Media +Technology Intelligence
The release of the Napster client in 1999 is seen by most in the music industry as a watershed event. It was the moment when millions of people began “trading” individual music tracks over the Internet and–in the received version of the story–stopped buying CDs. The industry’s response was, first, panic, then to attempt to get Read More …
There’s something about the video rental market, to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, that causes the studios to get all wee-weed up. Back in 1983, not long after the Hollywood studios began, ever-so tentatively, to release movies on the newly introduced half-inch videocassette for watching at home, they were horrified to discover that some enterprising video Read More …
Some news out of China last week laid a nostalgia trip on those of us who covered the long saga of the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war. According to a report in the Timesof London, a recently introduced high-def DVD format developed in China, called China Blue High Definition (CBHD), is already outselling Blu-ray in Read More …
Last week saw two interesting developments in the ongoing debate over effects of file-sharing and what to do about it. On Thursday, a federal jury in Minneapolis ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay $1.92 million to Universal Music Group and other record labels after finding she had downloaded 24 songs illegally. That works out to a staggering Read More …
The copyright industries had high hopes for France’s three-strikes law. At the World Copyright Summit in Washington last week, speakers had nothing but praise for the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who championed the law and railroaded it through the legislature. And they were crushed when, on the second day of the conference, the French Read More …