And the 2007 prize for the most useless piece of online regulation goes to…. The Beeb reports on the latest proposal from Home Secretary John Reid to force paedophiles and other sex offenders to register their electronic mail details, as well as chat-room login names and other virtual identifiers in Read more…
The AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law has now released a personality rights wiki, where you can browse the latest cases on personality rights from all over the world. Do you know a case that is not listed? Write a stub for it, a note, Read more…
A follow up on the Blackboard patent story. Blackboard has seen the writing on the wall and has issued an enforcement promise for open source software projects. According to the terms of this pledge, Blackboard will not enforce U.S. Patent 6,988,138 against software released with an open source licence. According Read more…
Luke Razzell has forwarded this invitation to an event in London for publicity purposes. Identity Society is delighted to announce an Open Space event (aka “unconference”) on February 19th in the revolving restaurant space on the 34th floor of the BT tower in central London. The tower’s curious history as Read more…
Excellent news coming from the Software Patent Law Center (SFLC). The USPTO has granted ex parte re-examination of US Patent 6,988,138, which protects “Internet-based education support system and methods”. As previously reported, this patent led to its owners, e-learning software firm Blackboard, to sue Desire2Learn, which also manufactures educational software. Read more…
(Via SCRIPT News) The copy-protection system shipped with every HD-DVD has been cracked, according to the firm in charge of licensing, Advanced Access Content System (AACS). As with DVDs before, licensed players come with a built-in encryption key (device key) which can unlock the content within High Definition discs, protected Read more…
I’ve just read a rather naive article in the BBC Technology website on the rise of BitTorrent TV-show sharing. According to the report this is the next stage in the fight against piracy, as the top shared material online now is made up of TV shows. I’m sure that TV Read more…
(via Ashley Theunissen) I recommend that you watch this video from the UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). Apparently it is being distributed in rental DVDs instead of the annoying Piracy Crime video, but I don’t know if it is new. I initially thought it was a spoof, but apparently Read more…
(via Open Access News) Journal publishers represented by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) have hired a PR firm in order to raise morale and attack open access publishing, according to a report in the journal Nature. “We’re like any firm under siege, it’s common to hire a PR firm Read more…
Licence geeks may have noticed the following information in the right-hand column of this blog: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.<!– –> The terms of the licence are simple. I will allow people to reuse and republish my posts as long as Read more…