The DVD battle is over...Blu-ray becomes the high-def format of choice. Now, what do you do?

By J. SCOTT ORR

Toshiba waved the white flag of surrender in the battle over next-generation DVD yester­day, abandoning its HD-DVD standard and ceding the market to Sony's more popular Blu-ray platform.

So, if you're one of the million or so people who have already purchased Toshiba units, it may be time to stop building your li­brary of HD-DVD discs and start thinking about a Blu-ray box.

It's also a huge opportunity for Sony. The Consumer Electronics Association estimates there are 36.5 million HDTV sets in American homes, so the potential for growth is great.

Michael Meadows, president of home en­tertainment for New Wave Entertainment, which produces and markets DVD content, said the emergence of Blu-ray as the industry standard likely will fuel a surge in high-defini­tion DVD sales.

Advanced Blu-ray players are poised to hit the market in the next several months, and studios are likely to ramp up the release of movies in high definition. There are only about 400 high-definition titles available.

"This will be the year high-definition DVD takes off, and you'll probably see the price of hardware and software coming down," Mead­ows said.

Still, Blu-ray's sudden victory raises plenty of questions.

Q. I just bought a Toshiba HD-DVD player. Have I been Betamaxed?

A. Sort of.

For those who don't remember, there were once two formats for videocassettes: Sony's Betamax and VHS, the standard used by most other companies. In what became a classic marketing case study, Betamax succumbed after a years-long battle and VHS emerged as the standard.

Toshiba, it would seem, learned from Sony's experience with Betamax and threw in the towel to avoid a protracted and costly platform war. More than 6 million Blu-ray units had been sold already, and the gap was widening.

On the positive side, HD-DVD players are cheaper (as little as $150) than Blu-ray boxes (which start around $400), so hopefully you didn't pay too much for yours.

Toshiba vowed yesterday "to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD-DVD products." Still, with the major players in the entertainment industry back­ing Blu-ray, titles will become in­creasingly difficult to find.

Q. What about all those movies I bought for my Toshiba?

A. Your HD-DVD unit is not going to stop working. And, of course, since the HD-DVD tech­nology is backward compatible, you can still play all your regular DVDs on it.

If you've accumulated a nice collection of HD-DVD discs, you can watch them until they, or your player, wear out. One option: eBay, where HD-DVD discs will always be available. (You can still buy movies on Betamax tape there.)

Q. What happened to make Toshiba cave in?

A. The dominoes began falling last year, with major motion pic­ture studios lining up behind Blu-ray, but the final blows came in swift succession over the past nine days.

Basically, a single format was in the best interests of the enter­tainment industry, hardware makers and retailers, so they moved as one to anoint Blu-ray the winner.

On Feb. 11, retailing giant Best Buy said beginning in March it will "prominently showcase" Blu-ray hardware and software. "Our decision to shine a spotlight on Blu-ray disc players and other Blu-ray products is a strong sig­nal to our customers that we believe Blu-ray is the right format choice for them," said Brian Dunn, Best Buy's president and chief operating officer.

That same day, Netflix, the largest online movie rental serv­ice, also endorsed Blu-ray, saying a single format would bring clar­ity to consumers and accelerate the use of high-def.

Four days later, Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, issued its own "we've listened to our cus­tomers" announcement and went with Blu-ray.

Q. What is the difference be­tween HD and non-HD when it comes to DVDs?

A. High-definition is all about picture quality, whether we're talking about DVD or HDTV, and that boils down to the number of vertical lines that make up the picture.

Standard-definition televi­sions have 480 lines, compared with 1,080 for HDTV.

Q. What's the difference between Blu-ray and HD-DVD?

A. Blu-ray and HD-DVD use sim­ilar technologies and the pictures are of equal quality.

Q. I haven't bought a high-defini­tion DVD player yet, what's this mean for me?

A. Toshiba's announcement is good news for most consumers who have yet to buy into the high-definition DVD market.

Consumers will no longer have to side with one platform or the other, so investing $500 or more in a high-definition player is no longer the gamble it once was. And the elimination of uncertainty about which standard will win out means more players will enter the market and prices will likely drop.

Q. Wait, I already have a stan­dard DVD player. What's this all about?

A. The player most people have today plays DVDs and other for­mats on discs that are incapable of holding the tremendous amounts of data needed to replay high-definition signals.

The solution came in the use of a blue laser that allows more than three times more data to be stored on each disc. Of course, if you don't own or plan to pur­chase an HDTV any time soon, your current DVD player is all you need.

Q. How did Sony win this thing?

A. Sony's marketing genius moment came when it included Blu-ray technology in its PlayStation 3 game console.

The popular gaming device came with the bonus capability of being able to play Blu-ray discs and brought Blu-ray technology into millions of homes that weren't even in the market for a high-definition DVD player. 

Why one charger doesn't boost all electronic devices

By J. SCOTT ORR

Charge!

As Americans are more and more consumed by their consumer electronics, they also are finding those ultra-light cell phones, Bluetooth devices, MP3 players and the like are useless without their heavy, homely cousins, those clunky "wall-warts" that deliver life-sustaining juice.

Chargers — they're the ugly sidekicks of the latest gadgets. Chances are you've got a drawer full of them at home right now. If you've got kids, it's probably two drawers. If you travel for work, your briefcase probably contains a rat's nest of the wiry little devils.

So why can't one charger meet all our digital-age demands? Why can't the same charger that brings your cell phone to life also power the portable DVD player or digital camera? Why do major manufacturers of consumer electronics produce dozens of different chargers for their products instead of making life easier for consumers?

"The answer is very simple: It's the free market and they can do whatever they want," said Zivan Zabar, a professor of electrical engineering at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. "There is no technical reason why these things could not be standardized. It's just free market competition and people want to earn more money."

Ryan McIntyre is a venture capitalist from the San Francisco Bay area who travels for business at least a couple of times a month. He carriers with him a laptop, cell phone, two iPods, a Bluetooth headset, a Sidekick for e-mail, a digital camera and a tangle of chargers to keep everything going.

"There is not a lot of user outcry yet, but it's coming. It's a frustration that is sort of diffuse enough that not a lot of people are articulating it, but there is some amount of anger out there," said McIntyre, who has complained about the problem in his blog, ryanmcintyre.com.

"I mean, there have certainly been enough people stranded without a charger and all of a sudden they can't use their cell phone. It is striking more and more people as a little bit insane," McIntyre said.

The charger question was broached a few weeks ago by none other than America's domestic diva Martha Stewart during the recent "D: All Things Digital" conference in Carlsbad, Calif., sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

Stewart rose during a question-and-answer session with Sony CEO Howard Stringer, produced a tangled handful of wires and asked why her digital devices and their respective chargers can't all get along.

Stringer, according to Walt Mossberg, the Journal columnist who was conducting the session, responded he had "a sneaking suspicion it's because the last three years, the most profitable business at Sony was the component division," which makes chargers.

Matt Swanston, director of business analysis at the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents Sony and virtually all of its major competitors, said it's not just profit that fuels charger diversity.

"From an engineering standpoint, each device has very specific power requirements," he said. "Each different type of battery has to be charged a little bit differently. It's like BMW being very specific about wanting only BMW parts used on their cars."

He also said there has been little movement toward standardization because consumers have not demanded it: "It's not a deal-killer for people. When they look at consumer electronics, they're not going to not buy it because of the charger."

Jonathan Steuer, a vice president and strategist with Iconoculture, a Minneapolis-based consumer research and strategy consulting firm, agreed there has been little consumer uproar so far.

"You would think that at some point consumers would band together and demand it or companies would band together to do something about it, but that just hasn't happened," he said.

Steuer also noted alternatives are arriving. Most promising, perhaps, is that many current-generation consumer electronics can be charged through USB ports on computers or with a $10 device that turns any wall electrical socket into a USB port.

Other solutions include devices like the iGo system from Mobility Electronics Inc., which includes car or wall chargers matched with a variety of tips to fit various devices. The charger itself costs about $60 and tips for cell phones, DVD players, cameras and so forth cost about $10 each.

A range of other charging technologies is on the way as well, though presumably they all would face the same compatibility hurdle. Among them are the use of solar power, hand cranks or even the kinetic energy created by walking.

A British company, Splashpower, has developed an induction charging system that allows compatible devices to be charged simply by placing them on a charging pad with no plugs or wires involved. Induction technology also could eventually lead to charging "hot spots," like those that currently provide WiFi Internet access.

Stephen Jacobs, a professor of information technology at Rochester Institute of Technology, said although new charging technologies are certainly on the horizon, it may be a while before companies are willing to give up a proven cash generator.

"Chargers," he said, "are really the popcorn at the movie theater." 

Are Wii there yet? Elves can't keep them on shelves

By J. SCOTT ORR

The holiday shopping season is upon us and if your little one is craving the world's most popular gaming system, you may have a Wii problem.

Last year, Nintendo's Wii gaming console became a latter-day Cabbage Patch Kid or Tickle Me Elmo, prompting long lines of desperate parents haunting gaming emporiums and big-box stores, hoping to satisfy the gaming demands of their precious little snowflakes.

Well, it seems someone hit the replay button. Here comes the sequel, Quest for Wii 2007.

Electronic game retailers already are under siege, and despite Nintendo's claims that they are churning out Wii consoles at an unprecedented pace, there are few of the $250 units available for consumers.

The alternatives - Sony's PlayStation3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 - just won't do, retailers report.

"Whenever we tell them we don't have any Wiis in stock, they just walk out. They won't even look at PS3s or Xboxes. If they came for a Wii, they want a Wii and nothing else," said John Bedmar, a sales associate at Gamestop in Menlo Park Mall in Edison.

Like other retailers, Gamestops receive Wii systems from Nintendo in a haphazard manner. They might get three one day, 24 two weeks later, and they never know in advance when or how many units they will be receiving.

"They're really, really difficult to get. We don't even know ourselves what we are getting and when," Bedmar said.

Sony has been the most aggressive in trying to fill the gaming gap, cutting the price of its PS3 by $100, though at $400 it remains pricier than its more sought-after competitor.

Still, Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently told the Associated Press the company is hoping consumers will lose patience with Nintendo and move to the PS3 platform, which has many features the Wii lacks, including the ability to play high-definition DVDs.

Microsoft's Xbox 360, at $450, has seen significant increases in sales this fall thanks largely to the release of the wildly popular "Halo 3" game in late September, but still lags behind the Wii in gamer popularity.

Both PS3s and Xbox 360s are widely available at retail outlets like Gamestop, big-box stores and online. If you're looking for a Wii online, aftermarket prices on eBay and other sites are ranging around $500.

The Wii and PS3 both debuted last November around the same time Microsoft released its enhanced Xbox 360.

According to the research firm the NPD Group, between January and June Nintendo led the pack, selling 2.1 million units compared with 1.25 million for the Xbox 360 and 763,500 for PS3. Through October, lifetime sales of Wii totaled 5 million, and PS3 totaled 2 million; Xbox, which came on the market four years before its competitors, leads with sales of 7.1 million.

In an interview last month with the San Francisco Chronicle, Reggie Fils-Aime, the head of Nintendo in the U.S., acknowledged the company is struggling to keep pace with demand.

"We have increased our projection of worldwide sales twice. The situation today is: The more we put in, the more we sell. The issue is, the demand is overwhelming and we continue to be in a situation where product lasts roughly a day on the shelf," he said.

Lisa Su, assistant manager of Gamestop at Linwood Plaza in Fort Lee, said your best hope of winning the Wii sweepstakes is to be persistent.

"Call every day; come by the store when you can. They do come in, but it's pretty much just a matter of luck because they are gone just as fast as they hit the floor," she said. 

Ouick HDTV drill helps get big game on wide screen

By J. SCOTT ORR

As some Giants' fans contemplate spending thousands of dollars on tickets to Super Bowl XLII, many others are looking at a more lasting investment to allow them to view Big Blue's quest for a third world championship in style.

If there was ever an event made for big screen, HDTV-viewing, it's the Super Bowl. Retailers in New Jersey are prepared for a rush on high definition sets in the days leading up to the big game.

"They're going crazy," Christopher Zarate, store director of the Circuit City on Route 17 in Paramus, said of Giants' fans.

"You can see them coming with their Giants hats on. I'll be out on the floor and just yell out `go Giants,' and the fans all yell back, waving their hands. It's incredible," Zarate said.

He added that the game could go a long way toward convincing balky spouses to go along with the new purchase. "This is a great pitch to the wife so they can both enjoy the game together," he said.

"This time of year there is always an increase in sales because of the Super Bowl," said Shaheed Sellers, a manager at the Micro Center on Route 20 in Paterson. "With the Giants playing, we expect even bigger sales," he said.

Sellers said the Super Bowl is often the event that gives consumers considering upgrading their televisions that final incentive to take the plunge and buy a sleek flat screen TV loaded with high definition goodness.

According to a survey commissioned by electronics giant Circuit City, the Super Bowl is by far America's most popular sporting event to watch on television. Half of the men and 33 percent of the women said the Super Bowl is their favorite televised sporting event. No other event came close.

Almost half of the men in the survey and 34 percent of women said they would be more likely to host a Super Bowl party if they had a big screen, hi-def television.

So what can you get for your money? According to CNET.com, which reviews and rates tech products, it's pretty simple: The more you spend, the bigger the set. Some examples: For $300 or less, you can get a flat-panel LCD HDTV of up to 20 inches; $300 to $500, up to 32 inches; $500 to $750, up to 37 inches; $750 to $1,000 up to 42 inches and so forth with $3,000 or more fetching a colossal 70-inch screen.

But spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a home entertainment upgrade can be a scary proposition for many consumers, especially considering the vast array of products that are out there. What size screen do I want? What do 1080i, 780p and 1080p mean? What about installation? What else do I need besides the set itself?

With only a few days until game time, you may have problems getting delivery and professional installation before kick-off: Circuit City, for example, can't guarantee delivery and installation by game time for sets bought now. You may be able to make a special accommodation with a smaller electronics store, hire a specialist — or you can do it yourself, which is no more difficult than hooking up a regular television.

Here's a quick check list that can help you get the right HDTV into your living room by game time.

BUDGET: How much do you want to spend? This is probably the least fun, but most important aspect of the process. There's an HDTV out there to fit most budgets and you can get a sweet set of 60-inches or more for the cost of a pair of Super Bowl tickets, the cheapest of which are going for around $3,000 online.

SIZE: Yeah, size matters — but biggest is not always best. Generally speaking, the best widescreen HDTV viewing is from distances that are one-and-a-half to three times the width of the screen. So if your living room is only about 10 feet across, a 42-incher should do just fine. A 65-inch screen is best viewed from between eight and 16 feet away. So get out the tape measure before you shop.

RESOLUTION: We're not talking New Year's resolutions here. Resolution is the quality of the picture and the main reason for getting an HDTV in the first place. A regular television has fewer than 500 visible lines of detail compared to 1,080 for an HDTV, and this is what gives hi-def its superior picture quality. You may come across resolutions of 1080i, the original HDTV resolution; or 720p, which has fewer viewable lines but uses progressive scan technology to enhance its picture. Most sets today offer 1080p resolution, which combines the 1,080 viewable lines of 1080i with the progressive scan of 720p. Still, a 1080i or 720p HDTV will be fine for now — since TV broadcasts do not yet come in 1080p.

SERVICE: Please don't forget this. Imagine your disappointment if you've just spent a bundle on a new HDTV, only to learn that you didn't upgrade your service through your cable or satellite provider. Fortunately, it's a pretty simple procedure: Just pick up a box from your service provider, swap out the old box, tell them to activate your upgraded service and you're good to go. It's not free either, most providers charge about $10 extra per month to lease a hi-def box.

CABLES: Zarate, of Circuit City, urged consumers to get High-Definition Multimedia Interface, or HDMI, cables to connect their new set to their hi-def boxes to ensure the best possible picture.

SOUND: Most, but by no means all, new HDTVs come with speakers, but don't forget to check. If you already have a home theater sound system, that's even better.

EXTRAS: It may be as flat a framed picture, but you can't just mount an HDTV on the wall with duct tape and bubble gum. They're heavy and require wall mountings that are anchored into your wall studs. Stands also are available, and make set-up easier, but make sure you check before buying your new TV; stands often must be purchased separately. 

Code makers battle with code breakers

Digital protections may curb licit use of music, video files

By J. SCOTT ORR

It's the digital world's equivalent of an arms race, pitting superpowers such as Microsoft, Apple and the recording industry against a persistent consumer insurgency that is determined to liberate legally purchased music files.

And lately, the consumers - or hackers, depending on your point of view - have been winning, deftly dismantling digital protections as fast as the corporate code writers can devise them.

The battle has been playing out most publicly in the world of music downloads, as record companies and music distributors strive to make sure consumers pay for the right to listen to their favorite tunes as they please.

But the debate has even greater significance as the Internet begins to realize its potential as a distributor of television and film content, and as the latest devices - from enhanced MP3 players to audio and video-enabled cell phones - establish themselves. Google's $1.6 billion purchase of the online video site YouTube, announced earlier this month, is just the latest stage in that evolution.

The protective code written into digital files - known as Digital Rights Management - "is a necessary evil," says Dave Taylor, a Colorado online marketing and communication consultant. "But the voice of the consumer says it sucks. People want to have full rights to the music they purchase and Digital Rights Management prevents that."

That frustration has spawned a digital game of cat-and-mouse between the protective code-haters and companies intent on securing their copyrighted material. It's a struggle that has intensified greatly with each successive generation of code writing.

According to the technology blog Engadget.com, it took just eight hours from the time Apple unveiled its iTunes 7 software last month until an underground program called QTFairUse 2.3 was released to strip its protective code.

And in August, the anti-protective code programmers made a major breakthrough with the release of FairUse4WM, which strips the code from Windows Media files.

This is of particular significance because, unlike Apple's online music superstore iTunes, which charges by the song, several sites including Napster and Yahoo Music Unlimited sell subscriptions that allow unlimited downloads of protected Windows Media files. In theory, the protections ensure the files will cease functioning when fees aren't paid - but a program that can strip protective code from Windows Media files would allow users to grab as much music as they can download for a single monthly fee of around $15.

For the owners of content - in this case the major record labels - protective code is seen as a means of safeguarding copyrighted material from illegal duplication and distribution by pirates. The protective code in a music file might, for example, limit the number of times a file can be copied or even disable a file's use after a period of time.

CONSUMERS CAUGHT IN BETWEEN

Consumer advocates say protective code prevents fair use of copyrighted material that has been spelled out in federal law and court decisions. If you purchase a CD, for example, you are free to copy it as many times as you like for personal use, to move the music to other platforms like a computer or MP3 player and to play the disc on any CD player or computer.

Not so with protective coded music files. You can't easily transfer files among computers, change their format or play them across different platforms. Apple iTunes songs can only be played on Apple-approved devices, and Windows Media songs can only be played on designated players.

"What it is doing is keeping legitimate customers from using their music files in completely legal ways. What they have been trying to do is restrict legitimate users and make them pay over and over for the same content," says Derek Slater, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Slater says protective code has failed at its stated goal of fighting Internet music piracy and may in fact be pushing customers who want full rights to their music toward illegal peer-to-peer downloading.

Using a program like QTFairUse to strip protective code from protected files is a violation of a 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that has been criticized in some corners for putting too much power in the hands of copyright owners.

The law "gives copyright holders - and the technology companies that distribute their content - the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them," says a report issued in March by the libertarian Cato Institute. "Worst of all," the report says, "Digital Rights Management technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates."

Defenders of protective code say without it, owners of copyrighted material wouldn't allow their products to be distributed online at all. Even with protective code, some copyright holders refuse to allow digital copies of their work online: Notice the absence of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Madonna, to name a few, in online music stores.

"Digital Rights Management really allowed businesses to be able to start building a business for online distribution of well-branded content. The existence of Digital Rights Management has enabled business models that didn't exist before," says John Williams, founder of the online music store MusicGiants.com.

Williams says protective code does provide a level of protection for artists' work, even if the protections are easily defeated: "Only a small percentage of consumers understand what Digital Rights Management is and the number that go through the effort to remove DRM from their files is even smaller," he says.

THE FUTURE

Jennifer Urban, a law professor and director of the Intellectual Property Clinic at the University of Southern California Law School, says protective code is going to be around for the foreseeable future even if underground programmers are consistently able to defeat it. She added that consumers who want protective-code-free music files always have the alternative of buying CDs, which for the most part are not protected.

"The music industry I think is very well aware of the fact that Digital Rights Management has always been broken, and computer scientists say . . . that it always will be broken. But they still see it as an opportunity to release digital copies of music over various platforms and be able to control the use of the music," she says.

Most experts believe the best way to give consumers more control of the content they purchase would be to establish an industry standard so that all downloads would work on all platforms. Such a standard also would remove protective code roadblocks that some see as stifling innovation.

"We've got to find a way that protects content, but at the same time promotes interoperability," says Dave Ulmer, senior director of marketing for Motorola who has negotiated protective code deals with content owners for Motorola's iRadio service.

The lack of interoperability, Ulmer says, is preventing the widespread use of additional technologies, such as music and video capabilities for cellular phones. "Look at adoption of music services on phones today: It's somewhere less than 2 percent of users. We are at the very beginning of this world . . . we just have to make it easy for people," he says. 

Facebook decides to play the sharing game

By J. SCOTT ORR

In a move that could lead to widespread new freedoms for tens of millions of users of online social networking sites, Facebook has agreed to join a workgroup that could open up the so-called "walled garden" and allow users to move their data, content and utilities seamlessly among other networks.

If the group succeeds, users would no longer be forced to create and maintain separate accounts at sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Instead these myriad networks might someday work, and play, gracefully as one, changing the way people contribute and share information online.

"This means users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets," Chris Saad, an organizer of the DataPortability Workgroup, said in a statement.

The announcement that Facebook would join Google and other major players in the burgeoning social network landscape as members of the workgroup came at the Consumer Electronics Show yesterday in Las Vegas. News of the announcement spread faster than an instant message across the blogosphere after it first appeared on the popular technology site Techcrunch.com.

The workgroup announced that representatives of Facebook, Google and online address book Plaxo would be joining the efforts toward portability of the data and content users place on their sites. Representatives of social network leader MySpace and Yahoo already are represented.

That Google would sign on was hardly a surprise. The search giant has been working toward an interoperability scheme since last year. But Facebook's entry means it's all aboard for the first time.

If the group meets its goals of interoperability among the sites, it would mean the nearly 60 million users of Facebook could have seamless access to the profiles of the 100 million people currently on MySpace and vice versa. At the same time, users would be allowed to share data among the sites and programmers would be able to design software gadgets that work across the various platforms.

The pressure mounted on Facebook in November, when Google announced that MySpace would join other social networks in its OpenSocial system for sharing data and applications. Facebook suddenly found itself on the outside looking in.

While there are many social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook are by far the largest and they function similarly, allowing users to set up profiles, to upload content such as photos, videos and music and to share this content with other users.

"Their joint support of the DataPortability initiative presents a new opportunity for the next generation of software — particularly in the fields of social software, user rights and interoperability," the Dataportability Workgroup said in a statement.

Facebook's exponential growth since it was created in 2004 has often been attributed to its openness, in that it allowed anyone to create software widgets to enhance user experiences. But Facebook also been criticized for its "walled garden" approach to the way it guarded data and the widgets created for the site by others.

"They got forced into it," said Tim DeMello, founder of the Boston-based professional social network Ziggs.com. "They started by having this closed party of college kids, then they opened it up to everyone and now they may be continuing to open it up."

At the same time, he said, users should be mindful that openness can also bring privacy issues with it. For example, he said, it's quite possible that Facebook users might not want to share their information with the users of MySpace.

"There's going to be a lot of pressure on users as it relates to the information they put out there. It's simple, if you are at a closed party, you behave much differently than if you are in a more public setting," he said.

Despite all the excitement in the blogosphere, the announcement hardly means social networkers will wake up this morning to a new world of openness and sharing, since joining the workgroup and meeting its goals are two vastly different things.

Still, as the workgroup said in its invitation to Facebook earlier this month: "This is both a business opportunity and a cultural and ethical imperative for them. Open is not just a buzzword. It means that you play nice with others. Even others that are not inside your walled garden." 

NFL throws penalty flag over scholar's copyright lesson

By J. SCOTT ORR

It's been, quite literally, an up and down battle for Wendy Seltzer.

The diminutive scholar at Brooklyn Law School took on the National Football League recently in an effort to show how far some copyright holders will go to prevent the use of their content.

Seltzer posted to the video-sharing site YouTube a clip from this year's Super Bowl showing the NFL's familiar copyright notice — "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience . . ."

Sure enough, the league found the posting of its copyright notice to be an infringement on its copyright. The league demanded YouTube remove it. YouTube took it down. Seltzer argued the posting was not a copyright violation. YouTube put it back up. The NFL sent another notice. YouTube took the clip down again.

The episode is part of an emerging debate over intellectual property rights that is playing a fundamental role in shaping the Internet's newest landscape. It also demonstrates how the federal law that governs online intellectual property, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, does a poor job of spelling out the rights of the little guy.

Unlike the billion-dollar-brawl between entertainment giant Viacom and YouTube over copyrighted content, cases like Seltzer's raise the specter of individuals being hauled into court for posting content they believe to be protected under the DMCA.

Seltzer and other backers of fair use rights fear content owners could begin suing individual posters, just as the record industry has brought civil action against thousands of consumers for illegally sharing music files.

Copyright holders argue that if their intellectual property rights are not protected, it will stifle creativity and innovation. Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, MTV and numerous other entities whose content is frequently posted to the Internet, said as much in a recent statement.

Allowing unrestrained posting of Viacom's content takes "the fruit of our efforts without permission and (destroys) enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity," the company said.

In Seltzer's case, the NFL argued that copyright protections that apply to broadcasts of its games cover the entire game — prohibiting people from posting, say, highlight clips, without the league's consent. Seltzer argued that the clip she posted falls under the "fair use" exemption that allows for parody, criticism and a wide range of other non-commercial uses of copyrighted material.

"The purpose of my use was educational and commentary, posting it to help readers understand the silliness of the copyright claims. It was a tiny clip from an hours-long telecast and it was used in the context of commentary on my Weblog. It had absolutely zero effect on any market for the NFL's content," Seltzer said.

Among the key factors in determining fair use, Seltzer said, is the effect the use has on the market for the content. While posting an entire episode of the "The Daily Show," for example, might take away from Viacom's market, she argued that her 30-second slice of the Super Bowl copyright warning could have no such effect.

The NFL disagreed. In a response posted on the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, the league argued that if Seltzer wanted to use the clip for educational purpose she should have shown it in her classroom.

"Had she simply used the clip in her classroom, before students, she might have had a stronger argument that the context was educational and entitled to fair use deference. But it was posted without any of this context, and in a manner available for anyone in the world to see, not just her students. So the impact on our rights is in no way lessened by her prior or subsequent reference to the posting with her students in their classroom," the league said.

Still, neither the NFL nor Seltzer has taken the next step, which would be to head to court and allow a judge to decide the issue of fair use. Under the law, Seltzer said the NFL should have taken legal action rather than filing a second take-down notice, which was how the league got YouTube to remove the clip a second time.

But most of the millions of people who post content on the Internet are not lawyers like Seltzer, who continues to battle the NFL's take-down notice and would be more than happy to take on a precedent-setting case that could clarify fair use laws.

Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney at the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the real problem is that the mere threat of legal action from the likes of Viacom or the NFL prompts most posters to back down. When that happens, public debate suffers, she said.

"People get all scared when they see these notices and they wonder, `What if they are going to bring a lawsuit?' Once you really start contemplating lawsuits, people start thinking about legal fees and they become very intimidated," she said.

So what is "fair use"? Section 107 of the Copyright Act lists four factors to be considered in determining if a use is fair: "The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Of course, those factors are open to court interpretation.

In an effort to help people navigate the legal system, Seltzer and the EFF have started a Web site, www.chillingeffects.org. The EFF also grapples with the issue at its Web site, www.eff.org, which includes information on pending cases — like the one in which it has asked a federal court to protect the fair use rights of left-wing activist group MoveOn.org to parody Viacom's "The Colbert Report."

The suit says the parody — called "Stop the Falsiness," which includes clips from "The Colbert Report" along with original content — was the subject of a take-down letter from Viacom. The video was restored to YouTube when MoveOn insisted that its use of the Colbert clips was fair use. The suit charges that Viacom improperly used the DMCA to try and force YouTube to remove the video, even though it knew the clips were covered under the fair use provisions of the law.

"Copyright owners need to double-check their claims and think about free speech rights before erasing political content from sites like YouTube and misusing the DMCA," said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.org Civic Action.