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[John von Seggern <johnvon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

October 8, 2006

Court Protects 'Attention Rights' of Media Companies

WASHINGTON, DC--In a closely watched proceeding, DC District Court Judge
Natalia Wimbley
ruled Friday in favor of claims by a coalition of media companies to
rights to the
'attention' of consumers.  "This ruling is crucial to the continued
vitality of American
art and culture," explains RIAA President-elect Richard Mound.
"Recognition of attention
rights goes a long way to guaranteeing that artists and musicians will
have access to
sustainable revenue streams."

        The case, known as 'In Re the Sony Music catalog,' involves a
request by a number
of major media companies and industry associations that the courts
recognize a relatively
new legal doctrine extending traditional copyright protection by
granting copyright owners
limited rights to demand that consumers watch or listen to their
intellectual property.
"Digital technologies have undermined the ability of simple copyright to
secure reasonable
pay for artists," explains RIAA's Mound.  "Attention rights will restore
the balance by
giving the advertising model a firm legal foundation.  With attention
rights, companies
will be able to guarantee advertisers a robust and predictable
audience."

        Though Judge Wimbley stayed enforcement of her ruling pending
appeal, the decision
appears to grant companies an enforceable legal right to require
consumers to pay a
"reasonable share of attention relative to the property consumed."  In
practice, record
companies could, under the ruling, require that consumers listen to a
minute of ads for
every three minutes of music.  Failure to listen to ads, and attempts to
circumvent or
delete advertising, would receive punishment commensurate with that
ordered under the
Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

        Critics of the decision suggest that such 'attention rights'
would be even less
practical to enforce than copyright.  "The weakness of copyright today
is the weakness of
rights-management technologies," explains Professor Jimmy Sprig of
Stanford Law School.
"Do they really expect some sort of 'attention-rights management'
technology to work any
better?  Do they really expect, practically, to outlaw the mute button
as a circumvention
measure?"

        At least one company, though, has plans to market just such an
'attention-rights
management' system.   GE Surveillance Solutions, a subsidiary of the
General Electric
Corporation, demonstrated 'Iful' last month, a "passive, anonymous
intellectual property
consumption monitor" that, integrated into speakers and displays, uses
infrared monitoring
technologies to determine the "gaze-orientation" of consumers within its
perimeter and to
measure "consumer attention" through "progressive, comparative analyses
of dynamic cranial
heat topographies."

        "Most of the critics have been squawking about how impractical
these 'rights' may
be," notes June Myrmidon, Executive Director of The Michigan Artists
Collective.  "But
they seem to me to actually have more traction in the real world that
copyright does.
Copies are digital, ephemeral. They're hard to keep track of; they float
around in the
ether.  People's heads don't.  I'd much rather bet my cash flow on my
ability to monitor
heads as a proxy for 'attention' than on my ability to monitor digital
copies."

        A hearing before the Appellate Court has been scheduled for
early next year.

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--
John von Seggern
http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com