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Tiffany Still Confused About How Liability Works; Appeals eBay Decision (12 August 10:51) |
| Last month a US court correctly pointed out that eBay was not liable for counterfeit products showing up on the auction site. That doesn't mean that it's legal to sell counterfeit products,... |
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RIM Pays Off Wi-LAN To Get Rid Of Another Patent Suit (12 August 08:29) |
| Wi-LAN is a Canadian company that did some early work in the wireless field, but was unable to actually make much of a business out of its work, so it took the loser's route: it started suin... |
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Dear Old Media: You Can't Delay The News; Nor Should You Want To (12 August 06:38) |
| David Carr, over at the NY Times, has a good column pointing out not just how silly NBC's efforts to block all websites from showing the Olympics opening ceremony before it broadcast the (lo... |
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'Innocent Infringement' As A Way To Lower Copyright Infringement Damages? (12 August 04:51) |
| You often hear it repeated that "ignorance is no defense" to breaking the law, but it may actually be working in one copyright infringement lawsuit. Ray Beckerman has the details on a case ... |
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TSA Vendor Who Lost Laptop Apologizing To People Who Didn't Even Apply (12 August 03:21) |
| We recently wrote about how TSA-approved vendor, Verified Identity Pass, had lost a laptop containing all sorts of unencrypted data on people who had applied to be a part of the TSA's "fast ... |
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Why Treating Patents As Property Is A Bad Idea (12 August 01:48) |
| We've pointed out in the past why it doesn't make much sense to treat "intellectual property" as "regular property," since it ignores some very important differences between the two. James ... |
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Will Nicholas Negroponte Ever Understand That Competition Isn't About Killing OLPC? (12 August 12:18) |
| We've never quite understood Nicholas Negroponte's position when it comes to the $100 Laptop/OLPC/XO (whatever it's called these days). While the idea behind creating a super cheap, super d... |
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Is Taking A Laptop On Vacation Stupid? (11 August 10:47) |
| More than five years ago, we first discussed whether or not it made sense to take a laptop with you on vacation. Many people do so, and say that it's actually quite useful, because it allow... |
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Italy Tries, Fails To Ban The Pirate Bay (11 August 09:01) |
| A few years back, with the help of some pressure from US gov't officials, Sweden tried to shut down The Pirate Bay. It worked for about a day until the site was back up. And, of course, th... |
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UK High Court Recognizes That Defamation Standard Should Be Lowered For Online Forums (11 August 06:39) |
| UK libel law is incredibly strict. It's much stricter than in the US, which is why there have been a few cases over the years where someone tried to sue for libel in the UK despite the fact... |
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Boston Subway System Stops Defcon Talk; But Paints Security Target On Its Back (11 August 03:43) |
| You would think after years and years of it backfiring every time some scared organization tries to shut down a talk concerning their security vulnerabilities, that people wouldn't even bot... |
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How Copyright Is Holding Back The Creative Class (09 August 08:51) |
| While not enough people recognize it, the real purpose of copyright law is to provide an incentive for the creation of more content. The government felt that there was a market failure, whe... |
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Before We Ban Mobile Phones On Planes, Why Not See If They're Really A Problem? (09 August 07:28) |
| We've already explained why it's rather silly for Congress to pass an outright ban of talking on mobile phones in-flight, but that probably won't stop the effort from going forward. However... |
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Who Can You Sue When It's Your Own Copy Protection That Hurt Your Reputation? (09 August 05:55) |
| Video game maker Ubisoft has a rather long history of employing crappy DRM (and then even using someone else's code to crack their DRM when it caused problems for legitimate customers). How... |
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Philadelphia Inquirer Tells Staff Bloggers Not To Use Blogs To Test Story Ideas (09 August 04:28) |
| When you've built a business based on artificial scarcity for years, and then suddenly find yourself in a much more competitive market, it's no surprise that some of the ideas you come up wi... |
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Feingold Points Out That DHS's Chertoff Is Misleading On Border Laptop Searches (09 August 03:14) |
| Following the release of Homeland Security's policies for searching laptops at the border, where the rules are, effectively, "anything goes," DHS boss Michael Chertoff claimed that laptop se... |
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Good News For Innovation: California Confirms That Noncompetes Are Unenforceable (09 August 02:07) |
| Last year, I outlined a bunch of research from the past few years that show how damaging noncompete agreements are to innovation. In fact, some of the research suggests that the single bigg... |
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Airline Plans To Cancel All Flights Booked Through 3rd Party Websites (09 August 12:41) |
| And people wonder why airlines have so much trouble staying in business? We were already confused enough by American Airlines' desire not to be listed on the sites where people search for a... |
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Eight $1,000 App Buyers Later, And Apple Pulls It (08 August 11:25) |
| Two days ago we wrote about the "I Am Rich" iPhone application, which, for the staggering sum of $1,000, provided you with - get ready for it - a glowing red screen. Although it struck many ... |
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Time For Another Technology Moral Panic? Digital Drugs! Be Afraid! (08 August 09:52) |
| USA Today got us talking about the concept of technology moral panics with their fear mongering article about predators using game consoles -- and now it's back with a big warning about "dig... |
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Totally Misunderstanding Movie Downloading In France (08 August 08:08) |
| A bunch of folks have sent in this report from Variety about a study talking about what a big deal unauthorized movie downloading is in France. Specifically, it points out that movie downlo... |
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Dumb Criminal Series: When Newspaper Subscriptions Jump From 65 To 2,781 Someone May Get Suspicious (08 August 05:35) |
| Romenesko points us to a good one for the "dumb criminal" series. A NY Times delivery carrier has been accused of defrauding the paper of over $300k by sending in fake newspaper subscriptio... |
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Patent Gridlock Harming The Ability To Create Lifesaving Cures (08 August 02:08) |
| I've gotten way behind on my series of posts on intellectual property. I plan to pick it up again shortly. There's a big post I've been working on that I just haven't had the time to compl... |
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When Suing For Copyright Infringement On A $500 License, Don't Ask For $766 Million (08 August 10:32) |
| Eric Goldman has a short blurb describing the outcome in a copyright lawsuit where a title company apparently infringed on the copyright of another company by reusing its web-based "rate cal... |
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CD Duplicator Buys CD Baby; Recognizing A Digital Future (08 August 08:38) |
| Lots of folks who follow the music space are aware of CD Baby, who has helped independent artists sell their music for years. It basically was a one stop shop for many independent artists, ... |
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Security? What Security? Automatic Toll Systems And Passports Found Easily Hackable (08 August 06:47) |
| At this point it shouldn't be a surprise that various systems that shouldn't be are quite easily hacked, but that doesn't make it any less disturbing. Over at this years Black Hat event the... |
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Grammar Nazis Rejoice: NYT's In-House Grammar Nazi Opens Up Weekly Critique (08 August 05:19) |
| There's a class of folks (you know who you are!) who are well known in any kind of written forum/blog/email list etc. It's the infamous "Grammar Nazi." There are nice Grammar Nazis -- and ... |
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IBM Patents 'Paper Or Plastic'? (08 August 03:53) |
| Slashdot points us to the latest absurd patent to get approval from the USPTO. IBM has been granted a patent on the concept of storing your packaging preference information on your customer... |
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When Laws Can't Keep Up With Technology: Future Lawsuits To Worry About (08 August 02:33) |
| We were just talking about how copyright law has been unable to keep up with technology changes, but that's not the only law that rapidly changing technology is already impacting. As the pa... |
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Warner Music Complains That Rock Band And Guitar Hero Need To Pay More For Music (08 August 01:23) |
| And here they go again. Despite the fact that the games Guitar Hero and Rock Band have breathed new life into various musical acts and helped pump up sales of certain artists, the recording... |
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The Napster Of Newspapers (07 August 11:39) |
| It's no secret that I tend to think folks who worry about plagiarism quite often blow the issue out of proportion. Luckily, over the last few years, we've seen more and more folks start to ... |
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Lotus Adds Fake Engine Noise To Make Hybrids Sound Like Cars (07 August 10:05) |
| There have been a few stories over the past few years about the fact that hybrid cars (or just plane electric vehicles) are somehow "too quiet." The complaint is that pedestrians and bikers... |
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Andrew Cuomo's Blueprint For How Gov't Can Get ISPs To Censor Content (07 August 08:14) |
| It looks like NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has put forth a nice blueprint for how politicians can "censor" online content without technically breaking a law themselves: just threaten to ... |
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Mentioning 'Hits' Is Deceptive Advertising In The UK? (07 August 05:24) |
| Over in the UK, it appears that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decided that putting the number of hits your website gets into an ad is somehow deceptive advertising. Now, mos... |
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Is BitTorrent Realizing That Its Advantage Is In Distribution Technology, Not DRM-Laden Stores? (07 August 02:46) |
| We were among those who were quite confused last year when BitTorrent (the company, not the underlying technology) decided that its business model would be to give in to counterproductive Ho... |
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Will DHS Border Search Logic Be Used To Allow Gov't Screening Of All Internet Traffic? (07 August 11:25) |
| We've already explained how ridiculous it is for DHS to say that border patrol agents need to search laptops to prevent dangerous information from getting into the country. Obviously, if th... |
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Dish And DirecTV Figure If XM And Sirius Can Merge... (07 August 09:09) |
| You may remember back in 2001 that EchoStar, then owners of the DISH Network, tried to buy DirecTV from then owner Hughes (who was owned by GM at the time). However, after the Justice Depar... |
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Silicon Valley Isn't Ignoring China; It's Looking For The Opportunity (07 August 07:16) |
| Echoing some of Rebecca McKinnon's claims that we discussed recently, VentureBeat is running an OpEd piece by Rebecca A. Fannin, claiming that Silicon Valley has its head in the sand about t... |
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NebuAd In Trouble After Congress Suggests Its Entire Business Is Illegal (07 August 05:28) |
| We've covered the saga of companies like NebuAd and Phorm, who basically worked with ISPs to access your clickstream data and place advertisements based on your overall surfing habits, rathe... |
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Broadband Crunch Still Nowhere To Be Found; Internet Growth May Actually Be Slowing (07 August 03:57) |
| While consultants, telco lobbyists and politicians keep insisting that the internet is on the verge of collapse as more high bandwdith apps and services move online, we continue to rely on t... |
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Newspaper Content Is Advertising For More News Content (07 August 02:38) |
| I haven't had much time lately to add any new posts to my series of posts on how content is advertising, but a great post from Steve Yelvington is a perfect example of how this works in the ... |
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Is There Any Good Reason Why Apple Should Pull The $1000 iPhone App? (07 August 01:23) |
| Someone has created a simple iPhone application called "I Am Rich" which sells for $999.99 and simply makes the screen grow ruby red and offers "a secret mantra." But more shocking than this... |
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Another Author Shows JK Rowling How To Embrace Fans (07 August 12:04) |
| We covered the ridiculous lawsuit that JK Rowling had filed against a fan who created a reference book, The Harry Potter Lexicon to supplement her massively popular novels. At the actual tr... |
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Dear MPAA: DRM Is Not A Requirement For Releasing Movies (06 August 10:34) |
| We've written about the request from the MPAA to the FCC to grant a waiver that would allow the MPAA to use "selectable output control" (SOC) in order to block DVRs from recording their movi... |
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Infrared Spy Plane Leads To Police Officer's House Getting Raided Over Poor Insulation (06 August 08:53) |
| Last year, we wrote about an odd use of infrared camera technology. Apparently, a city in the UK, Haringey, was sending out spy planes with infrared cameras to map out heat loss from every ... |
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Openness Is A Winning Business Strategy (06 August 07:14) |
| For some unfortunate reason, there seems to be this idea that "open" solutions are somehow a less feasible business strategy. There are still those that sneer at open source companies as so... |
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Lawyer Points Out That Simultaneous Invention Can Get Patents Tossed (06 August 04:41) |
| For years, we've pointed out how ridiculous it is that our patent system doesn't include an independent invention defense. It seems rather against the concept of promoting innovation to say... |
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Eleven Charged In Massive TJX Data Loss... But Many Are Still Overseas (06 August 02:15) |
| We've had numerous posts about the massive (some say the largest ever) data breach by TJX, parent company of retailers like TJ Maxx and Marshalls. So, it's certainly worth mentioning the st... |
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Why Is Illinois Only Concerned About Canceling Online Gaming Services? (06 August 10:57) |
| An anonymous reader points us to the news that the state of Illinois has passed a law in response to the complaint of one individual that it was extremely difficult to cancel his online subs... |
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A Lot More At Stake In TorrentSpy vs. MPAA Email Snooping Lawsuit (06 August 09:20) |
| For a few years now, we've been covering the battle between TorrentSpy and the MPAA. While TorrentSpy has given in and shut down on the question concerning the operations of its business, t... |
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