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Unofficial reports of Google's open source VP8 video codec may arguably give other major video codec companies a run for their money- offering internet users good quality video, whilst using smaller bandwidth. But keeping it royalty and patent free for web browsers to use without charge- making it difficult for royalty codecs to compete.

If you are going to look at copyright on the internet, you really can't go past this settlement. This is Google's next step at world domination: control of our intellectual property. No one likes it, but everyone is going ahead with it because Google has them over a barrel ... The basic deal is that Google wants to digitise every book ever written and make them all searchable online by google customer. On the surface this is all shiny; it seems commonsense that all material should be digitised - we have to keep up with technology. The problem arises when you get to the sticky situation of copyright - generally with books, owners get royalties every time someone buys a copy. With the digitisation, Google wasn't too keen on the idea of pay-per-view. Ideally, they would have loved to present all that information free and just reap the benefit ... well, however Google reaps benefits. There was litigation all round - publishers were against it, yahoo and other internet giants were against it (because it wasn't their idea) and it went to the doors of the US Supreme Court, but not quite to trial. Google's rivals were not too sure that they wanted to go to trial, because the outcome was a little on the uncertain side. So the Google book settlement was drawn up, objected to, fought, signed up to, taken to the US Supreme Court for approval, rejected, modified, fought over a bit more, and sent back to the judge. The last move was in Feb 2010; we're still waiting for Critics argue that the deal gives Google too much power over digital books and will not benefit customers in terms of cost, possible censorship issues, privacy. Copyright owners will also lose out, as Google's royalty policy cuts them out of the system and reduces their royalty - and they are automatically included in the agreement unless they 'opt out' (even if they have not 'opted in'). Really, Google is the only party that seems to benefit, and yet for all of the fighting, the settlement seems

PIR = parallel importation restriction. Basically, every country around the world (except a choice few like Hong Kong and New Zealand who did away with it) is a 'territory' so far as publishing is concerned. If you publish a book in Australia, you can't just ship it over to the US and sell it wholesale to the bookstores over there. No, you have to find a publisher over there who will by the licence to reproduce the book for that market. India looks to be thinking about doing away with that. On the plus side for consumers, they'll have access to the entire Amazon e-book range - Hooray! Publishers won't be so happy, as they will lose out on royalties from selling 'local' e-books (hardcopy books will also be affected, but that's not at issue here). Of course, it doesn't work both ways - India will still have to go through the usual channels to publish overseas. the US protects its own. Australia debated this last year, you may remember. Woolworths and Coles were all for PIR abolition, but not really anyone else was ...

As yet it is unspecified, but the Conservative government is to table a bill on copyright that will strike a balance between consumer rights and artist rights. They don't want to stop people who may breach copyright in their day to day life, they just want to go after the baddies who destroy artists royalties. I predict anger from all sides - too weak, too strong ...

A follow up to my first post about the protest movement to save digital-only radio station BBC6 Music. A second day of protest was held in London and royalties organisation PRS for Music publishes stats showing the station is more supportive to a wide range of musicians than other stations.