Hear Us Now: Intellectual Property Rights -- Take the Consumer Survey


Intellectual Property Rights -- Take the Consumer Survey Posted by Bob at 11/12/09 10:52 AM Share Email Print Intellectual property rights are a consumer issue. For example, there are many instances that supersede the interests of the end user, making information unaffordable, unavailable, or difficult to use as in the case of digital rights management technologies. Consumers Union, and the over 220 member organizations of Consumers International (CI), believes that it is in the interest of all consumers to have unhampered and inclusive access to knowledge. To this end, we are helping CI gather information to pinpoint the barriers consumers face when they access knowledge resources such as educational materials, software, films and music. By completing the six questions on the CI access barriers survey, you can help us to understand how consumers view and interact with copyrighted materials. This is part of an international research and policy effort known as Access to Knowledge (A2K) that encompasses intellectual property rights and related communications policy issues. These include freedom of expression, security and privacy, accessibility, and infrastructure issues such as broadband availability and wireless access. To learn more about this international effort visit the A2K site. In the United States, we have pursued these issues under the banner of communications choice.				Read stories that consumers have shared, or share your own personal story. Airport Scanners Can Store, Transmit Images Contrary to public statements made by the Transportation Security Administration, full-body airport scanners do have the ability to store and transmit images, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Google Apologizes to Chinese Authors HONG KONG — Google has agreed to hand over a list of books by Chinese authors that it has scanned in recent years, company executives said Monday, in an apparent effort to placate writers who say their works were digitized without their permission. Google Nexus One buyers frustrated about help Owners of Google's Nexus One phone may be early adopters, but some of them are also getting an early share of problems with phone and customer service, according to complaints being posted on various forums. Two year contract trend could reverse by 2011 Operators will need to offer extra services to lock in savvy customers, say analysts. Aggressively priced smartphones and up front payments on hardware could see the trend towards two year contracts reversed by 2011. Analyst Gartner says it expects 12 month contracts to return to the norm in two years' time, as consumers move away from Sim-only in improved economic conditions. And there will be more pressure on operators to provide reasonable prices on those 12 month contracts, even on heavily subsidized smartphones. The Network Neutrality Debate Is far From Over In the epic battle between giant corporations and pirates of digital media, the latter faction has struck a severe blow with the help of regulators at the FCC. Bureaucrats soon will be penning regulations that will keep the Internet free forever from -- well, regulation. Meanwhile, Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and AT&T will slink back to their caves to bemoan their inability to further mine profit from customers.