(entry last updated: 2002-06-07 16:40:07)

Sorry! MIT graduation festivities started yesterday, and coincided with my descent into the throes of a summer cold! I decided to stick with adding links, figuring that checking out the newest links would be pretty easy. Now that I’m a lull for the moment, I thought I might try to catch up.

Interestingly enough, the big news today has largely been the same as yesterday’s - so I’ve really been refining the earlier links. Three main topics - Movie88/Film88, the ReplayTV users’ suit, and NetFlix - with some music biz on the side.

(6 items listed below)

• The EFF has joined a group of ReplayTV users, filing a suit that, it is hoped, will address the question raised by Kellner of AOL’s screed (click here to find related articles) some while ago - is skipping commercials in a recording of broadcast television theft/copyright infringement? The best discussion I have seen of this is still the FindLaw piece, but lots more have been posted recently
  • ReplayTV Users Sue Hollywood ; Wired
  • ReplayTV Owners Sue Entertainment Oligopoly; LawMeme
  • MPAA Misleads in Response to ReplayTV Lawsuit; LawMeme
  • Copyfight Renewal: Owners of Digital Devices Sue to Assert the Right to Record; Washington Post
  • ReplayTV Users, EFF: Right Back at Ya, Hollywood; GrepLaw
  • EFF Sues to Affirm Consumers’ Use of ReplayTV Device; Law.com
  • Commercial-skipping ‘thieves’ sue accusers: Fans of Sonicblue gear strike back at entertainment giants; SFGate (San Jose Mercury News)
• In what has to be some kind of a record, Movie88 came back to life as Film88 in Iran, and by today the news outlets were reporting that the servers (locted in The Netherlands) had been shut down.

• There is a bit more BPDG fallout - a summary article and a Microsoft position paper opposing mandated DRM (commenting article from The Register; a more general one from InfoWorld)

• Brad King has an insightful essay on Wired discussing a key problem the record industry faces -reconciling DRM with the ethos of music; his article certainly describes me and my attitudes to a “T.” An article that makes some strong predictions about the future of the music industry is in New York Magazine, and it’s getting a lot of attention on the Internet. I’m sure there’ll be a Slashdot discussion that I’ll need to add
• NetFlix is a recent IPO success in the .com world - there are two articles, one from the NYTimes and one from Salon, that discuss their position, their business and take a look at the implications for movie distribution.
• Wired.com compares and contrasts the relationship between the content providers and the lead companies in the DVR business - Sonicblue and TiVo. One is cooperating and one is fighting - will the difference in attitude lead to a competitive advantage>