• by Wayne Friedman , August 9, 2006

Future media technology will continue to challenge copyright laws and all that should have advertisers taking note as they monitor--or get involved with--new media distribution systems.

"Copyright will continually be outdated," says Brian Wieser, vice president and director of industry analysis of Magna Global USA, who wrote the report. "It's important, in light of the courts that take things literally these days, that copyright laws are updated. When there are new ways to get at information, laws will struggle to keep up."

He notes in his report that advertisers are interested in new technologies for "both defensive and offensive reasons." The good news: "New technologies almost always contribute to increased consumption of media." The bad: "The legal status of many new advertising-related technologies remains ill-defined."

Magna Global cites a number of legal cases where technology has challenged these copyright laws--and, more importantly, has taken years to resolve--cases involving Napster to Sony Betamax.

New court tests will focus on technologies such as the "network DVR." That's where a cable operator--such as one that Cablevision Systems Corp. is proposing--would store individual programs from its cable customers at its cable head-end. Movie studios believe that to be an infringement on their copyrights.

New technologies--like many place-based shifting content technologies, such as Slingbox--haven't been tested yet in the courts, but could be in the future.

One of those shifting technologies is already being challenged--segOne, from TMI-Multimedia--which can intercept a TV commercial signal so that a person could run their own commercial--or other content--in its place.

Flying J, the chain of trucks stops, has used segOne to intercept signals sent from Dish Network satellite boxes to televisions at their truck stop locations. Flying J substituted existing network commercials for its own 30-second commercials sold in packages for $30,000 per month--all this to target a monthly audience of 140,000 truckers.

Weiser notes while it appears that YouTube has stopped it renegade activities of placing TV network material on its Internet site (it now approved deals with the likes of NBC), legal people have argued that YouTube could choose to make use of a provision which would deem the uploading of copyrighted content by consumers under fair use statutes.

"The point of this is that nobody has clearly articulated what is illegal or legal," said Wieser. "There are so many unknowns."