[copyright] Forum Topics

It looks like common sense has broken out in New Zealand. There was a proposal to allow people to cut off customers completely when they were suspected of flouting copyright laws. Now that appears to be on [URL="http://www.out-law.com/default.aspx?page=9831"]hold[/URL]. I hope it won't come back. Let's be honest, I don't like …

A belated word about last week's [URL="http://www.facebook.com"]Facebook[/URL] fiasco, if I may. You might remember the company aroused all sorts of excitement when it changed its terms and conditions to allow itself rights in perpetuity to images on its servers. The BBC had a [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7897824.stm"]social media expert[/URL] in to explain how …

The Pirate Bay is, without doubt, a huge thorn in the side of the music and movies business. As the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3479.html"]worlds largest bittorrent tracker[/URL] with more than 3 million users and well over 20 million peers it constantly flips the bird at The Powers That Be. Even the threat of …

I wrote a [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3687.html"]post[/URL] the other day criticizing the RIAA for failing to understand 21st marketing techniques. The night I wrote the RIAA post, I listened to an interview on [URL="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98591002"]Fresh Air [/URL]with author and Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who recently published a book called [URL="http://remix.lessig.org/"]Remix[/URL], and he articulated …

The time has come to drag the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) kicking and screaming into the 21st century because it clearly has a lot to learn about marketing on the internet. The RIAA had a [URL="http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/music/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501507&subSection=Management"]good news/bad news announcement[/URL] on Friday. The good news was that it would …

MDY Industries developed a popular World of Warcraft bot by the name of MMOGlider. Popular because, I would imagine, it took much of the donkey work out of progressing through the virtual world by automating repetitive tasks. You know, the boring stuff such as slaying monsters and scavenging for loot. …

Italian Internet Service Providers have been ordered to block access to the Pirate Bay file-sharing Bit Torrent tracker site in Sweden by a judge in the Northern Italian town of Bergamo. This is the same judge, who has not been named, which only last month closed a leading Bit Torrent …

According to ChannelWeb a federal judge sitting in the US Court of Appeals has ruled that open source software licenses are [URL="http://www.crn.com/software/210004167"]legal under copyright law[/URL]. This is a complete u-turn on a previous ruling which had thrown the not so small matter of open source licensing into something of a …

I'm on vacation right now in Germany, and I thought I could watch some American TV here on my PC. But I've learned that US sites consistently block their TV shows outside the US, a practice I find more than a bit curious. I tried the network sites. I tried …

Just when you thought it was safe to forget SCO and their ridiculous notions about suing IBM and others for infringing on their copyright ownership of UNIX, it isn't. It's been 5 years since SCO sent out its threatdown letters to large companies telling them that they may owe money …

A federal court today ruled in favor of people using file-sharing applications such as Napster and Kazaa, notorious for illegal distribution of music files. The ruling was a blow to the [URL= http://www.riaa.org/]Recording Industry Association of America[/URL], which has been combating users and developers of this software because of its …

Who could forget [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lech_Johansen"]DVD Jon[/URL], the Linux guru who was co-author of DeCSS? This Linux application 'unlocked' DVDs with content otherwise protected by Content Scrambling System (CSS) encryption and landed DVD Jon in front of a judge. Which did not stop him from continuing his quest to free audiovisual content …

Yes, in a bizarre twist and turn of fate, the original bad boy of illegal MP3 downloads which then went legit and hooked subscribers into music with Microsoft's digital rights management system has changed tack and announced it is to sell MP3 format tunes. So, OK, maybe not a real …

A proposal from the [URL="http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/en/"]French Ministry of Culture[/URL] could hit online music and movie piracy very hard with a very big stick if it goes ahead. In addition to the existing law, introduced only last year, which made unauthorised file-sharing a criminal offence carrying a 30,000 Euro fine and up …

According to a legal [URL="http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/lenz_v_universal/final_lenz_am_cmplt.pdf"]document[/URL] published at the [URL="http://www.eff.org"]Electronic Frontier Foundation[/URL] site, the copyright Nazis at Universal Music Group might have bitten off more than they can chew when they ordered the removal of a Dancing baby clip from YouTube. Stephanie Lenz posted a video clip on YouTube of her …

Many of the world's leading Internet and media companies, including CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Fox Entertainment Group, Microsoft Corp., MySpace, NBC Universal, Veoh Networks Inc., Viacom Inc. and The Walt Disney Company, have pledged their support to a set of collaborative principles that are designed to foster the growth and development …

A [URL="http://blogs.allofmp3.ru/music_news"]statement[/URL] from the All of MP3 folk reads "the service will be resumed in the foreseeable future. We are doing our best at the moment to ensure that all our users can use their accounts, top up balance and order music." This follows a Moscow district court ruling earlier …

It seems like Apple is nearing a day we'd never think would come. [URL="http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKN0137689420070402"]This time it seems official.[/URL] According to the reports, Apple and EMI have formed a deal that would not only allow Apple to sell EMI's music on their store (quite possibly The Beatles), but "large portions of …

Google is being charged with content copying by none other than... Microsoft. They are complaining that Google is copying far too much information, information that many people make a living on. Google's been trying to make the whole web searchable, everything from books to news to magazines. Although Google has …

I am a writer by profession. Over the last two decades, I have been fortunate enough to have seen more than twenty of my books make it into print. Some have even sold enough copies for me to earn royalties over and above my advance. With publishing house marketing budgets …

If you are the GoogleBot, you are probably reading this. Why? Well, your creator, the rapidly evolving Google Inc, who might I add has prevented many execs at Microsoft and Yahoo from sleeping well at night, released its Blog search feature today, which indexes RSS and Atom feeds. It’s a …

Creative Technology, the makers of the Soundblaster cards, and more recently, the Zen Neon portable music players, confirmed this week that 4,000 of it's shipped Neon music players shipped with the Wullik.b worm that affects Windows computers. Wullik.b came to the world in 2003 and it attacks all flavors of …

The battles between Microsoft and Google have been widely discussed, and recently hit the courts again when Microsoft claimed that Google had unlawfully lured Kai-Fu Lee to work for them. The defection, Microsoft claimed, was in violation of a ‘non-compete’ clause which was included in Lee’s contract with Microsoft. Superior …