats? Jan. 25, 2008. We don’t think this is a mistake, actually. For several years, we have questioned as biased and invalid many of the “studies” the entertainment industry creates that purport to show a correlation between alleged infringement activity from a specific environment (i.e. file sharing networks) or population (i.e. college students). More investigation should be done into the numbers and methodology of these reports, especially since the entertainment industry parades them before Congress as evidence that it needs more restrictive intellectual property rights. If you think there is no connection between these sorts of studies and legislation like the PRO IP bill (H.R. 4279) or the HEA Reauthorization bill, think again.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Jeremy Kirk. Antipiracy Group’s Tactics Violate Swiss Law. InfoWorld. Jan. 25, 2008. This is another novel theory of the privacy issues that are raised when the music industry uses private firms to track file sharing networks for alleged copyright infringement. We first heard about this approach late last year, when the University of Oregon questioned the authority MediaSentry had to engage in investigative tracking on the RIAA’s behalf. The University argued, among other things, that MediaSentry’s tracking activities may be illegal because the Maryland-based company does not hold a investigator’s license in Oregon.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 29, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Tim Wu. Has AT&T Lost Its Mind? Slate. Jan. 16, 2008. Columbia law professor Wu rhetorically poses the obvious question in response to news that AT&T is considering proposals to filter content, ostensibly to halt alleged copyright infringement. Wu delves more deeply into the “safe harbor” provisions of Section 512 than we did when we first reported this story in last week’s Clippings, and offers some interesting thoughts about why AT&T would even consider such an effort.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 22, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Aaron O. Patrick and Sarah McBride. Showdown Looms Over Pirated-Media Directory. WSJ.com. Jan. 11, 2008. Sweden gets into the U.S. copyright enforcement act. We wonder whether the country will appear in the Trade Representative’s 2008 Special 301 report for its alleged copyright indiscretions.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 15, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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Nate Anderson. EFF Tries to Quash Labels’ ‘Making Available’ Claims. ArsTechnica. Jan. 13, 2008. EFF’s brief (.pdf) in the Atlantic v. Howell case argues, among other things, that “an infringement of the distribution right requires unauthorized, actual dissemination of copies of a copyrighted work,” not just downloads to a shared network folder. The hearing in an Arizona federal court occurs January 24.

(Editor’s Note: Copycense editors originally commented on this article in the Jan. 15, 2008, edition of Copycense Clippings.)

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