Digital Rights Network

On the 5th of September the USPTO held a roundtable discussion on the Broadcast Treaty (list of participants below). Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge has posted a summary.

List of Participants

Ben Ivins, Senior Associate General Counsel, Legal & Regulatory Affairs, National Association of Broadcasters
Bradley Silver, Counsel, Intellectual Property, Time Warner, Inc.
Chris Boam, Director, International Public Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Verizon Communications, Inc
Christopher Veith, General Counsel Office, Broadcasting Board of Governors

The American content industry is feeling a bit chipper at the moment. With the recent judgements of Grokster and Kazaa having gone, to a significant extent, their way the MPAA and RIAA clearly hope that the demon spectre of unpaid file sharing can be brought under control, if not exactly *their* control. The Grokster case laid a potential for liability on a technology innovators. The Kazaa judgement in turn mandated that judicially enforceable anti-infringment technology be incorporated into Kazaa. They will hope that this sets a trend for any technology with a potential for infringement. Perhaps all these will, in time, become well controlled distribution channels, forcing consumers to pay their monopoly prices for a diet of the usual high quality boy bands and highly original Hollywood plots with Tom Cruise.

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a subsidiary of the American Chemical Society (founded 1909), is unhappy because the Federal Government has funded an open scientific database called PubChem that *might* compete with their service. CAS President Massie stated: It would not only injure us significantly, it would put information for free in the hands of world scientists and do it all with taxpayer money. For me to wake up one morning and find I have to compete with my own government is extraordinary. (The fact that much of the money paying for subscriptions to the CAS come from taxpayer-funded scientists seems to have passed him by).