Oh dear, so Apple has released a new product, and the techie blogosphere has gone crazy. The early verdict seems negative, with various people pointing out the many features that it does not have, but to me Hitler sums it up nicely when he says that it is an over-sized 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
Anyone who has been paying attention to the War on Piracy will have noticed that the emphasis has shifted from the user to the internet service provider. As content owners discovered that attempts to enforce their rights against users backfired and/or had no noticeable effect, they began returning to the Read more
The COMMUNIA project has published The Public Domain Manifesto. I reproduce the preamble: “Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l’auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient—le mot n’est pas trop vaste—au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l’un des deux droits, le droit de l’écrivain et le droit Read more
I recently wrote about a story that appeared in BoingBong and Michael Geist’s blog about Costa Rica being forced by the United States to pass maximalist IP legislation through the imposition of sugar import restrictions. Diego Delfino of the excellent site 89 Decibleles has posted a response to my claims. Read more
Quick reminder that the Open Rights Group is holding a meeting in Edinburgh this Sunday: How to talk to your MP and get them to change the Digital Economy Bill (Edinburgh) Sunday, January 24, 2010 from 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM (GMT) Gain the confidence to talk and write to Read more
As usual, xkcd makes an excellent point: With sizes of up to 64GB contained in a tiny card the size of a coin, I wonder why the content industries are not concentrating more on such storage devices, and continue to insist that the war on piracy is an online endeavour. 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
As far as incendiary headlines go, this one in BoingBong is near the top when it comes to flammability: US to Costa Rica: you want sugar markets? We want maximal copyright. It has everything, a large and powerful country threatens a small unarmed trading partner with retaliatory sanctions if they Read more
Much virtual ink has been spent in describing the breaking of hostilities between Google and the Chinese government, after the search engine company claimed that it had been the victim of a targeted attack in order to obtain information about Chinese dissidents. In condemning the attack, Google clearly pointed an Read more