Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Prof. Lessig has an OP-ED in the NYT today about the orphan works bill rolling now in Congress. Among the important points mentioned there, here are my three favorites: (1) to the extent that foreign authors are substantially deprived of copyright protection as a result of the new rule, the amendment will probably violate U.S. international obligations, and it would take the E.U. exactly two seconds to file a WTO complaint. (2) It makes no sense to put so much weight on the issue of “diligent effort” if rightholders are not required to register works, as in the case of patents, for instance. (3) It would be somewhat unfair to apply the rule retroactively to works by authors who relied on full, automatic copyright protection upon creation/fixation.

it seems that MySpace and YouTube are about to check fingerprints of media placed on their websites. This should become possible with the help of Audible Magic, a company that specializes in fingerprinting technology and maintains a database of digital works' ID information, especially music and video.