Here we go again.  The Computer and Communications Industry Association (representing industry giants like Google and Microsoft) just filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission claiming that content providers (copyright holders) are issuing excessive, misleading warnings with movies, games, books and music.  (See story.)  Essentially, this complaint seems to be saying “stop telling us so loudly to stop breaking the law.” 

At the same time, a coalition of Japanese television, music and film companies are once again criticizing YouTube, complaining that the video-sharing site is “not doing enough” to rid the site of clips that infringe on copyrights!  In the same commentary, the group expressed skepticism about the work YouTube parent Google was doing on its own new video recognition and purging system.  (See story.)

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t!

This is yet another example of dueling claims about rights – digital rights – and the effort required to protect the value of digitized intellectual property without ruining distribution channels.  This particular exchange of claims and demands illustrates once again the shortfall in digital trust technologies to satisfy the competing interests of content providers and content purveyors.  Watermarking, acoustic and video fingerprinting, encryption-based DRM, and content summary and comparison techniques are all being tried and used to one extent or another.  Yet, the dueling rights argument continues.

It’s not completely a technology issue.  Intellectual property protection laws vary from nation to nation, and there are no comprehensive standards for formats or interfaces.  Without updates in legal frameworks and standards, and without digital trust technologies that satisfy both interests and provide evidence that rights are being managed in accordance with agreements, we can expect the argument to go on and on and on…

The Digital Trust volume on Intellectual Property Protection (Volume 3) will be out soon.  Subscribe to the LEF RSS feed www.csc.com/lefpodcast and you’ll get the volume when it’s released.  There’s some encouraging news in that volume, but the basic shortfalls remain.  If you have the “right” idea to solve this one, .  We can go far together.