HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

After years of discussion and ongoing debate, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) will begin accepting applications for new generic Top-Level Domains (“gTLDs”) beginning on January 12, 2012.  Up until now, only 22 unrestricted gTLDs have existed across the Internet, among the most popular and well known being .com, .org, and .net.  With this new initiative, ICANN is establishing a process for companies and organizations to apply for new gTLD extensions, which may consist of any term or word, from company, firm or individual names and trademarks (e.g., .digitalhhr, .hugheshubbard, .josel, etc.), to generic categories of goods and services (e.g., law, .music, .baldguys, etc.).   Continue Reading »

A recent panel discussion at the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. on copyright issues arising from emerging cloud technologies, which was moderated by Dan, was featured in BNA’s Patent, Trademark & Copyright Law Daily.  The panel focused on how the growth of cloud-based distribution platforms and demand for content created novel copyright issues.  As Dan noted, these issues placed in sharp relief copyright holders’ exclusive reproduction and performance rights in their works against  the ability of service providers and consumers to access the works without infringing those rights.  The BNA article can be found here.

It is no surprise that the move to the cloud is in full swing. New methods of content distribution and consumption, coupled with the widespread proliferation of IP-enabled consumer devices, are driving the public’s relentless desire for “any content anywhere”.  The success of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon on Demand, Flickr, and the emergence of novel content authentication and delivery standards like the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem’s (DECE) Ultraviolet exemplify the entertainment industry’s investment in and increased reliance on cloud-based distribution platforms and business models. Now, as music makes a similar move to the cloud with the recent emergence of Amazon CloudDrive, Apple’s iCloud and GoogleMusic, stakeholders across all forms of entertainment have officially ent ered the equation. But while cloud integration continues to gain speed in the foreground, a host of new legal issues are emerging in the background as the convergence of new cloud-based storage mechanisms and channels of distribution with entertainment content continues to usher in novel copyright questions for stakeholders to grapple with. At present, the legal questions currently surrounding digital lockers and the “cloudification” of entertainment content are focused primarily on the balance between copyright holders’ exclusive rights to reproduce and publicly perform their works and consumers and service providers ability to make lawful use of such content through emerging technologies, in each instance, without directly or secondarily infringing copyright holders’ rights. Continue Reading »

In the rush to take advantage of the boom in the apps market, developers may have–consciously or not–overlooked the fact that some of the software building blocks they were using to create apps were governed by their own license restrictions, which may have been violated by the developers.  A recent report published by OpenLogic found that 7 out of 10 apps that contained open source software were in severe breach of the open source license requirements.  Continue Reading »

As discussed in our recent webinar “Whose Data Is It Anyway: Privacy in the De-Centralized Digital World”, currently there is no comprehensive federal statutory scheme to govern the protection of privacy.  While lawmakers and agencies at the federal level continue to grapple with developing useful legislation to address privacy and security breach concerns, lawmakers in three states recently introduced legislation in attempts to strengthen their respective state’s security breach notification systems. Continue Reading »