Events:
¤ Content Forum 2006: Speaker Submissions due 1/27!
A call for speakers has been issued for the curriculum at SIIA’s 2006 Content Forum. The conference will be held on May 15 – 16, 2006 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, CA. We encourage you to visit http://www.siia.net/events/spring06/call_cf.asp for submission guidelines. The deadline for submissions is January 27, 2006.

Anyone interested in helping plan the event should contact Brian McCloskey at 202.789.4482.

¤ Information Industry Summit 2006, 1/31 - 2/1, NYC
The fifth annual Information Industry Summit, our flagship event, will focus on the impact of users taking control over their purchase, storage, sharing and use of content. Industry insiders, representing maverick innovators and other influential leaders, will provide insight on the economic, regulatory, social and technological implications of this shift. Don’t delay; register before the conference sells out.

¤ Content Anti-Piracy (CAP) Meeting, 1/30, NYC
The CAP group is a committee of content providers who gather to address compliance, digital rights management and data piracy issues. The next meeting will be held on January 30, 2006 in New York. If you are interested in attending this meeting, call Keith Kupferschmid at 202.789.4442 for further details.

¤ Brown Bag: The Legal Implications of Digitization Projects, 2/22, NYC & Webcast
Digitization projects and related initiatives have become all the rage. Last year, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and the Library of Congress all initiated new and innovative digitization projects. Join Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA’s Vice President – Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement, and his industry panel as they assess the business and legal implications to determine how best to proceed in this environment. Further detail on this session -- including registration information -- can be found here.

¤ SIIA Brown Bag On Demand Webcast\Podcast Replays
SIIA and ScribeStudio are pleased to announce that podcast and webcast archives of recent Brown Bags are available for download:

      • "Successfully Implementing New Technology" (January 11th) Webcast / Podcast
      • "Online Advertising Update - The Sure Thing" (December 15th) Webcast / Podcast
      • "Content Aggregation in a New Era" (November 17th) Webcast / Podcast
      • "The Future of Information Outsourcing" (October 19th) Webcast / Podcast
      • "Creating Strategic Partnerships that Work" (September 27) Webcast / Podcast
      • "Information User Behavior Changes" (July 28th) Webcast / Podcast

Access to this On Demand feature is limited to SIIA Members only. Login using the email address this message was sent to and the password "siia" (case sensitive).


Working Groups:
The Content Division’s working groups are a great way to get involved with the SIIA. They provide members a way to learn about current industry issues and afford a chance to work with peers at other companies. Membership in these groups is open to any employee from a member company. Please contact the chairs to find out more.

¤ Business Models Working Group
  Judy Hsieh, BusinessWeek Online (Chair)
The Business Models Working Group focuses on assessing and providing information on best practices for business models for electronic content. The goal is to track and report on how buyers and sellers of data are successfully managing distribution of digital content.

¤ Standards Working Group
  Ken Ficara, Wall Street Journal (Chair)
The Content Standards Working Group serves as a resource to SIIA members who are interested in adopting standards for content format and management, but who are confused by the plethora of choices and confusing claims. This group also brings a business focus to standards discussions, in the hope of influencing standards groups to concentrate on solving the problems that publishers and editors face.

¤ Content Anti-Piracy (CAP) Group
  Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA (Chair)
The CAP group is a committee of content providers who gather under the auspices of SIIA's Anti-Piracy group to address compliance, digital rights management and data piracy issues.

¤ Online Fraud Prevention Working Group
  Pamela Springer, ECNext, Inc. (Chair)
The objective of this initiative is to review and identify areas of fraud that online publishers need to be aware of and concerned about and develop a short “best practices” guide on Personal Identity Information for online publishers. The guide is aimed at helping to improve internal practices around payment processing in order to mitigate the risk to publishers of fraudulent online purchases – both for themselves and their customers.


¤ Government Affairs/Public Policy
SIIA's Government Affairs program aggressively promotes and protects the interests of its member companies in legal and public policy debates by working with state, federal and international policymakers, organizing grassroots activism and participating in landmark legal decisions. SIIA is the leading voice on key issues affecting the software and digital content industry, particularly with regard to electronic commerce and the digital marketplace.

The following updates and commentaries have been posted in the past month:

¤ SIIA Ed Tech Alert -- Federal Ed Funding, Higher Education, School Katrina Relief, Florida Standards (January 10)
¤ SIIA Comments on HR 4127, as Reported by Subcommittee (December 29)
¤ California Junk Fax Law Stayed (December 22)
¤ SIIA Comments to the SEC Re: Draft EDGAR RFP (December 18)
¤ Intellectual Property Update (December 9)


Edited by Brian McCloskey, Program Manager, Content Division, SIIA

Comments are welcome!