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Thinking About Real Copyright Reform (07 November 09:07) |
| Michael Scott alerts us to a recent paper by professor and copyright expert Jessica Litman about "Real Copyright Reform." While there's been some chatter here and there about doing real cop... |
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The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing (07 November 08:17) |
| I've discussed in the past the question of whether or not there's even a moral question to consider when it comes to copyright, if you can first show a situation where everyone is better off... |
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Sarah Palin Joins Al Gore In Not Realizing That Everyones A Reporter These Days (07 November 07:31) |
| Last year, we wrote how odd it was that former VP Al Gore banned reporters from a speech he gave, where all audio-video equipment was also banned. These days, such "no reporters allowed" sp... |
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Murdoch Reconsidering Paywalls Delaying Implementation (07 November 06:44) |
| Is Rupert Murdoch flip-flopping on paywalls again? Way back when (i.e., two years ago) Murdoch was a big believer in the idea that news should be free online, and that he could more than ma... |
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IP Czar Focused On Protecting Jobs Not Promoting Progress (07 November 06:01) |
| We were already somewhat concerned about the nomination of Victoria Espinel for the IP Czar job in the administration (forced on the administration by the silly and pointless "ProIP" Act fro... |
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Glenn Beck Not Allowed To Rape And Murder An Internet Meme (07 November 05:10) |
| Back in September, we wrote about Glenn Beck's misguided attempt to gain control over the domain name used as part of an internet meme that is critical of Glenn Beck, GlennBeckRapedAndMurder... |
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Court Says Telenor Doesnt Need To Block The Pirate Bay (07 November 04:27) |
| I'm heading over to Norway in the next few days to give a talk at the Nordic Music Week event, and it's nice to see that the courts in that country seem to recognize how silly the IFPI's dem... |
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Update On Choruss Universities Not Talking Mysterious 10000 Students Still Nowhere To Be Found (07 November 03:33) |
| We've been pretty big critics of the music tax concept, that was being pushed by Jim Griffin's Choruss along with Warner Music (who had hired Griffin to create this program). Of course, we'... |
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Does The White House Have Any Legal Right To Demand No Modifications To Its Photos (07 November 02:25) |
| You may recall earlier this year that there was a fair bit of controversy when the White House started putting photos up on Flickr. Or, rather, there was controversy over the licensing. Ev... |
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Retailers Still Want New Laws Blaming eBay For Shoplifting Law Enforcement Isnt So Sure (07 November 01:17) |
| A group of brick-and-mortar retailers have been pushing for years to pass laws that put liability on online sites, like eBay, if stolen goods are sold through the sites. This really has not... |
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Venezuelan Government Blames Video Games For Violence Implements Widespread Ban (07 November 12:06) |
| Via Game Politics we hear about the situation in Venezuela, where the government is apparently blaming video games for the widespread violence in the country, and has issued a ban on the imp... |
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Congressional Study Says $42 Billion Could Be Raised By Legalizing Internet Gambling (06 November 10:44) |
| Ragaboo writes "
A congressional report was recently released estimating that the regulation of Internet gambling could amount to around $42 billion in revenue for the U.S. government. Con... |
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Bluebeat Claims It Owns Beatles Copyright By Re-recording Songs Judge Disagrees (06 November 09:15) |
| In the US, if you really want to "protect" your copyrighted works, you have to register the works. Unlike for a patent or a trademark, it's pretty much a rubberstamp process. Every so ofte... |
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Costume Designer Claims Riverdance Needs To Pay A Royalty For Every Performance (06 November 07:38) |
| In the latest sign of bizarre and ridiculous lawsuits brought about by the belief that every concept and idea must be owned and licensed, Richard alerts us to the news that the folks behind ... |
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Comcast Exec We Need To Change Customer Behavior Not Our Business Model (06 November 05:40) |
| Brooks writes "Speaking at a cable broadcaster's summit, Steve Burke, Comcast's COO, said: "An entire generation is growing up, if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respe... |
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Ferrari Doesnt Want Web Racing Simulation To Use Ferraris (06 November 03:40) |
| Lincoln Braun writes "I play an online web game. BATracer which is designed to simulate a number of racing series including Formula 1, LeMans, A1 Grand Prix, Ferrari Challenge, and more. Th... |
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Nestles Kit Kat Bars Give Consumers An RtB In Japan (06 November 12:14) |
| Techdirt reader Kathy writes in to let us know about the 200 different flavors of Kit Kat candy bars in Japan. Public Radio International describes how Nestle has developed an interesting s... |
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Lord Mandelson Wants Students To Get More Tech Education Can We Start By Educating Him (06 November 10:13) |
| Lord Mandelson, the UK Business Secretary who has been the leading force behind putting in place the entertainment industry's desired plan to require ISPs to kick accused file sharers off th... |
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Texas Pulls Voting Reg System From IBM After Multimillion System Cant Recover Lost Data (06 November 08:23) |
| EFF points us to yet another massively expensive computer system that can't do some rather basic things. Apparently the state of Texas has pulled its election systems from an $863 million c... |
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Well Duh People Who Use Social Networking Tend To Have Larger Social Circles (06 November 06:38) |
| While I guess there are still some people who think that sitting around on your computer isn't "interacting" with other people, I would have thought that the myth that computer users are lon... |
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Answers To Textbook Questions Copyright Violation (06 November 05:18) |
| Just a few weeks ago, in writing about the pointlessness of "derivative rights" in copyright law, I questioned the "example" of an answer key for a textbook, noting that there was no reason ... |
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EU Officials Push Back Against Hollywood Sorta Note That Internet Access Should Be A Right Sorta (06 November 04:09) |
| The pendulum on the entertainment industry's push to have countries force ISPs to kick accused (not convicted) file sharers offline via a "three strikes" policy keeps swinging back and forth... |
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FCC Poised To Let Hollywood Break Your TV And DVR (06 November 03:01) |
| Earlier today, we wrote about how even the MPAA's own members have shown they don't need to break your TV and DVR with selectable output control in order to release video-on-demand movies pr... |
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Canadian Govt Issues Takedown To Newspaper For Posting Section Auditor General Report (06 November 02:06) |
| We've discussed in the past how silly it is for countries to have "crown copyright" (basically granting the government copyright over government documents). Luckily, the US has no such thin... |
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Content Is Advertising Free Local Commercials Sponsored By Another Company (06 November 01:03) |
| Via Adam Savage, I heard about a fun project that highlights the advertising is content, content is advertising concept in multiple ways. It's a site called ILoveLocalCommercials.com, which... |
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Oh Look Hollywood Doesnt Need To Break Your TV To Release PPV Movies Early (06 November 12:02) |
| For a while now, the MPAA and the major movie studios have been asking the FCC for permission to break your TV and DVR by enabling "selectable output control," which would block the recordin... |
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Dear RIAA Its Not Working Together As A Team When Its Under Threat Of Regulation (05 November 10:42) |
| I've been trying not to respond to every RIAA blog post these days, but it's hard to let certain things go when they so rarely make any sense. For example, RIAA President Cary Sherman recen... |
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Why Do Canada And Europe Copyright Money (05 November 09:24) |
| We've discussed in the past the odd idea that any government should be able to copyright anything it produces, but plenty of governments still do maintain things like "crown copyright" or ot... |
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Perfect Pitch Accused Of DMCA Abuse To Censor Criticism (05 November 07:50) |
| Michael Scott points us to yet another (yes, another) case of copyfraud, where someone sends a DMCA takedown notice to stop criticism, rather than actual infringement. In this case, the par... |
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OK Hollywood Learns A Scary Lesson From Paranormal Activity (05 November 06:05) |
| A few weeks back, I noted that the low-budget (but highly-profitable) Paranormal Activity movie might teach Paramount a thing or two about how the business of making movies could succeed wit... |
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UK Law Firm Sets Up Special Team To Hunt Down Anonymous Commenters (05 November 03:08) |
| Stephanie Migot writes in to let us know how UK law firm Wragge & Co has decided to set up a special "cyber tracing" team, whose job it will be to scour the internet for anyone making n... |
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Maryland Testing E-Voting System That Lets People Verify Their Votes Counted (05 November 11:56) |
| For many years, David Chaum has been pushing for a voting system that he claims will be a lot more reliable. Basically, after you vote, you get a coded number, and then after the election, ... |
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Swedish Pirate Party Gets A Second EU Parliament Seat (05 November 09:55) |
| When the election results first came in for the EU Parliament back in June, it initially looked like the Swedish Pirate Party would get two seats, though it was later downgraded to just one.... |
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Why Is NY Not The FTC Or DOJ Filing Antitrust Claims Against Intel (05 November 07:54) |
| I have no idea if Intel is really guilty of antitrust violations or not at this point -- though, considering the fact that its products keep getting faster and cheaper, it's not as if there'... |
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EMI Sues Music Site Offering Beatles MP3s (05 November 06:15) |
| Last last week, a bunch of music blogs started noticing that a previously unknown site called Bluebeat.com was selling MP3s for $0.25, including numerous acts that still haven't officially a... |
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Is It Really A Problem That Only 31 Newspapers Sent Reporters To The World Series (05 November 04:53) |
| Earlier this year, we had a discussion on the changing nature of sports beat reporting in the internet era, and one of the points we made is that there really is an awful lot of overlap and ... |
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Grammy Winner If Youre A Good Musician You Have Nothing To Fear With Piracy (05 November 03:41) |
| Last year, we wrote about Grammy award wining singer Joss Stone and her opinions on file sharing where she said she "loves it" and thinks "it's brilliant." More recently, Stone was asked a... |
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Patent Holder Sues McAfee Gets $25 Million But May End Up Losing $5 Million Due To Everyone It Has To Pay Off (05 November 02:21) |
| A few years ago, we noticed the troubling trend of private equity firms raising capital solely for the purpose of investing in patent lawsuits. Basically, these private equity guys saw the ... |
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Patent Holder Sues McAfee Gets $25 Million But May End Up Losing $5 Million Due To Everyone It Has To Pay Off [Update] (05 November 02:21) |
| A few years ago, we noticed the troubling trend of private equity firms raising capital solely for the purpose of investing in patent lawsuits. Basically, these private equity guys saw the ... |
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Why Kicking Fans Off The Internet Wont Make Them Buy (05 November 01:01) |
| When Lord Mandelson officially announced his plan to kick file sharers off the internet based on accusations (not convictions) -- the so-called "three strikes" plan -- I asked a simple quest... |
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Storm Trooper Copyright Lawsuit Back On In the UK (04 November 11:40) |
| Last year we wrote about a copyright fight between George Lucas/Lucasfilm and Andrew Ainsworth, the guy who created the original costumes for the storm troopers in Star Wars. Ainsworth beli... |
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Law Professor ! Claims Copyright Infringement Because Blog Uses Faculty Photo In Blog Post (04 November 10:22) |
| Just because you're a law professor, it doesn't mean you really understand the law, apparently. Eric Goldman (a law professor who does understand the law) alerts us to a bizarre lawsuit inv... |
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Law Professor ! Claims Copyright Infringement Because Blog Uses Faculty Photo In Blog Post [Update] (04 November 10:22) |
| Just because you're a law professor, it doesn't mean you really understand the law, apparently. Eric Goldman (a law professor who does understand the law) alerts us to a bizarre lawsuit inv... |
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Time For Palm To Drop WebOS And Embrace Android (04 November 08:52) |
| It appears that Wall Street is giving up on Palm after sales of the Pre have been massively disappointing, and Sprint (their only US partner) appears to be focusing more and more on HTC Andr... |
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Australian Radio Program On Piracy What 60 Minutes Should Have Done (04 November 07:02) |
| On Monday, we wrote about that that ridiculous attempt by 60 Minutes to do a story about movie piracy that was basically one long press release for the MPAA's position. Facts weren't checke... |
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Attacks On File Sharing Simply Drive People Further Underground (04 November 04:23) |
| Admittedly it's just an estimate, but reports coming out of Sweden suggest that, rather than stop file sharing, under the new IPRED law, a growing number of file sharing users have simply go... |
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ATT Sues Verizon Over Theres A Map For That Ad Campaign (04 November 01:36) |
| Recently, Verizon came up with a rather clever ad campaign, mocking the iPhone ads that claim "there's an app for that" with ads that showcase Verizon's wider 3G footprint, claiming "there's... |
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Reason To Have A Distinct Ringtone So You Can Find Your Mobile Phone At The Dump (04 November 11:25) |
| A guy in Aspen accidentally dropped his mobile phone into the piles of leaves he was raking up, and scooped up the phone and sent it off to the dump... But, amazingly, he was reunited with t... |
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Court Rules That Using Domain Registration Privacy Services Represents Material Falsification (04 November 09:25) |
| Lots of people use private registration services for domain names, that lets them register a domain name while keeping their own identities private. There are plenty of legitimate reasons t... |
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Discount Tickets Available To SF MusicTech (04 November 07:33) |
| On December 7th in San Francisco, there will be the next SF MusicTech Summit, which is a great event that I've been to a few times before. It really does a great job covering technology and... |
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