Barry Willis

The <A HREF="http://www.mpaa.org/">Motion Picture Association of America</A> (MPAA) has lauded a ruling by a Washington, DC federal appeals court. On Friday, February 16, the court upheld by a 2-1 vote a 1998 law that extended copyright protection for intellectual properties works by two decades. The extension was pushed through Congress by former president Bill Clinton, with strong backing from the Walt Disney Company, which feared that copyrights on icons like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck would soon move into the public domain. US copyright law now agrees with its European counterparts as a result of the revision.

Hollywood studios, independent production companies, and video store owners are whistling all the way to the bank, thanks to a resurgence in rentals driven by the increasing popularity of the DVD format. Rental revenue increased 4% during the first six months of 2003, according to figures recently released by the Video Software Dealers Association (<A HREF="http://www.vsda.org">VSDA</A>) (VSDA). The upswing is the first for rentals in years. According to research conducted by the <A HREF="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com"><I>Hollywood Reporter</I></A>, in the first half of the year, the home video industry has exceeded $10 billion in revenue and should top $22 billion by December 31.

Former Chrysler Corporation CEO Lee Iacocca was famed for saying that, in the auto industry, a company "either leads, follows, or gets out of the way." Fox Television has apparently decided that where high-definition programming is concerned, it had better follow or get left behind.

Even though it hasn't been officially submitted to the DVD Forum for approval, the Blu-ray high-definition optical disc format appears to have the inside track for becoming the <I>de facto</I> standard.