Intellectual Property Law

Income Breakdown for "Best Selling" Author

Posted on November 19, 2009
One would think that the authors' positions in publishing, being better than the artists' positions in the recording industry, would lead to somewhat better incomes. No such luck. Rob Beschizza at boingboing pointed to Lynn Viehl's posting of her latest royalty statement...

Cognitive Dissonance Writ Large

Posted on November 18, 2009
Nate Anderson provides extensive coverage of Michael Fricklas's talk at Yale Law. Fricklas is top legal attack dog for Viacom, and the headline on the ars piece highlights the lawyer's admission that the Cartel's jihad against its own customers was....

Must-See TV: ACTA

Posted on November 12, 2009
The indefatigable Michael Geist has posted the slides and audio of his "ACTA 101" talk. This is must-see stuff, covering pretty much everything you need to know about ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that's being negotiated mostly in secret right about now...

Now THAT's Funny!

Posted on November 09, 2009
Remember how I said that the EFF weren't being sufficiently sarcastic in covering the Cartel's revelations about PVRs? Right, well, sometimes you do get good sarcastic commentary on the Web and today's helping is dished up by Cory over at boingboing. He savages Rupert Murdoch for being the antiquated fossil he still is, someone who not only fails to understand the modern interlocked Web-centric methods of information distribution, but also someone who fundamentally opposes the very notion of fair use and seems to think if he just hires enough of the right lawyers he can make it go away...

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In An Effort to Prove They Cannot Learn

Posted on November 05, 2009
...the Cartel are once again attempting to use law and regulation to control your home entertainment experience. Funny, it seems like just yesterday I was ranting about how they had stupidly misunderstood the value of PVRs. Oh, right, sorry, that was two days ago...

It's People Like You What Cause Unrest

Posted on November 03, 2009
The shocking part about this whole thing is that now, ten years or more into the Copyright Wars, we still have such stupid people in positions of control. Take this week's example, Alan Wurtzel. This specimen of executivius fossilus cartellae works for NBC as, apparently, some president of some research of something...

Pandora in the NY Times

Posted on October 22, 2009
Earlier this week the Times Magazine online published an extensive piece on Pandora, a service I've used for several years and started paying the premium for a year or so ago. Surprisingly, it looks like Pandora might actually turn a profit this year, due in large part to a popular iPhone app...

New Technology -> New Art

Posted on October 19, 2009
Sort of a case-in-point contrast to Nate Anderson's post, boingbong! highlights what are probably the first Google Wave mash-ups. As I said last time, mash-up isn't really the right word to use here, but we still don't have better language so it's what I'll use for now.

In Their Own Words

Posted on October 16, 2009
I wanted to point to two very different published items, both of which bring thought to bear on the current state of the Copyright Wars. First, Nate Anderson - who has been doing stellar work in the trenches of this slogfest for several years, primarily at ars technica - published a piece called "100 years of Big Content fearing technology"...

Dear Ralph Lauren - Choose Your Targets Carefully

Posted on October 07, 2009
Actually that probably should be addressed to Ralph Lauren's lawyers, but in theory they're acting on behalf of the company, so we get to mock R.L., Inc. The whole thing started with a photoshop disaster, reproduced here so you can see what we're talking about...

Dilbert Has a New Line of Business

Posted on September 09, 2009
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-09-09/. But... trademark? Everyone knows patents are more profit(eer)able.

Won't Someone Please Think of the Children

Posted on September 03, 2009
My wife pointed this one out to me. It's a couple years old but the message is sadly accurate. The assertion is that kids - today's learners, tomorrow's adults - want to be able to create, consume, revise, remix, and share. Where are the 21st century technologies, teachers, and most importantly the 21st-century thinkers who will teach them how? (And because I'm into shameless promotion of things I think are good causes, check out Donors Choose where you can find school projects (in America at least) that teachers have put together and are seeking funding to make happen...

The Cartel Swallows Marvel - IP Contention Ensues

Posted on September 01, 2009
The geek news sources have been abuzz the past few days with the news that Disney acquired Marvel. The mainstream press is focused on the financials, of course, but I couldn't help but think about the implications of trying to find and corral all the Copyfight-related interests at play here...

UK Photogs Get A Chance

Posted on August 21, 2009
Photographer Not A Terrorist appears to have gotten the attention of the relevant UK authorities. A new post on their Web site indicates that the British Home Office has issued new advice on how the anti-terrorism laws should be applied in the case of photographers doing their jobs...

TypeKit Promises to Unravel Font-Linking Rights

Posted on August 19, 2009
First, a bit of background - bear with me here. It's an ongoing frustration for Web designers to try and get the things that show up on peoples' screens to look like what the designer wants. I vividly remember going to visit a customer who complained that my product looked terrible on her screen and discovering that she had somehow jiggered her Web browser settings to map the colors I had chosen into some hideous chemical green and pink...

The Struggle to be Noticed

Posted on August 17, 2009
It has been said many times, but it bears repeating once more: the biggest threat to most new artists is not copying, but obscurity. I've been watching the struggle as one of my favorite new acts - the steampunk band Abney Park - works through the difficulties of getting themselves, and their unusual musical approach - noticed...

BMO Responds to EFF

Posted on August 17, 2009
When I posted the previous entry, noting EFF's critique of the Burning Man Organization (BMO) restrictive IP policy, I was uncertain what category to use. I chose "Culture" sort of on a hunch. Reading Andie Grace's extensive response in the "Burning Blog", I see this hunch was right...

Untangling the "Civil Rights for Musicians" Debate

Posted on August 17, 2009
A week or so ago, I noted that the debate over this proposal (to make broadcast radio pay the same sorts of fees that Web radio has to pay) was getting more confusing. Today Matthew Lasar at ars technica posted a long entry that examines the issue in depth...

A Win Too Fair

Posted on August 17, 2009
At least that's what the DoJ thinks is fair, according to papers it has filed in the Jammie Thomas punitive damages debacle. Yes, certainly Congress intended low-income students and single moms to be ordered to pay USD 2 million because... um, because something...

Burners Getting Burned About Play IP

Posted on August 14, 2009
I'm not a burner (person who attends the Burning Man festival) but several of my friends have gone in past years and some will go this year. And more than a few are unhappy with the Terms and Conditions that the festival is attempting to impose on recordings (photos and videos at least, probably audio as well) taken out on the playa...

Photographer, Not a Terrorist (UK)

Posted on August 12, 2009
Back in June of last year I suggested readers bookmark a link provided by Bruce Schneier that collected several items related to the false claims that anti-photography laws are a useful part of an anti-terrorism strategy. Today a friend pointed me to a blog entry by Phil Coomes, a picture editor (and photographer in his own right) for the BBC...

"Civil Rights for Musicians Act " Fight Gets Nastier (and More Confusing)

Posted on August 12, 2009
A friendly Copyfight reader sent me a pointer to V. Dion Haynes' story in the Washington Post covering the next round in the fight over this bill. The article highlights claims by the MusicFirst Coalition that, among other actions, radio stations have been refusing to run ads supporting the legislation...

Source linking back from browser copy-paste

Posted on August 11, 2009
I can't decide if this is cool, creepy, or both. Best if you do the experiment yourself to see what's on, so follow these steps: Go to http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205737/Man-killed-shards-glass-hurling-girlfriend-shop-window.html. In your browser (I've tried in Firefox and others report it works in IE, Chrome, and other desktop browsers) select a passage of text, say a paragraph, and "Copy" it...

Dionne Warwick versus the Cartel

Posted on July 29, 2009
I thought I had talked about the "Performance Rights Act" before - now called the Civil Rights for Musicians Act - before, but apparently not. You may recall that the act's sponsor, John Conyers, gained a moment of digital notoriety by publishing the Downing Street memos as samizdat that the official media wouldn't touch...

PhD Comics on Scientific IP

Posted on July 21, 2009
PhD Comics presents its take on the process whereby scientists produce original material and then give it away (for free) to a system where other scientists work (for free) to select from those works so they can be published in journals that then charge huge fees to read this freely contributed work...

Amazon's Gaffe Isn't What You Think It Is

Posted on July 21, 2009
I've been wanting to avoid writing about the (latest) mess Amazon finds itself in. However, the story is being mis-told all over the place, so I'm going to pontificate about it. Compare, if you will, these two headlines: "Amazon redacts Orwell on Kindle like it?s ?1984?" versus "Pirated copies of Orwell books pulled from Kindle"...

Do Patents Really Promote Useful Progress?

Posted on July 07, 2009
The stated purpose of patents, as spelled out in the US Constitution is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts..." I've pointed out cases in the past where the way patents are granted and used is actually contrary to progress in the useful arts I practice...

World e-Book Faire

Posted on July 02, 2009
Project Gutenberg and the World Public Library are co-promoting a month-long event with that name. Their theme is one of "public access" and they're offering something like two million eBooks for download. I haven't investigated completely but it appears that all the offered downloads are in PDF format without any DRM or other electronic encumbrances...

Proof That Even Very Smart People Can Say Very Stupid Things

Posted on June 29, 2009
Generally I have a lot of respect for Richard Posner. The word "brilliant" gets thrown around casually a lot, but I really do think Posner verges on brilliance. You don't get 40 books published by writing nonsense or wasting readers' time. Let's settle for saying he's a very smart, very widely influential judge...

A Win Too Far?

Posted on June 21, 2009
Almost everyone, including the Cartel's own lawyers, appears publicly shocked by the USD 2 million verdict returned against a Minnesota mother whose fight against the RIAA has been something of a rallying point in the war the labels have waged on their customers...

Eh, Mebbe Not

Posted on June 11, 2009
The highest legal review body in France, the Constitutional Council, has said "non" to legislation trumpeted by the Cartel that would have allowed cutting off Internet access of people accused of copyright violations. The French constitution contains clauses promoting a presumption of innocence and the Council determined that the legislation - which had already passed in Parliament (WAKE UP YOU GUYS YOU'RE BEING OWNED) - violated those clauses as well as infringing on French Constitutional guarantees of free speech...

A Style Mash-Up

Posted on June 10, 2009
What would you get if you took the 19th-century notion of a penny dreadful and updated it for the 21st-century iPhone? The makers of Steampunk Tales think they have an answer. Steampunk is a pop-culture phenomenon this decade. There are books, music, and cons devoted to this movement...

And Now A Pirate MEP

Posted on June 09, 2009
In addition to Vikings, reindeer, and cute blonde girls, Sweden can now say it has a Pirate member of the European Parliament. According to Veronica Ek's story for Reuters (here reprinted by the Globe and Mail) about seven percent of the Swedish electorate cast ballots that sent a member of the Pirate Party into office...

IAF Goes For The Sponsors

Posted on June 01, 2009
The Interstitial Arts Foundation (IAF), whose event I mentioned a couple weeks ago, is putting together a new volume of fiction writing. The book, currently called Interfictions 2 is a follow-on to their successful publication in 2007 of a work of collected short fictions that exist between the large spaces of current mass-market genre definitions...

Not Satisfied with Copying Policy, Canadian Think-Tank Copies Verbatim

Posted on May 29, 2009
This kind of thing is too good not to snark about, so excuse me for a moment. According to Matt Hartley's story in Toronto's Globe And Mail online site, the Conference Board of Canada got caught plagiarizing. Why is this funny? Well, the reports (plural, three of them) that had to be withdrawn were supposed to be giving the Ottowa government advice on how to update Canadian copyright laws...

EFF Launches "Teach Copyright" (free)

Posted on May 28, 2009
And by "free" we mean both "Creative Commons licensed for free use" and "free of Cartel propaganda." Nice combo. Here are some excerpts from the press release they sent:Last week, the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation -- a nonprofit mouthpiece for the entertainment and software industries -- unveiled plans to spread its protectionist ideas to the nation's schools and libraries through the distribution of a curriculum titled "Think First, Copy Later...

More Fun Free Things

Posted on May 19, 2009
"Feed Your Soul: the free art project" - free, downloadable art. Cardstock it, frame it. Just don't resell it. The Hype Machine - an aggregator for blog discussions about music. Mostly it's a "play in browser" type experience but they link back to the original blog entries, which often have download links...

Interstitial Arts Foundation Event

Posted on May 14, 2009
After my post about new art forms I got a pointer to this event: Interstitial Salon, June 11th in New York City. I don't know anything other than what I've read on the Web about this Interstitial Arts Foundation - anyone have any contact or experience with them? My first response is that, no, interstitial doesn't really describe what I was after - I'm looking for something that is more broad-brush and definitive of new forms, not something trying to fit itself into the spaces between existing forms...

Pay to Play May Come to Broadcast At Last

Posted on May 14, 2009
No, I'm not talking about modern payola practices in radio again. I haven't bothered to keep up with it in the past few years but I'm convinced that it still goes on. Instead I've had it called to my attention that the US House of Representatives has taken a step forward in passing legislation that would force traditional radio broadcast stations to pay the Cartel for playing songs on the air...

Real DVD Monopolies (or so says RealNetworks)

Posted on May 14, 2009
Last year I made a passing note of a product called RealDVD that was supposed to let you burn a DVD onto a PC drive, with copy prevention software intact. I was sort of dubious that the product would amount to anything. Well, it appears to have amounted to (another) antitrust claim against the Cartel...

Can Tim O'Reilly Re-Invent the Book?

Posted on April 30, 2009
In today's O'Reilly Radar column, Tim tackles the notion of how one might re-invent the book. Whether or not one thinks this medium is in need of re-invention there's no doubt that the book publishing industry is continuing to upheave, and possibly at a faster rate...

Sometimes It Is That Easy

Posted on April 30, 2009
I've been pursuing various links in my continuing quest to find easy ways to pay for music I like. I came across RCRD LBL.com which appears to be a curated online community for artists, labels, and fans to share and talk about music. They're obviously aiming at the hipper, more online-centric crowd; for example, you can follow them on Twitter and their "Genres" page is a tag cloud that I'd bet is derived by aggregating tags artists put on the uploaded content...

Copyfight is Everywhere

Posted on April 20, 2009
No, not this blog. We continue to trundle on in our small way. The lack of outraged emails telling me what an idiot I am is evidence that we're no longer much noticed. Copyfight issues, though. Those are everywhere. Two examples came across my radar this week...

More Good Free Science

Posted on April 14, 2009
The Social Science Research Network is offering free introductions to material within its now Cognitive Science Network (CSN). CSN will provide "a worldwide, online community for research in all areas of cognitive science." They will have seven e-Journals in various cog-sci areas and are offering free subscriptions until October 2009, and then $40 after that...

Why Is This Still So Goddamn Hard?

Posted on April 13, 2009
Once upon a very long ago I wanted to hear a very specific song. I was at work, and was making a point to a coworker about how certain male and female voices went together. This duet was part of the point I was making, but I didn't have it at hand. Had someone said "Give me a buck and I'll give you a copy of that song you can play on your computer" I would have cheerfully handed over my USD and been pleased at the exchange...

Anti-Staples Ruling Troubles Free-Speech Advocates

Posted on March 23, 2009
Staples' slogan is "That Was Easy." Now it appears that the ease of mass-mailing something to a large number of employees may have brought trouble not only to this company but to everyone - bloggers, journalists, critics, etc - who relies on the notion that truth is an absolute defense against charges of libel...

Is Silence the Price of Patents?

Posted on March 20, 2009
I've written in this blog about the drug industry before, most emotionally in regards to the dangers to life posed by intellectual property restrictions in copying AIDS medication. I've also noted that drugs, which rely most heavily on patent protection, tend to lead to higher-quality patents than we see issued in the software field...

"Mash Up" Just Seems So Inadequate

Posted on March 20, 2009
These days lots of people send me links to things they think are interesting and Copyfight-able material. I don't want to discourage people, but I can't possibly blog every one. Cory Doctorow I am not. But I did want to use this video of interesting images from Google Earth to jump off into a bigger thought or more like a set of related questions...

Reverse Image Search

Posted on March 18, 2009
This is billed as pure tech, but its use in tracking material, possibly copyrighted material, are obvious: TinEye, a reverse-image search. The idea is that you upload a picture to it and it tells you where else on the Web it has seen that picture. One obvious use would be sourcing material - I have this picture, who might it have come from - and another would be finding people who are using your images...

Thru-You, the YouTube Mashup

Posted on March 14, 2009
Enough people have sent me this one that I feel obliged to blog it, though I'm not sure I have anything new or original to say: "Through You" is a massive mash-up of clips from films found on YouTube. It makes for some interesting music, and the author goes to some lengths to give complete credits...

Newspapers are Laughably Expensive

Posted on March 02, 2009

Who Does She Think She Is?

Posted on February 17, 2009
A new independent film documentary is starting to make the rounds of small theaters and informal showings. Who Does She Think She Is? explores the particular conjunction of female artistry and motherhood, particularly in modern American society. As a group, women are under-represented in American galleries, shows, and in teaching about American art...

LimeWire Going Legit

Posted on February 10, 2009
Chris Crum over at WebProNews has posted a Q-and-A with LimeWire George Searle, who has a couple comments on ongoing partnerships and attempts to move beyond the trench warfare with the Cartel. (Reminder: I work for a company that is technically related to LimeWire, but have no contacts or interest in that bit of the business...

DMCA Rulings Overbroad in Gaming Too

Posted on February 09, 2009
Blizzard Entertainment has just scored another victory in its campaign against "botters" - or rather, makers of bots. The company had already won a judgment against bot-maker MDY on grounds of interference; now it has won on DMCA grounds, and not everyone is happy about that...

RIAA Takes Over DOJ

Posted on February 06, 2009
 OK, enough with the funny stuff. The new Obama administration is shaping up to be a disaster for Copyfighters everywhere. In particular the new Department of Justice is stacked with lawyers who've been on the wrong side of copyright and intellectual property lawsuits for the last eight years...

Bale Out

Posted on February 06, 2009
I'm certain there will be lots more of these and I promise not to blog them, but I did want to point to one amusing remix of Christian Bale's f-bomb laden tirade on the Terminator 4 set. This is what we do now - we parody it on YouTube. There are also apparently remixes of the remix, using the audio track with different visuals...

UK Copyright Law, In Verse

Posted on February 04, 2009
No, that's not "inverse" as in backwards. It's "rendered in verse" as in "poetically." Or at least, in rhyming couplets. Back in 2006, Yehuda Berlinger put up a rendition of US Copyright Law in verse form. Now he's added the UK's copyright law - though he does point out that there are upcoming changes, which may require him to re-verse.

What Happens to Comics When Newspapers Cut Back?

Posted on February 02, 2009
Jeph, the writer of the webcomic "Questionable Content" has a long and thoughtful post on his LiveJournal about the unfortunate rift between comic artists who are working for print syndication and those who are working for online publication. Jeph starts from the blog post by Neil Swaab that paints online comic artists as merchandisers first and artists second...

Clay Shirky Predicts Media for 2009

Posted on January 12, 2009
Shirkey has a few specifics and a few generalities in his "Year Ahead in the Media" piece on guardian.co.uk. Nothing hugely surprising - more newspapers will stop printing, magazines (specifically specialty publications) belong online, DRM for television shows is a disaster, and print-on-demand for books will flourish...

NiN Giving It Away

Posted on January 08, 2009
A friend of mine who's a fairly rabid Nine Inch Nails fan noted that Reznor has recently put out a lot of raw video footage from the current tour onto BitTorrent. This is in addition to anyone's ability to get a legal download of the entire new album just by visiting nin...

Copyright Owners Contributing to the Destruction of Their Own Property

Posted on January 07, 2009
Everyone else is writing about Apple's iTunes music store going DRM-free. Which is, I admit, an interesting move. It's also interesting that they're moving to a 3-tier pricing scheme, after about six years of the Cartel nagging them to break the 99-cents-for-anything barrier...

Watchmen Judgment Posted

Posted on January 02, 2009
The PDF of Judge Feess' ruling on the motions for summary judgment by Fox and Warner Brothers can be found online. I was surprised at how readable-to-a-layperson the document is. It appears that Fox's claim is nothing new, that an option for buying out Fox's rights existed for years and was never exercised, and finally contains a very interesting footnote on testimony not given and why a certain lawyer's advice may have been detrimental.

Are Resales Killing Publishing?

Posted on December 31, 2008
In a column published by the NY Times this week, David Streitfeld puts forth the proposition that the highly available, highly interconnected nature of the online book reselling market is killing book publishing. New-in-print brick-and-mortar retail has been under pressure at least since Amazon started its first Web site...

Why Proprietary, Locked Media Are Bad

Posted on December 31, 2008
Microsoft gets the faceplant this time, but it could just as easily have been iPods: Gizmodo reports (as do many other sites) that Zune 30MB models have all started locking up and requiring a hard reset. This should be a clarion warning that using proprietary hardware or software (DRM) to restrict peoples' ability to manage their legally owned content is a bad plan...

IP and Me at Arisia 2009 (Jan 16, Cambridge MA)

Posted on December 30, 2008
I just got my panel schedule for Arisia 2009, one of the big local science-fiction cons. As in past years there will be panels on things of interest to fans, including intellectual property. At the moment it looks like I'll be on a panel Friday night on the "Future of Intellectual Property" that will also have Richard Stallman as a participant...

Venue Matters

Posted on December 30, 2008
Where a case gets heard can be as important as what's argued in court. Two items this week are bringing this lesson home: In the first case, the RIAA got its wrist slapped for pre-emptively trying to appeal in mid-trial. As Nate Anderson points out, you can't generally do that without the judge's permission, and in this case Judge Davis is not in a favor-granting mood...

CBLDF Asking for Support from Creators

Posted on December 30, 2008
It's that time of year, when every charitable organization and good cause is asking people for donations. Earlier this year I mentioned the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's efforts to protect the rights of adults to view creative material, even if it is a bit edgy...

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Posted on December 29, 2008
I am what you might call an amateur comics geek. I don't subscribe to titles when they appear in issue form, but I do love my collections and graphic novels. And I'll defend to the death the proposition that Moore's Watchmen is hands-down the best graphic novel, ever...

RIAA Declares Jihad Over; ISPs to Slap Wrists (for now)

Posted on December 19, 2008
pa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081219-no-more-lawsuits-isps-to-work-with-riaa-cut-off-p2p-users.html"Ars trumpeted the headline as "RIAAStock 08 Peace Music"/a but I think that's a bit overblown. Still, it's a surprising turn of events...

Support the EFF

Posted on December 17, 2008
pEFF has an amusing song/cartoon riffing on the "12 Days". It's a fund-raiser, obviously, and it references several of the things Copyfight cares about./p pobject classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="500" height="402" param name="movie" value="http://w2...

Teach Your Kids to Break the DMCA

Posted on December 15, 2008
Neil Gaiman pointed to Gever Tulley's 2007 TED talk on "5 dangerous things you should let your kids do". As a parent who wrestles almost every day with what I should and should not let my kids do I found the concept interesting. And there, near the end of the talk, Tulley just flat out says "teach your kids to break the DMCA"...

Creative Commons Turns 6 (NYC Party, Dec 16)

Posted on December 15, 2008
Sorry for the last-minute-ness of this. I just got a mail saying the event has moved to a larger venue to handle the bigger than expected crowd: Creative Commons' Birthday and Salon NYC Come celebrate CC's 6th Birthday and our December Salon Host: For Your Imagination / CC Date: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Time: 7:00pm - 10:00pm Location: For Your Imagination Loft Street: 22 W...

AC/DC Idiots?

Posted on December 10, 2008
Opinionated Canadian blogger Scott Feschuk has a column lampooning AC/DC for striking an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart. The aging Oz hard-rockers are hardly the first to strike this kind of deal. Given how influential big-box retailers have become in the dwindling world of physical platter sales it's not a big surprise that artists would go where the sales are...

Rebellyon - Amanda Palmer and Roadrunner Records

Posted on December 05, 2008
We're used to understanding (maybe more than the general public does) the degree to which the modern record-making system is a slave enterprise. The artists are indentured and their work is wholly owned by the labels. The labels can promote or not, arrange tours or not, front money or not, and generally have full and complete ownership of the created product...

Continuing on the Morality Theme

Posted on December 02, 2008
Neil Gaiman has a long, and cogent discussion in his blog today about the Christopher Handley case. I generally agree with what Gaiman has written. I think popular speech doesn't need defending. It's the edgy, unpopular, icky stuff that needs defending because that's what people will attack...

Euros Put Cost (to People) on Patent Lawsuits

Posted on November 28, 2008
While researching the previous entry I came across this item: European regulators put out a report today accusing drug manufacturers of costing consumers EU 3 billion by using patent lawsuits to keep generics off the markets. Back in January, the EU Competition Commission staged raids on at least nine major drug companies, seeking evidence on restrictive business practices, and then another round of "surprise inspections" earlier this week...

Immoral Patents, or So Say the Europeans

Posted on November 28, 2008
On Friday, the EPO (European Patent Office) upheld an earlier decision rejecting a patent application from the University of Wisconsin-Madison' Alumni Research Foundation in the US. The patent was for stem cell technology, and it was rejected because the process disclosed in the patent apparently required the use or destruction of human embryos...

Right to Own, Right to View

Posted on November 25, 2008
In this blog I spend most of my time on the production side of the issues - talking about business models, distribution, artist compensation, and so on. Once in a while it's important to remember that there are also complimentary rights - your right to own materials produced by creators, for private viewing...

RIAA v. Joel Tenenbaum: The Fleet is in Motion

Posted on November 24, 2008
Almost a year ago, Eric Bangeman wrote a piece on ars pointing out that the Cartel has somehow managed to avoid noticing that students at Harvard share music files, too. Despite its widespread and very public campaign of suing its under-25 customer demographic, the RIAA seemed unwilling - some would say scared - to take on Harvard...

An ASCAP for Books

Posted on October 28, 2008
Pending approval by the court, it appears that Google has worked out a deal with US book publishers. Google published an announcement of the deal in its blog and the story has been in most of the major media. The deal is primarily focused on books that are still under copyright, but no longer in print...

Lala Land?

Posted on October 23, 2008
My brother sent me an invite to sign up for the music streaming service "Lala". According to their promotion it's all kosher with the Cartel. You play a stream in your Web browser in a Flash plug-in (like Pandora and Last.fm). I'm not terribly inclined to sign up for another service and was wondering if anyone had any experience with these guys? They apparently have software that scans the music on your disk and adds songs it finds there to your online collection so you can stream them from the lala site into any browser...

PvP vs The Cartel

Posted on October 22, 2008
The PvP comic usually centers around gaming and related topics (the characters work at a game-reviewing magazine) but today's strip shows they didn't learn the lesson Deborah Gregory learned the hard way.

Law Enforcement Seizes Biker Gang IP?

Posted on October 22, 2008
I'm tempted to file this under "weird IP stories you don't expect to read" but I don't have a category for that. Buried at the very bottom of the AP story on the Feds busting up the Mongols biker gang appear the following paragraphs:U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien has asked for an injunction that would seize the Mongols' trademarked name...

Business Models Blog Series Concludes

Posted on October 20, 2008
The "Business Models for Artists" series I noted a few days ago has now concluded. The series ended up being less about actual models and more about methods for enacting a model once you've got one.

McCain Can't Win on Song Front Either

Posted on October 17, 2008
Not content with getting into legal troubles before, McCain's camp has decided to get itself chastised by yet another 80's rocker, at least according to this MTV Newsroom piece. No idea if they're using a general license again or just appropriating.

Maybe Art Isn't A Business

Posted on October 16, 2008
Seth Godin has a post on his blog warning that maybe art should be - or must be - for its own sake, or for the sake and enjoyment of the artist creating it. Godin is arguing against the idea that you should take what you love and turn it into a business...

21st Century Business Models for Artists

Posted on October 16, 2008
A friend who is trying to figure out how to make something like a living as an independent writer/creator pointed me to the first entry in what promises to be a blog series. The authors are somewhat known as authors and creators themselves, and the series will culminate in a business-model paper...

Steal This Comic

Posted on October 13, 2008
Randall Munroe, author of the xkcd comic, and one of the few people I know who is making a living through his Web comics, has had enough of DRM. His most recent published comic contains a simple four-step "you will be a pirate anyway" argument. Or, if you don't like it, demand DRM-free content in the first place.

Apple Gets a Dock Patent

Posted on October 09, 2008
Apple was finally granted a patent, for which it first applied in 1999, on the user interface construction that has come to be called the "dock". The patent calls it "a userbar" but Apple's own documentation calls it a dock (this image also comes from Apple's site) and that's the term it's generally come to be called...

Rowling Wins Against Lexicon

Posted on October 08, 2008
In a not-at-all-surprising decision, Judge Patterson has ruled to block publication of the print version of Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon." The judge's decision noted that the proposed Lexiconcopies distinctive original language from the Harry Potter works in excess of its otherwise legitimate purpose of creating a reference guide...

Royalties on Digital Tunes Stable Through 2012 - DRM in Doubt

Posted on October 03, 2008
I've been so busy with the mess on Wall St that I totally missed Apple's threat to close down iTunes if royalty rates went up. There were several proposals on the table, including one to lower fees, which are formally known as "mechanical royalty rates"...

Orphan Works and Emphatic Words

Posted on September 30, 2008
Once again I'm finding myself trying to make sense of something and hoping others can help me out. I got a pointer from a freelancer friend to a page posted by the Illustrator's Partnership of America. This page contains a harsh critique of The Orphan Works Act of 2008...

Burn (DVD) to Hard Drive

Posted on September 23, 2008
I got a pointer to a forthcoming program from Real, to be called RealDVD, that is supposed to be the first legal way to rip DVDs to hard disk. It's kind of that, kind of not. Of course, we've had DVD rippers forever; the problem is that they're technically a no-no, since they tend to strip off the copy protection...

Politics and Song Rights

Posted on September 22, 2008
This isn't another political song remix, or even a political song parody. This is about the use of (usually American pop) songs in political ads and campaign appearances by candidates for a political party. In this case, McCain for the Republicans. First off, we have the candidate's use of the song "Barracuda" by the band Heart, even though the band has asked them to stop...

Public Art Commentaries

Posted on September 17, 2008
Interesting AP piece on Geoffrey Raymond's art form: he paints a large picture of a public figure (e.g. Barack Obama or Lehman Brothers' ex-CEO Richard Fuld) then takes that picture out into the public and invites people to annotate it. Most people seem to sign their names or leave text comments...

Disney and the Copyright on Mickey Mouse

Posted on September 15, 2008
Disney is famous for getting copyright-term legislation passed that extends protection on old materials and thus protects their interest in Mickey Mouse, their iconic character. One of the first appearances (Wikipedia claims it's the third appearance) of this character is in the cartoon short Steamboat Willy...

Google Backs Up On Chrome EULA

Posted on September 04, 2008
Well, that didn't take long. Google has admitted that putting Clause 11 into its EULA was a mistake. Frankly, it's a cut-and-paste error as I had guessed. As reported in a number of places (see, for example, CNET). Google has pulled the unnecessary language...

Google, Chrome, and Copyright

Posted on September 03, 2008
I'm filing this under "IP Abuse" because I'm starting to think Chrome, Google's new wonder-browser, is a tool for (potential) copyright abuse. I was first tipped to this by Edward Champion, who blogs under the title "Reluctant Habits." In a post dated September 3, he picks apart the Chrome EULA and does not like what he sees...

More Free (Online) Books

Posted on August 27, 2008
Linked to me by a friend: 25 Places to Read Free Books Online. It's not a comprehensive list by any means; for example, they left off Baen's Free Library, which is an excellent SF resource. That said, I think it's excellent someone can compile a list of 25 such places, referencing many thousands of titles.

In Which Our Hero TriesTo Comprehend EU Copyright Issues

Posted on August 21, 2008
OK, I'm in need of help here. Have I got this right? I got an interesting pointer from a European Copyfight reader indicating that I should take a look at the growing controversy over the European Parliament's proposed new telecoms package. As far as I can tell the source of this controversy is here: http://www...

DMCA Takedowns Must Consider Fair Use

Posted on August 21, 2008
For years (and I mean YEARS - remember this report from 2005? Or Diebold's abuse of takedown notices from 2003?) copyfighters have been complaining about the abuse of the DMCA's takedown notice provisions. In the ongoing saga of Universal Music versus a dancing baby, we have finally gotten a ruling stating that copyright holders must take fair use into account...

A CBLDF Benefit Mashup Thu Aug 21, 7:30P

Posted on August 19, 2008
Cory Doctorow and DJ Spooky on stage together in NYC to benefit the CBLDF. Details here: http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000367.shtml Two very interesting and thoughtful people. Benefiting a great charity. What more could you ask? (except to be in NYC this Thursday night)

An End To A 'Reprieve' - Bye Bye Web Radio?

Posted on August 11, 2008
A little over a year ago I was writing about negotiations between SoundExchange and Web streamcasters. The issue was a set of exorbitant new fees authorized by the US Copyright office. Back then it appeared that Congress might even pass some kind of legislation...

Future of Music Coalition Events (Fall 2008)

Posted on August 06, 2008
Our friends at the FMC sent me a couple pointers to upcoming events, primarily their fall seminar series. Here are the pointers of interest: Monday, September 22, Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, IL: http://www.futureofmusic.org/events/Chicago08/ Monday, October 6, Public Theater, New York, NY: http://www...

People Want to Pay - Sort Of

Posted on August 05, 2008
Kevin Kelly - who a few months ago put out the notion of "true fan" - has another interesting assertion in his blog: people want to pay for stuff. Why, then, is copying - and not paying - so prevalent? Kelly says that people want to pay if they perceive that the exchange is fair, if it's easy enough, and if they understand some sort of benefit that comes from the paying...

Tooting My Own Horn - MPAA vs The People

Posted on July 16, 2008
Back at the start of June, I was interviewed for a story that has finally appeared in Infotech and Telecom News. The story is mostly pull quotes from people talking about the MPAA's recent wins against Web sites that post links to copyrighted material...

Pi-Con 3

Posted on June 25, 2008
I've been invited to be a panelist/guest at the 3rd annual Pi Science Fiction Convention being held in West Springfield, MA this August. Given that the guests include Cory (boingboing) Doctorow and Randall (xkcd) Munroe I doubt most anyone will notice I'm there...

The War on Photography

Posted on June 23, 2008
Bruce Schneier has an update on his article for the Guardian describing the "movie plot" efforts to link public photography and anti-terrorist work. The gist is that there is no credible evidence linking public photography - even of public buildings, infrastructure, etc - to terrorist acts...

Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on June 20, 2008
Microsoft wished for a new trial, but must not have asked nicely enough this time. Last time it was accused of infringing Alcatel-Lucent (digital music) patents it won, getting a negative verdict and large judgment thrown out. This time, however, Judge Marilyn L...

The 21st Century Version of the Copyright Notice

Posted on June 18, 2008
I had a nice chat last week with Mike O'Donnel of iCopyright about their new service for small and independent publishers. The company has a large for-pay service that is used by large publishers, including news wires, to track the digital progress of copyrighted materials and they're reusing some of that technical infrastructure for the new offering...

Future Writers, Future Books

Posted on June 16, 2008
The Futurist online has an interesting think piece by Patrick Tucker on the possible future of writers, books, and writing in this century. Riffing primarily on a talk by Tim O?Reilly from earlier this year, Tucker visits interesting notions such as "the book as souvenir...

Tracking the Trackers

Posted on June 13, 2008
The CS Department at University of Washington have released a report with this title reporting on an investigation of copyright enforcement as it currently exists on P2P networks. The report's site contains a summary of the report's findings, a downloadable PDF of the full report and an online FAQ describing their research methods and key findings...

FMC Releases "Rock the Net" Compilation CD

Posted on June 04, 2008
Our friends at the Future of Music Coalition are announcing a CD compilation to benefit their Net Neutrality campaign. Featured names include Wilco, Bright Eyes, They Might Be Giants, Aimee Mann, Guster and more. The CD is set for an end-of-July release.

Who Pays MediaDefender to Disrupt Peer to Peer Networks?

Posted on May 30, 2008
Could it be? Say it with me. That'd be... The Cartel. OK, so I'm not about to start a new career as a singer-songwriter. Which is probably good since I'd probably be foolish enough to give away my own recordings of my own performances for free and if I used BitTorrent for that then I could be the one getting DoSed...

Did Microsoft (over)Implement the Broadcast Flag?

Posted on May 23, 2008
Sherman, set the wayback machine to 2005! No, I'm not talking about the Internet Archive's Wayback machine. I'm talking about traveling back in time to late 2005 when the 'net was buzzing - angrily - about a Cartel proposal to require DRM to be embedded in every broadcast signal...

Does the RIAA Have Legal Legs?

Posted on May 14, 2008
I don't blog much about the minutae of the cascade of digital music-related lawsuits in part because there are people who obsessively blog these things and I've lost patience with it over the years. One place that hasn't lost patience and generally does a very good job with the details is Recording Industry vs The People...

Help Cory Help Others

Posted on May 05, 2008
Cory Doctorow has structured an interesting...something around his book Little Brother. I don't know what to call this - it's part charity, part pay-for-value-received, part experiment. The idea is that Cory gives away this book - it's online for free...

Gin, Television, and 100 Wikipedia per Year, for Sharing

Posted on April 30, 2008
Clay Shirky is one of the better Big Thinkers on the Web today, particularly in the arenas of social media and cooperative interactions. He's published an essay called "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus". In part this is related to his new book Here Comes Everybody but focused around a single idea...

Gaiman, Final Thoughts, and McFarlane

Posted on April 25, 2008
Gaiman included a few "final" thoughts on copyright. Given how much he's involved himself in the discussion of these issues over the years I seriously doubt this'll be his final word, but perhaps he feels he has no more to say on the Rowling case. In this entry he's reflecting on his own copyright battles with Todd McFarlane over authorship of certain material that Gaiman wrote...

Fair Use, One Author's View

Posted on April 22, 2008
Gaiman put up a blog entry explicitly calling out fair use. In it he talks about the Rowling/RDR Books case, noting that her approach is different from his own in response to 'unauthorized' material that has been put out on him and his writing. He also notes that his own two first books were at best legally shaky in Fair Use terms - an aggressive lawsuit could easily have shut him down from writing anything more...

Publishers vs Academics

Posted on April 18, 2008
Ms Rowling is not the only one concerned with how much of her work others are taking. Law.com has a report from Janet Conley on a lawsuit by three academic publishers against Georgia State University. At issue are incidents like a 32-page copy made by a music professor...

Rowling versus the Lexicon, Round 1

Posted on April 15, 2008
Or, formally, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books, 07-cv-09667. But since it was Rowling testifying Monday, that's where the focus is. If Mark Hamblett's piece for law.com is accurate it appears things are getting nasty right off the bat. Considering how heated some of the comments were on my last entry on this topic I expect there's a fair bit of passion in the air...

What is the Value of News?

Posted on April 14, 2008
Daily Kos posted a think piece this weekend. The essay argues that big media have, in effect, caused their own devaluation. That is, the "amateurish" state of news on the Web is not really due to the proliferation of bloggers or non-authority sources such as Wikipedia...

People Unclear on the Concept?

Posted on April 02, 2008
Neat-o-rama blog reported that students in UT San Antonio were told to come up with a "code of academic integrity in order to combat plagiarism". Apparently they then copied a chunk of their code from BYU. Now on the surface this is a ha-ha funny story about kids who copy when they shouldn't...

Google Advanced Search Adds Licensing Info

Posted on March 31, 2008
Riffing on the same theme as compfight, Google has added a feature to its advanced search that lets you find Web pages with explicit usage rights as a search parameter. The parameter lets you specify a few combinations of free to use, share, and modify...

Update on the Gaiman Experiment

Posted on March 26, 2008
Neil Gaiman posted an update on the experiment of making American Gods free online to read. Numbers from Harper Collins, which is hosting the e-book, show a decent number of unique views and a fair number of page impressions. If their numbers and my math are right the average viewer is reading about 45 pages online, which is 1-2 chapters...

The Onion Explains FCC Censorship

Posted on March 26, 2008
Onion Network News gives us a guideline for how to figure out whether the FCC will find something obscene or permissible. Maybe the Supreme Court should include this in their review.

Sharing, Part of the Power of Everybody

Posted on March 25, 2008
Clay Shirky gave a talk at the Berkman Center covering some of the ideas from his new book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. The video is online from Harvard under a Creative Commons license. The focus of the talk is Shirky's notions about the enabling power of the Net and along the way he has a lot of interesting things to say about sharing, including Napster and a variety of other collective sharings like American dubbings of Japanese anime...

Finding Legally Usable Pictures - compfight

Posted on March 20, 2008
A friend pointed me to a new search tool, compfight, that allows you to search for pictures posted to the Web photo hosting site flikr. The cool part is that you can check a box that lets you search for Creative Commons-licensed photos.

Fleeting Words, Extensive Review

Posted on March 17, 2008
Back in June of last year I noted that Fox was going to court to fight the FCC's policy of punishing "fleeting" expletives. The trial judge called the policy "arbitrary and capricious." SCOTUS agreed to add the appeal hearing to its fall docket. Given how bad this Court's rulings have been in recent speech cases, I'm not too hopeful, but we'll see.

Did IP and Hollywood Shenanigans Sink New Line?

Posted on March 14, 2008
File this under "rampant speculation." The headline is that New Line Cinema, maker of the Lord of the Rings movies, is calling it quits, with top execs out and assets being snapped up by Warner Brothers. Question: did the ongoing legal problems over those movies sink the studio? End of last year it looked like New Line was in the clear, having finally settled its long-running legal battles with Peter Jackson, and green-lighting two "Hobbit"-based movies...

Artists and How to Support Them

Posted on March 12, 2008
Kevin Kelly has caused a bit of a stir by putting out a model for patronage support of creative people. His concept is that of a "true fan" and the piece's title is "1,000 True Fans". The idea is that if a person was willing to spend about one day's salary (Kelly picks the arbitrary sum of $100) then an artist could be supported by one thousand such people...

More Media Offerings

Posted on March 04, 2008
A couple of interesting links from the pile today. First up is what looks like "Netflix for audiobooks", though they don't use that slogan. Simply Audio Books requires a monthly fee or prepaid subscription and based on how much cash you put up front they let you hold onto 1-4 audio books as long as you like...

Go Get Your Free Book

Posted on February 29, 2008
A couple weeks ago I blogged about Neil Gaiman's work with his publisher to put up one of his books for free download. At the time, the fans voted on which book they wanted put up for free. Well, it's up, and last night Gaiman blogged this:For the next month, your free copy of American Gods is waiting for you at http://tiny...

Copying in Political Speech

Posted on February 25, 2008
"I see that politicians have a way of borrowing from each other." On msnbc.com I found a video of a Meet the Press segment that begins by addressing the issue raised by Mrs. Clinton of whether or not Mr. Obama had plagiarized some political speech lines...

Get Your War On, Cartoonists

Posted on February 21, 2008
A friend of mine blogged about a talk by David Wallis, whose book "Killed Cartoon" catalogs political cartoons and photographs that have been killed by newspaper and other print publication editors because of being anti-war. The logical question, not answered by Mr...

Could BitTorrent Be Disabled Automatically?

Posted on February 20, 2008
This is being painted in the context of net neutrality and copyright enforcement; I see it as a way to automate attacks on any particular users of any information. There's no reason this technique couldn't be used by, say, the Chinese government to disable access to Web sites it finds objectionable...

As the Cartel Turns

Posted on February 15, 2008
Hometown paper the LA Times runs an extensive piece on the complete screw-over that studios give to writers. To say that they lie, cheat, and defraud doesn't begin to cover it. In this case the victim is one Deborah Gregory and the villain is Disney but the same story could be told hundreds of times - just change the names and it's the same again and again...

Like YouTube for Business Documents

Posted on February 14, 2008
Earlier this week I had a chat with Jason Nazar of docstoc.com. The company had contacted me a while back suggesting the chat. They're a beta-level software startup dealing with professional, legal, and business documents. I was initially dubious that there was a Copyfight angle to this story...

No You Can't

Posted on February 14, 2008
The next in what I expect will probably be a chain of parodies of the Yes We Can song has appeared in my inbox: Billionaires for Bush bring us the "No You Can't" song. Unless one of these parodies generates something new or newsworthy I'll probably not blog them but you can feel free to keep sending me links, if only for the amusement value.

Like A Stack of Books 348 Feet Tall

Posted on February 13, 2008
Creative Commons is boosting signal for Public.Resource.Org, who announced that they have put online - for free, with no restrictions on reuse - a vast source of US caselaw. The total is over 1.8 million pages, including all SCOTUS and US Court of Appeals decisions since 1950...

How Much Potter Does Rowling Own?

Posted on February 12, 2008
Dave Langford's February ANSIBLE (a fanzine for fantasy/SF readers and authors) has a commentary from Steve van der Ark relating difficulties encountered in producing a print edition of a "Harry Potter Lexicon." For some time there has been an online Lexicon, which has been criticized for both using and linking to large chunks of Rowling writing...

Can E-Zines Succeed?

Posted on February 11, 2008
Bloggasm is a thoughtful collection of entries from Simon Owens that focuses on media and journalism. In yesterday's entry he reviews the troubled history of e-zines, particularly those focused on SF/F and speculative fiction in general. E-zines in this field are at least 10 years old now and one would think they'd have had time to establish a field...

Like Hope, But Different

Posted on February 11, 2008
In a move that surprised nobody under the age of 50, the "Yes We Can" political remix has spawned its first parody. The john.he.is video mashes up bits of John McCain speeches with... well, it's a parody so I won't spoil it.

It's More Complicated, And More Interesting

Posted on February 11, 2008
Neil Gaiman has been blogging online for seven years now. If you go to that link you'll find a poll asking you to vote for which of Mr. Gaiman's books is to be put online for free for a month to celebrate the event. Gaiman's blog entry today also quotes from a New York Times story on this contest...

Bye Bye (Buy?) Baidu

Posted on February 07, 2008
Baidu, the Chinese search powerhouse was on the receiving end this week of a lawsuit by three of the big four record companies. They are asking that Baidu be ordered to stop linking on its music-delivery service to copyrighted tracks. Separate suits were filed against Sohu and Yahoo! China over related infringement charges...

Qtrax Backtrax

Posted on February 05, 2008
Oops, not so fast. Yesterday I blogged about Qtrax, a company with big claims to be providing ad-supported music downloads. An alert reader sent me a pointer to a Guardian Unlimited story in which UMG, Warner and EMI all said "No deal". Qtrax appears to be admitting to some overblown claims in announcements (wait - a software company announced vaporware?! I'm SHOCKED...

Two Big Digital Music Service Moves

Posted on February 04, 2008
I tend to avoid most digital music stories not because they're not Copyfight-able but because I find them boring. After eight-going-on-nine years of the Copyright Wars there's very little new in the trench warfare. So excuse me if I gloss over a lot...

Political Remixing & Cultural Copyright

Posted on February 04, 2008
If you've been around politics since the last US Presidential election you might remember some of the popular parodies such as JibJab's "This Land Is My Land". I haven't seen a comparably memorable parody yet this season, but I have seen "The Yes We Can Song" (warning: page has a plug-in that auto-plays on load)...

Photographers' Rights

Posted on January 28, 2008
Here is a nice one-page PDF summarizing the rights of photographers to take public pictures - that is, of public figures and objects in public spaces. Written in 2003 by Bert Krages, an Oregon attorney, it has an update date of 2006 and so should be fairly current and useful.

Shirts vs. Suits

Posted on January 25, 2008
The writers behind the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert comedy/satire shows staged a mock debate on Capitol Hill to illustrated some of the issues of the WGA strike. My sense is that many members of Congress are sympathetic, but I doubt they're likely to get involved...

Street Use (blog)

Posted on January 22, 2008
In the past I've referenced Gibson's dictum that "The street finds its own uses for things." The basic premise is that attempts to control how people will use technology once it's out in the wild are doomed to failure. Many startup companies and published hacks are built on this premise...

More Microsoft Woes

Posted on January 15, 2008
The EU has been remarkably persistent in going after Microsoft for what the EU sees as anti-competitive and antitrust issues. Last year the EU had its earlier antitrust case upheld. According to Business Week, the first case "ended up costing Microsoft billions of dollars"...

More EMI Woes

Posted on January 15, 2008
Or, "More reasons why EMI is in no position to force changes to the RIAA". EMI is attempting to cut costs by laying off up to 2000 workers. That's not unusual for companies that have been bought out and whose new owners are focused on fixing the bottom line...

Pre-MPAA Films Being Shown (MA Fri Jan 18 & on)

Posted on January 14, 2008
I seem to be all about the events this month. In addition to talk about copyrights and open-source nerd rap, there's a showing this Friday that local folk might want to check out: The Harvard Film Archive is showing two historical "edgy" films this Friday...

File Under "That'd Be Nice"

Posted on January 14, 2008
Or maybe just "wishful thinking." Relaying heavily from a Variety Magazine piece, Nate Anderson at ars technica asks whether the RIAA could go away, at least in its present form. The base of the problem is that the RIAA isn't solving the music industry's problem - plummeting sales - and is costing it millions of dollars...

Open-Source Beats Coming to Boston

Posted on January 09, 2008
Speaking of Boston-area science fiction and comics conventions, I've noticed that Open-Source Beats nerd rapper MC Frontalot is scheduled to appear at Anime Boston in 2008, nominally Saturday the 22nd of March.

A Serial Drama in Internet Form

Posted on January 08, 2008
Shared-world writing has been around a long time. Whether it's someone writing a Sherlock Holmes story long after Doyle's death, or a co-created world like Robert Asprin's Thieves World in which authors cooperate on characters and settings, it's been done...

Talk at Arisia (Boston, MA, Sun Jan 20)

Posted on January 08, 2008
Pimping my own event for a moment... I'll be on a panel at the 2008 Arisia Science Fiction Convention on Sunday night the 20th at 8PM, talking about science, IP law, and creativity. I'm certainly no Cory Doctorow but I'll do my best. I'm not yet sure who the other panelists will be, probably local science fiction/comics writers and other creative types.

Start With the Right To Speak Freely

Posted on January 07, 2008
Cory Doctorow continues his campaign to educate the SFWA on what modern technology means for authors. Writing in Locus, the science-fiction writer's trade rag, he puts forth the notion that the attention being paid to use and infringement is hopeless and even counter-productive...

1-Click Patent Rejection

Posted on January 07, 2008
Illiad weighs in again on the ongoing saga of the Amazon one-click patent.

Even Fools Don't Invest in the Music Business

Posted on January 04, 2008
Alyce Lomax has a piece on fool.com (the Motley Fool investment advice site) this week advising against investing in the music industry. The punchline:a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value...

Get Yourself Some RIAA-Free Music

Posted on January 04, 2008
I wish I'd seen this in time to post it for peoples' end-of-year buying, but here you go anyway... RIAA Radar is a site dedicated to offering enough information to make more-informed choices about your music buying, assuming you care about the Copyright Wars...

The Smile of Success

Posted on December 28, 2007
Neil Gaiman's blog today contained this exchange:Question: I wonder how you feel about both Beowulf & Stardust being among the top 10 most P2P traded movies of the year? Gaiman: I'm simply glad that they're popular. [...] Because mostly the solution to piracy seems to be providing the pirated thing yourself.

Google One Up, One Down in Patent Decision

Posted on December 27, 2007
According to Peter Sayer's piece in PC World, Google is in the clear on its AdSense service, but the claims made by Hyperphrase Technologies against the Google Toolbar's autolink function need reexamination. Let's see if I can unpack that a bit. Back in April of '06, Hyperphrase sued Google for infringement of four patents...

Cartel Makes PC World "Bad Behavior" List (again)

Posted on December 21, 2007
Yardena Arar has a piece in PC World this month titled "The 7 Most Annoying Developments in Software". The premise is that software has developed into a serious annoyance, which isn't far wrong in my experience. The story begins with "The Antipiracy Inquisition" and moves from there to DRM...

Jackson, New Line Settle - Hobbit to Go Forward

Posted on December 18, 2007
Just over a year ago I posed the question What Does IP Have To Do With Who Directs "The Hobbit"? Today, Ain't It Cool News is reporting that "Team Jackson, New Line, and MGM have made nice" and the Hobbit movie (and a sequel) are going to go forward...