Intellectual Property Law

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...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

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...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.