A civil court in Amsterdam has delivered a throwback ruling that reverses a decade of legal practice in intermediary liability. The BREIN Foundation is an anti-piracy group in the Netherlands, and it sued News-Service.com Europe (NSE), one of the largest providers of Usenet services in Europe. BREIN brought the action Read more…
This bit of news was reported by the Creative Commons Blog some weeks ago, but it deserves as much dissemination as possible. The regional court of Berlin (Landgericht Berlin) has effectively enforced a CC Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) Unported licence against a far-right party. This is great news because it is Read more…
With all of the patent suits Apple is currently filing against its tab and smartphone competitors, the title is more than justified. But the following is a personal rant that I believe exemplifies what is wrong with Apple. [Rant warning] This may be a hypocritical title, considering that I am writing Read more…
Last week, Yours Truly attended the 5th edition of the Creative Commons Summit in Warsaw, Poland. This was an impressive event bringing together Creative Commons affiliates and enthusiasts from all over the world. Anyone who has been following the rise of Creative Commons as an international movement may have noticed Read more…
Yours truly has been on the road for the last week, through the northern frozen wilderness of Edinburgh to the urban post-apocalyptic wastelands of London. Now I am attending the 5th edition of the Creative Commons Summit in Warsaw. This affair promises to be more focused, the program looks impressive, Read more…
The final version of the Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest has been published (PDF version here). This is a thorough and impressive documents stating the guiding principles towards a positive agenda in the intellectual property debates. The Preamble sets out this masterfully: Time is of the Read more…
Some readers may remember that some time ago I wrote a post about Bitcoin, an interesting online payment experiment in the shape of a cryptographic currency. My conclusion was that the currency was probably illegal in the U.S. and Europe, and left it at that. At the time Bitcoin’s star Read more…
Last week yours truly attended the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, a meeting of like-minded activists and academics who got together to discuss and frame a positive agenda in the IP debate. The “progressive” side in the IP Wars has often been criticised by its opponents Read more…
Last Sunday Fidel Gamboa, the lead singer of Malpaís, died at the painfully young age of 50. I wish I had known him enough to call him a friend, we had met several times and I admired his music, his sensibilities, and now I must carry the regret that I Read more…
Consulting firm Gartner has produced a report suggesting that interest in social media may have peaked. The report says: “Of the respondents, 24 percent said they use their favorite social media site less than when they first signed up. These respondents tended to be in segments that have a more Read more…