Monday, June 09, 2003

A Republican Senator is introducing a bill to regulate DRM technologies - the idea is to force content owners "to prominently disclose to consumers the presence of anticopying technology in their products" and protect the right of consumers to resell copy protected CDs or DVDs.

Are the P2P file sharing networks about to start suing each other? Stefanie Olsen, John Borland and Evan Hansen seem to think so as they report that Alnet is claiming rival networks may have infringed a patent it holds on digital tags. Altnet has licensed the 'TrueNames' patent to Sharman Networks, owners of Kazaa. The Altnet ceo says "We're very focused on preserving the integrity of the patent and realizing the potential it offers peer-to-peer applications and content owners." Sounds to me like an invitation to the IP lawyers to make hay while the sun shines.

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