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…
This week yours truly has been thinking about net neutrality prompted by a call for regulation in one of the national newspapers (my response here). For those not familiar with the term, net neutrality is one of those annoyingly slippery concepts that defy easy classification. Traditionally, the term has been Read more…
Issue 8-2 of SCRIPTed, a journal of Law and Technology, is now online. This issue has a distinct emphasis on medical technologies, particularly issues around neuro-imaging: Editorial Twitter Chip, Simon Biggs, pp.120-123 Reviewed Articles Does Technology Trump Intellectual Property?: Re-framing the Debate About Regulating New Technologies, Michael Anthony C. Read more…
The modern copyright system owes a lot to collective copyright management. Intellectual property is all about enforcement, but it tends to be expensive and time-consuming endeavour. Collecting agencies offer a system by which copyright enforcement is allocated to a society which represents its associates. When they work as intended, they Read more…
The UK has had a glimpse of what the total societal collapse looks like. The UK riots of August 2011 have struck me as an example of systemic failure of government and society at almost every level of organisation, as lawlessness and anarchy reigned supreme for a few nights. This Read more…
(via Mathias Klang) I highly recommend this excellent video about filter bubbles: The filter bubble was a phenomenon that was described in its early shape by Cass Sunstein in his seminal Republic.com, where he narrates the rise of the Daily Me, an information filter where people hear only what they Read more…
This is an excellent podcast from NPR about software patents Some truly eye-opening interviews and in-depth investigation looking at patent trolls, the reason East Texas District is the epicentre for patent litigation, and the effect of software patents on innovation. While it is obviously American-centric, anyone involved in software has Read more…
Scotland Yard has caught LulzSec’s Topiary, their biggest scalp to date. Topiary has been identified as Jake Davis, an 18 year-old from the Shetland Islands (pictured here looking like a poster child for teenage hackers, including Neo-wannabe shades). He appeared in court earlier today and was released on bail, under Read more…