Travel
Back from the tropics
I am now back from the tropics. Thanks to Arne Kolbe, who kindly accepted to fill in with some posts while I was away sipping piña coladas and Imperial.
Feeling silly
Kill the Christmas Blues
Are you feeling the Christmas blues? Are you sick of eating fruticake, turkey or tamal? Do you think that if you see another picture of Santa you will leave the room screaming? The solution is finally here! Let Slingshot Santa cure all of your problems.(Thanks to Rena for the link).
Regulation
Database right review
As usual, James Boyle has made an excellent comment in his always informative FT column, this time about the recently announced review of the database right. Could we be facing a turn in IP policy? As far as I know, there has never been a situation where an IP right Read more…
Software patents
Bad software patents again
Greg Aharonian has named the worst software patent of the year in his PATNEWS mailing list, and I must say that I thoroughly agree with his choice. Behold U.S. Patent 6,910,071, which protects a “Surveillance monitoring and automated reporting method for detecting data changes”. Sounds impressive, right? Here is the Read more…
Creative Commons
Creative Commons and real life
What happens when works licensed under Creative Commons hit real life? My theory is that CC is no different to any other type of licensing in principle, and that posting stuff online will always leave one open to abuse, be it with proprietary or non-proprietary works. This is brought by Read more…
Web 2.0
alternative wikipedia edited by experts
According to The Register, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is to launch an alternative Wikipedia that combines the best of both worlds: wide public input edited by hired experts. This is definitely something to be curious about and it will be interesting to see how this approach works out. Arne
Announcements
SCRIPT-ed December issue now online
The latest issue of SCRIPTed is now online. Here are the contents: Editorial – The Adelphi Charter; John Howkins. Special Feature – Intellectual Property, Competition and Human Rights: the past, the present and the future; Abbe Brown and Charlotte Waelde. – Intellectual Property Rights, Competition Policy and Innovation: Is There Read more…
Open science
What does Nature’s Wikipedia study reveal?
This week Nature published a study on the reliability of Wikipedia in comparison to the Britannica encyclopaedia. 50 science articles were chosen from both encyclopaedias and send for “blind” peer review. The result from 42 returned usable reviews: Britannica turned up 123 errors, and Wikipedia 162. In regards to this Read more…
P2P
Flooding peer-to-peer networks firm fails
A firm dedicated to flooding P2P file sharing networks with fake copies has been shut down. Overpeer was a company that started filling networks with copies that did not work in order to make it difficult for users to find music. They were initially paid by the music industry, but Read more…
Enforcement
If you can’t beat them, sue them
Creative is threatening to enforce a patent that they own on a system to navigate music on a digital player. Unfortunately the news source does not have the patent number. This seems like just another way of beating your competition. If their product is more popular, find a broad patent Read more…