Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Industry profits from digital music are on the rise as industry-owned music download services expand and gain acceptance, anti-piracy efforts take hold in some countries, and internet intermediaries join in, music industry representatives said today.
Online piracy, patent reform and intellectual property issues relating to pharmaceuticals are among the top legislative and regulatory priorities for many stakeholder groups in the United States this year, but given that 2012 is an election year, chances are slim that Congress will push through anything that isn’t a top priority or that could cause too much partisan rancour.
It may be too much, too late for content providers finally trying to tame the internet, and a fresh approach is needed, writes Bruce Berman.
The new age of lobbying through online public engagement showed its effectiveness today as the Senate announced the postponement of next week's vote on controversial anti-piracy legislation that led to unprecedented protests on the internet.
A list of answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the much-disputed anti-piracy legislation before the United States Congress has been published by CNET News. It also reported that some 4.5 million people signed the petition on Google during the blackout protest yesterday.
In an unprecedented action suggesting intellectual property rights have bumped up against an access threshold, thousands of websites have gone "dark" today in protest against two draft anti-piracy and counterfeiting bills in the US Congress that the protestors say would harm freedoms online. The protest includes major technology firms like Google, Mozilla, Wikipedia, Flickr, Reddit, Vimeo and WordPress.
As of today, no one is really sure what the future holds for the controversial internet anti-piracy bills in the United States.
On the eve of the start of the application period for new generic top level domains (gTLDs) on the internet, the chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Steve Crocker, described the program as a "major step in the globalisation of the internet." For the first time there will be equal access and an equal invitation to users from all over the world to have generic domain names, Crocker said at the National Press Club in Washington, DC today.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is launching a large expansion of the available top-level domains on the internet on 12 January, has told international organisations the expansion will not hurt them.
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has announced its support for additional policies for new generic top-level domains on the internet, with conditions. The Commerce Department agency will stick to the 12 January start of the application period for new domains, but it has requested that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) take additional precautions when opening up the process.