Digital HHR Presents: "Forecast: Entertainment in the Cloud"

On December 9, the DigitalHHR team presented "Forecast: Entertainment in the Cloud", the next in its on-going series of live, CLE-accredited webinars.  As the public's demand for "any content anywhere" grows, entertainment, media and technology companies are turning to the cloud for innovative ways to distribute and monetize content. Through initiatives like digital lockers, streaming to mobile apps, progressive downloading to tablet devices, and other forms of cloud-based storage and distribution, stakeholders are exploring new business models and ways to innovate without compromising the value of content or jeopardizing the rights of content owners to control how their content is consumed by the ultimate end user. In this CLE-accredited Webinar, we focused on the critical legal and business issues raised by the expansion of cloud computing and its impact on the distribution and consumption of entertainment content. We analyzed how cloud computing has led to new methods of distribution that give rise to an increased threat of copyright infringement and the recent case law impacting the cloud computing landscape. We discussed new digital rights management tools, methods of end user, subscriber and purchase authentication. We explored how stakeholders can balance complying with evolving standards, laws and regulations with the need to exploit new technological advancements that lead to improved services and enhanced end user experiences. Our New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group at Hughes, Hubbard & Reed was joined by our UK-based colleagues from the international Technology and Media focused law firm Taylor Wessing LLP. Taylor Wessing addressed some key international and European issues that impact cloud models. These issues included jurisdictional risks, different rights spanning different territories, advertising laws, collecting societies, the European laws on privacy, cookies and liability for cloud platform providers, as well as challenges related to format shifting/uploading consumers' existing content into the cloud. The webinar was held on Thursday, December 9, 2010 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST.