Category Archives: Copyright, patents, and trademarks
Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system
The Free Software Foundation has funded a documentary about the folly of software patents, titled Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system. The film is available in Ogg Theora format. If you have a modern browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc) … Continue reading
Posted in Copyright, patents, and trademarks
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and so…
the great patent war begins. This is the big one.
I wouldn’t steal
Another sane message about copyright – this time from the European Free Alliance in the European Parliament (the Greens): I wouldn’t steal. This site touches on two points that have irritated me for a very long time in the whole … Continue reading
copyright sanity
The ever amazing Michael Geist published a great list of “fair copyright for Canada” principles, which he thinks should be adhered to in the drawing up of new Canadian copyright legislation. A lot of it applies world-wide, in my opinion. … Continue reading
time to take away the RIAA’s privileges
Alexander Wolfe over at Information Week has an article up with a great suggestion: deal with the RIAA as we do with misbehaving children: take away their privileges. He proposes shortening corporate copyrights from the current 125 years to 5 … Continue reading
djb to release all his software into the public domain
Dan Bernstein aka djb writes brilliant software. He has a reputation for being a little difficult but his software is really, really well written and some of the most secure code out there. I used qmail for a long time, … Continue reading
Lessig at TED
Larry Lessig‘s excellent talk at TED titled ‘how creativity is stranged by the law’ is now online. Recommended viewing – 19 minutes long.
Posted in Copyright, patents, and trademarks
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gene patents
Michael Crichton (the author) has a most interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times today about the folly of gene patents. Patents are supposed to cover inventions. Genes are most certainly not inventions. They are ‘features of the natural … Continue reading
the music industry
So, in one week the music industry has managed to get signatures from artists that are dead in support of a (retroactive!) copyright extension in the UK, and now the RIAA is trying to lower the royalties it pays to … Continue reading
6 new copyright exemptions
The US copyright office at the Library of Congress has issued 6 new copyright exemptions. Basically, there are 6 new (narrow) exemptions from the DMCA: * anyone can now ‘unlock’ cell phones * film professors can break CSS to make … Continue reading
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