As part of the its Development Agenda, the World Intellectual Property Organisation has published a report entitled “Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain” by the always wonderful Professor Séverine Dussollier. In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to point out that I was Read more…
(via TechDirt) The New York Times has published an interesting article about how copyright owners are urging for a change in Spanish copyright law (as an aside, I should find another word to describe articles linked in this blog, “interesting” is seriously over-used). Allegedly, Spain is the pirate capital of Read more…
An interesting case of art ownership and moral rights is taking place in Costa Rica at the moment. The new 2,000 colones bill will enter into circulation soon. However, there has been a dispute because the author of the portrait of educator Mauro Fernández (pictured) has claimed that he was Read more…
So, what many suspected has come to pass, our deepest fears confirmed and one of the worst possible texts adopted. The Digital Economy Bill has gone through the wash-up process in the very last day of this Parliament. I am expecting others to go into the detail of what is Read more…
The Hight Court in England has just delivered a ruling in the case of 20th Century Fox & Anor v Newzbin Ltd. Newzbin is a usenet binary file-sharing service that allows users to search and share material using the bulletin-board-like protocol. Wikipedia points out that “Usenet is distributed among a Read more…
The Hollywood Reporter’s legal blog is carrying a story about yet another lawsuit involving landmarks and/or statues. The Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro is suing Columbia Pictures for copyright infringement over the exclusive rights it holds on the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, one of the Read more…
Tired of hearing copyright infringement called “theft” by all sort of people in the content industries? James Murdoch of News Corp is just the latest in a long line of industry shills who favour this wrong-headed argument. I could write a long retort to that statement, but I will simply Read more…
Apologies for the sensationalist title, but that is precisely what came to mind when I read an article about how the book industry has lost billions of dollars because of book downloading. Attributor is a company that produces anti-piracy solutions, and they have conducted a study that claims illegal downloading Read more…
Things are heating up in the fight against piracy in the UK. Virgin Media has announced that it will use deep packet inspection (DPI) software to analyse whether its customers are sharing copyright infringing material. Privacy International has brought this practice to the attention of both the European Commission and Read more…
It was supposed to be the British equivalent of high-profile cases such as PirateBay and the Jamie Thomas trial. It was supposed to act as a clear deterrent to a new generation of file-sharers against widespread copyright infringement. Instead, Alan Ellis, the founder of torrent tracking site OiNK has been Read more…