Google released its Voice and Video chat today, and our own unscientific tests here at New Media Rights and UCAN show that the audio and video quality easily rivals competing services such as Skype. The biggest difference is that this is Google making a move into the voice and video area and it has the potential to alter the playing field a fair amount.

On July 16 the Copyright Office released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking soliciting commentary on various issues concerning the treatment of digital phonorecord deliveries with relation to compulsory copyright licenses. A major piece of the discussion was the characterization of buffer reproductions of digital sound recordings under copyright law, an issue which could have a profound effect on innovation in new media. We have issued our comments to the Copyright Office and have posted them here.

paul stumpr - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/