Open content
Sunday Bloody Remix
This is an amazing remix of Sunday Bloody Sunday, sung by George W Bush. I am left speechless by the sheer creativity of people who are willing to do something like this.
Software patents
E-learning patented
(via Jordan Hatcher) Blackboard, the maker of educational software applications, has managed to patent e-learning. At first I thought that this was an exaggeration, nobody could claim such a broad patent as to cover e-learning, right? Behold U.S. Patent 6,988,138, which protects “Internet-based education support system and methods”. The title Read more
P2P
Music industry sues LimeWire
LimeWire, the popular Gnutella P2P client, has been sued by music industry giants Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI Music. This new case will be the first to try the inducement test introduced by MGM v Grokster, as the music companies will claim that LimeWire is “actively facilitating, Read more
Open content
Copyright at the Fringe
(Thanks to Jordan Hatcher for the link). A London law firm will be sending a murder of lawyers to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to train comedians on how to protect their intellectual property. No, this is not a cheap joke. Apparently, joke stealing is a serious problem at the Fringe, Read more
Cybercrime
Meta-phishing?
Phishers appear to be growing more imaginative, perhaps as a sign of growing consumer sophistication about their tactics. I have just received a phishing email that seems to play on phishing scam fears by asking users not to give information away, but then directing them to a website where they Read more
Blogging
Blogosphere is written by somebody else
This is a very interesting article about the growing practice of plagiarism online, particularly fueled by the blog explosion. More and more people are joining the bandwagon and creating a blog, writing their thoughts and opinions for the world to read (or more accurately, for their reluctant and suffering friends Read more
Cyber-liberties
One Laptop Per Child
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a worthy project to combat the digital divide (if somebody utters the word “bridge” I will scream). The project has managed to design $100 USD laptops, which is considered affordable enough to provide children in developing countries and remote rural communities with their first Read more
Enforcement
Stronger IP rights coming your way
Two pieces of news exemplify that IP maximalism is alive and well, and that the copyfight has just begun (cue Imperial March). The first is a piece in The Times regarding the term extension of sound recordings. The article informs us that those poor struggling artists, Cliff Richard and The Read more
Open source
New draft of GPL v3 published
The second draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 is now available to the public. I have spent some time this weekend reading through the new draft and comparing it with the original. You can find some of my earlier opinions about the first draft in this SCRIPTed Read more
P2P
KaZaA deal worth gloating about?
The international record industry has been heralding as a great victory their deal with P2P software producer Sharman Networks, the makers of the KaZaA P2P client. Read for example this note from FT.com, where the settlement is described as one of the biggest victories against online piracy for the music Read more