(Thanks to Nadja for the link) This has been a great week for copyfighters, digital advocates and other internet pundits who dislike, loathe, hate or plainly distrust DRM. The Sony DRM debacle has done more for the cause against DRM than any rousing speech. When people are faced with a Read more…
In the first agreement to come out of the WSIS, the United States has kept control of ICANN. At least that is what has been reported so far, there was never really any doubt that the U.S. would keep their control. For those unfamiliar with this institution, ICANN “is responsible Read more…
I have been looking at a very interesting proposal from fellow Costarican Jaco Aizenman about something called “Virtual Rights”. The idea is to create a set of rights that apply to all citizens, who will have the right to have (or to choose not to have) a virtual personality. This Read more…
(Thanks to Jo Gibson for the link) The news wires are replete with stories of the death of a Chinese MMORPG player apparently due to exhaustion after playing non-stop for 3 straight days in World of Warcraft (the news has made it even to Metro). The story comes with calls Read more…
patentingLIVES Law, Culture, Development 1-2 December 2005 London, United Kingdom Clore Management Centre, 25–27 Torrington Square, London WC1 A 2 day international and interdisciplinary conference on life patents An exploration of the ethical, cultural, social, legal, and scientific questions 1 December 2005 Opening Session: Tony Howard, UK Patent Office Human Read more…
2005 will probably be remembered as the year of the Grokster and KaZaa cases, but there is something more important happening. It is the year of the DRM wars. Digital Rights Management has always been a controversial subject, with a very outspoken camp against it (and it has even been Read more…
As if the patenting of software was not enough of a nightmare, the next step could be the patenting of movies. You would be wise to be sceptical of this claim, who in their right mind would think of patenting movies? Behold U.S. patent application 2005/0244804, an application for the Read more…
There is a new licensing scheme for Spanish-speaking countries called“ColorIuris: Colores de Autor”, literary Author’s Colours. This page was created by a law firm in Spain under the assumption that all sorts of open licences (including Creative Commons) are incompatible with Continental traditions based on the droit d’auteur. This is Read more…
Some of the top patent judges in Europe are pleading for a unified first instance European patent court. After all, there is a European Patent Office, but the patents must be enforced in the national jursidictions, which creates a patchy and unneven application of patent rules and produce the wildy Read more…
I was checking some links in a class that I teach for our LL.M. in Innovation, Technology and the Law through distance learning. I clicked on an article that was supposed to take the students to this page, looking for the article “What is the Future of the WTO Dispute Read more…