LimeWire, the popular Gnutella P2P client, has been sued by music industry giants Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI Music. This new case will be the first to try the inducement test introduced by MGM v Grokster, as the music companies will claim that LimeWire is “actively facilitating, Read more…
(Thanks to Jordan Hatcher for the link). A London law firm will be sending a murder of lawyers to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to train comedians on how to protect their intellectual property. No, this is not a cheap joke. Apparently, joke stealing is a serious problem at the Fringe, Read more…
Phishers appear to be growing more imaginative, perhaps as a sign of growing consumer sophistication about their tactics. I have just received a phishing email that seems to play on phishing scam fears by asking users not to give information away, but then directing them to a website where they Read more…
This is a very interesting article about the growing practice of plagiarism online, particularly fueled by the blog explosion. More and more people are joining the bandwagon and creating a blog, writing their thoughts and opinions for the world to read (or more accurately, for their reluctant and suffering friends Read more…
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a worthy project to combat the digital divide (if somebody utters the word “bridge” I will scream). The project has managed to design $100 USD laptops, which is considered affordable enough to provide children in developing countries and remote rural communities with their first Read more…
Two pieces of news exemplify that IP maximalism is alive and well, and that the copyfight has just begun (cue Imperial March). The first is a piece in The Times regarding the term extension of sound recordings. The article informs us that those poor struggling artists, Cliff Richard and The Read more…
The second draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 is now available to the public. I have spent some time this weekend reading through the new draft and comparing it with the original. You can find some of my earlier opinions about the first draft in this SCRIPTed Read more…
The international record industry has been heralding as a great victory their deal with P2P software producer Sharman Networks, the makers of the KaZaA P2P client. Read for example this note from FT.com, where the settlement is described as one of the biggest victories against online piracy for the music Read more…
The place and dates for the 2007 edition of the iCommons summit has been announced. This edition of the summit will take place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, between 15-17 June 2007.
(From Burkhard Schäfer). Wikipedia is celebrating 750 years of American independence on the 25th of July, according to The Onion. The article informs us that the United States became independent in 1256, that there is footage of the original Thanksgiving on YouTube, and that the founding fathers are Jefferson, Washington Read more…