Overview of the charging situation for digital contents in Japan: From the viewpoint of compensation for private sound and visual recording

Japanese copyright law consists of two parts. One has to do with the rights of the content holder. The other is concerned with limitations to the rights of the content holder, such as compensation for private sound and visual recording; that is, charges for copying media where it is difficult to charge individually, as is the case with Digital Rights Management (DRM ). Such compensation permits the holders of the content to collect royalties through a special compensation arrangement. That is, the designated management associations impose the obligation for compensation on the manufacturers of recording devices. Despite the spread of such compensation arrangements, new challenges continue to arise, such the case of SARVH, the designated management association, brought against Toshiba, a manufacturer of DVD recorders. The Tokyo District Court ruled, 'Compensation is not required under copyright law, but just that all possible efforts be made.' It remains unclear whether holders of content can receive sufficient royalties or not. An analysis of the latest decision regarding digital content, from the point of copyright law, clarifies the relationship between DRM and compensation for private sound and visual recording. To accommodate stakeholders' requirements, a new regulation or structure for payment of royalties is proposed. --copyright law,DRM (Digital Rights Manegement),compensation,levy

Resistance to antiangiogenic therapy is directed by vascular phenotype, vessel stabilization, and maturation in malignant melanoma

Angiogenesis is not only dependent on endothelial cell invasion and proliferation, it also requires pericyte coverage of vascular sprouts for stabilization of vascular walls. Clinical efficacy of angiogenesis inhibitors targeting the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling pathway is still limited to date. We hypothesized that the level of vessel maturation is critically involved in the response to antiangiogenic therapies. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated the vascular network in spontaneously developing melanomas of MT/ret transgenic mice after using PTK787/ZK222584 for anti-VEGF therapy but also analyzed human melanoma metastases taken at clinical relapse in patients undergoing adjuvant treatment using bevacizumab. Both experimental settings showed that tumor vessels, which are resistant to anti-VEGF therapy, are characterized by enhanced vessel diameter and normalization of the vascular bed by coverage of mature pericytes and immunoreactivity for desmin, NG-2, platelet-derived growth factor receptor β, and the late-stage maturity marker α smooth muscle actin. Our findings emphasize that the level of mural cell differentiation and stabilization of the vascular wall significantly contribute to the response toward antiangiogenic therapy in melanoma. This study may be useful in paving the way toward a more rational development of second generation antiangiogenic combination therapies and in providing, for the first time, a murine model to study this