What makes people happy? This is a difficult question, particularly when one considers that there is a growing trend in some policy circles to emphasise happiness as a goal, instead of concentrating efforts on making people richer. The BBC even broadcast a series looking at the new science of happiness. Read more…
LimeWire has replied to the RIAA suit against them with a countersuit. LimeWire has issued its answer to the plaintiff’s claim, and have counter-sued. The document makes an interesting argument against the RIAA’s anti-competitive practices. The main claim is that the RIAA has been operating as a cartel by promoting Read more…
The BBC reports on a serious security breach at Second Life, the popular virtual environment game thingy. According to a bulletin by Linden Labs, the makers of the game, they have expressed that: “Linden Lab reported today that it is notifying its community of a database breach, which potentially exposed Read more…
Some further news about the Zune and Creative Commons DRM discussion, which has caused quite a stir in the circles that get stirred by this sort of tune. Just a brief recap. The Zune Insider blog broke the news that Zune would have a new interesting feature to transfer files Read more…
Richard Poynder has emailed me a link from an interview with Richard Jefferson, founder of the Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS), an Austrlian initiative on the use of open source licensing and principles in the biological sciences. There is a longer version of the interview available under a Creative Read more…
Groklaw has the story of yet another court victory for the GPL in Germany. This is the second such court ruling in Germany, which I find ironic as I was once involved in a heated argument with a German law professor who assured me that open source licensing in general, Read more…
There seems to be a new software patent conflict in the European air as a result of the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). The EPLA is a project by the members states of the European Patent Convention, and it is being organised by the European Patent Office. The EPLA will Read more…
For those unfamiliar with SSRN, it is one of the most important research resources that I use to find articles that are otherwise not easily available online. SSRN relies on authors making their articles available in PDF format. Why should anyone make their articles available online? Because SSRN uses the Read more…
Thanks to Ilanah at IPKat for reminding me that today is “Talk Like a Pirate” day. Avast me hearties, arrrgggh! As a devout Pastafarian, I keep taps on all things pirate. For example, did you know that Patafarianism teaches us that there is direct correlation between global warming and the Read more…
Both the techie press and blogospheres have been filled with stories on Zune, Microsoft’s new digital player and best hope to cripple Apple’s hold on the market. Zune follows Redmond’s long tradition of arriving late to a market and trying to take on the early innovators, but I digress. Something Read more…