HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

On December 9, the DigitalHHR team will be presenting “Forecast: Entertainment in the Cloud”, the next in its on-going series of live, CLE-accredited webinars.  

As the public’s demand for “any content anywhere” grows, entertainment, media and technology companies are turning to the cloud for innovative ways to distribute and monetize content. Through initiatives like digital lockers, streaming to mobile apps, progressive downloading to tablet devices, and other forms of cloud-based storage and distribution, stakeholders are exploring new business models and ways to innovate without compromising the value of content or jeopardizing the rights of content owners to control how their content is consumed by the ultimate end user.

In this CLE-accredited Webinar, we will focus on the critical legal and business issues raised by the expansion of cloud computing and its impact on the distribution and consumption of entertainment content. We will analyze how cloud computing has led to new methods of distribution that give rise to an increased threat of copyright infringement and the recent case law impacting the cloud computing landscape. We will discuss new digital rights management tools, methods of end user, subscriber and purchase authentication. We will explore how stakeholders can balance complying with evolving standards, laws and regulations with the need to exploit new technological advancements that lead to improved services and enhanced end user experiences.

Our New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group at Hughes, Hubbard & Reed will be joined by our UK-based colleagues from the international Technology and Media focused law firm Taylor Wessing LLP. Taylor Wessing will address some key international and European issues that impact cloud models. These issues will include jurisdictional risks, different rights spanning different territories, advertising laws, collecting societies, the European laws on privacy, cookies and liability for cloud platform providers, as well as challenges related to format shifting/uploading consumers’ existing content into the cloud.

The webinar will be held on Thursday, December 9, 2010 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST.  To register, please click here.

DigitalHHR’s Wayne Josel will be moderating a panel at the upcoming Digital Hollywood New York conference.  Entitled “Cloud Media & the Connected PC-TV-Mobile Universe: The New Face of the Digital Consumer”, the panel will feature top executives from Verizon, HP, ActiveVideo Networks, Thwapr and IBB Consulting in a discussion on new initiatives to deliver content to consumers from the cloud. 

Digital Hollywood New York, being held from November 10 through 12, is the East Coast version of one of the leading conferences focusing on the convergence of entertainment and technology, bringing together leaders in the film, television, music, home video, cable, telecommunications and computer industries.  This year’s conference theme is “Media Disruption: TV, Film & Video, Magazines, News, Books, Games, Commerce & Advertising”.  Registration information is available here.

Next week, Matthew Syrkin will present a panel on music licensing and related copyright issues to the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.  The panel, entitled “Beg, Borrow or Steal – Exploring Practical Solutions to the Music Sampling Debate” will take place on Monday, Oct. 18 at noon at the Princeton Club in Midtown.  Panelists will address the rise in popularity of music sampling in popular music and explore the complex licensing and clearance issues implicated through the practice.  These issues include new business models, such as sample clearing houses and statutory fees.  The panel will include music industry litigators, in-house counsel from Warner Bros. Records, the founder of Public Enemy (the famous rap group), and an NYU Professor of Musicology.

For more information regarding the panel, please click here.

On September 21, the DigitalHHR team will be presenting “Whose Data Is It Anyway: Privacy and Data Security in a De-centralized Digital World”, the next in its on-going series of live, CLE-accredited webinars.  As individuals increasingly rely on mobile, cloud computing and social networking applications, they reveal more and more of their personal information which is in turn used to create more and more “personalized” services and applications. While the benefits of many of these services and applications is sometimes obvious, this environment has also revealed tensions between individuals’ rights to control their personal information and businesses’ need to use such information to enhance commercial opportunities.  In this CLE-accredited Webinar, we will focus on the critical legal and business issues and questions raised by the need to protect personally identifiable information (PII) of end users in a digital environment, both in the U.S. and abroad, and how businesses can balance compliance with applicable laws and regulations while exploiting advancements in technology that enable the use of personal information to improve their products and services. Our DigitalHHR team will be joined by a London-based colleague from the international law firm of Norton Rose to address topics including:

• Stakeholders’ responsibilities: does every entity with access to PII have the same obligations to consumers?
• Privacy policies and disclosure requirements
• EU privacy regulations and the impact on cross-border initiative

The Webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EDT. To register, click here.

Matt Syrkin will be speaking at the New York City Bar Center for Continuing Legal Education on the topic of Internet rights and technology, along with attorneys from Hunton & Williams LLP, Holland & Knight LLP, and Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C. One of the most popular New York City Bar events, the conference, titled “Internet Rights and Technology: a Practical Legal Guide to Doing Business on the Internet”, will be held on September 28 and will focus on the ongoing challenges for lawyers in addressing the evolving legal landscape of the internet and new media.

As one of the featured speakers, Syrkin will be addressing the hot topic of interactive entertainment and will tackle structuring development and publishing agreements, intellectual property ownership and licensing, distribution and syndication models and content monetization.

To register for this seminar, please click here.