Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

Browse by Tags

• Apple
• Entrepreneurship
• Music
• NextNY
• Patent
• Rants
• Startup
• Technology
• Web 2.0

• Being better than free when copies are ubiquitous

  The digital world fundamentally changes what a copy means for copyright. I wrote about this in the past from the legal perspective, suggesting an implied license to reproduce and a greater reliance on other rights. Kevin Kelly has a great post up about the Internet's role as a super-distribution center and how to make money in the face of this ( via Andrew ). Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies? I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus: When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. In other words, money is no longer in the distribution, but "rather... Posted Feb 22 2008, 10:15 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Business, Law

• Steve Jobs and Apple telling half-truths about DRM

  This has already been covered ad nasuem , but I thought I should mention Apple's denouncement of DRM last week. Steve Jobs summarily dismissed Apple's DRM as a result of demands from the record labels. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices. I have no doubt that the record labels are concerned with putting unprotected music out there, but Apple is also in no rush to do away with DRM... Posted Feb 13 2007, 04:20 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Intellectual Property, Rants, Music, Copyright, Business, Apple, Law

• How is IP split between separating founders?

  AskTheVC addresses the question of what happens to IP rights when the founders go their separate ways . "Bottom line, you have a strong incentive (as does your former partner) to settle this amicably, otherwise, you both are going to be worse off." I thought it was worthwhile to dig into this a little further, though, and discuss what happens with the various IP rights a startup might acquire. Often you'll hear 3 founders say "we want everything split 3 ways", but joint ownership of IP can be tricky. Rights and duties with joint ownership are poorly misunderstood, even by many lawyers. More importantly, the rights and obligations of each owner vary by the type of intellectual property and from country to country. A joint owner of copyright in the US has different rights from a joint owner in England, and a joint owner of copyright has different rights from a joint owner of a patent. Both copyright and patent rights vest in the original author(s) or inventor(s) respectively, and both can... Posted Feb 12 2007, 06:47 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Copyright, Web 2.0, Patent, Business, Law, Entrepreneurship, Startup, NextNY