To emphasise the point that the Grokster and KaZaa decisions are irrelevant to file sharing, the latest statistics demonstrate that August has had the largest number of online sharing in history. Internet statistic company BigChampagne has calculated that there were 9.6 million file sharers at any given time. KaZaa’s market Read more
Unsurprisingly, Sharman Networks has lost their case in Australia. The Australian Federal Court has finally ruled in the case Universal Music Australia v Sharman License Holdings [2005] FCA 1242. The Court has ruled that Sharman Networks “authorised” copyright infringement. From what I understood from the ruling, “authorising” is the equivalent Read more
Last Friday I took part in a very interesting debate about Creative Commons at the MusicWorks 2005 Convention in The Lighthouse in Glasgow. The panel was moderated by Professor Simon Frith from the University of Stirling, and was attended by David Ferguson from the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers, Read more
I was not able to attend the “Stealing Booty” event I advertsied last Friday, but some other copyfighters (am I a copyfighter now?) were able to attend and have given some very good reports. The first one comes from former student Jordan Hatcher, who wrote a very good article here. Read more
Seems like Andrew Orloski of The Register is at it again. I don’t know if he has a personal problem with Creative Commons, but he seems to be on a crusade against CC. This time he is reproducing some letters and continuing his comments against the global licensing movement. We Read more
(The article may require registration). Once again we are being warned that movies are in danger of becoming a thing of the past by internet pirates and DVD-copying rings. This is another article that warns that movies will become impossible because of pirates. I have many problems with the underlying Read more
I keep thinking that there may be a new subset of IT Law called Network Law, interested with the formation, regulation, and study of networks. An article in The Economist is making the usual rounds through the blogosphere describing an interesting paper by Seth Chandler of the University of Houston, Read more
So, the Llama song was a hit, so I will continue with the silly Saturday tradition. Here are the Ninja Kittens from RatherGood.com, the best site on the net. As contagious as the Ninjas are, my favourites are still the Angry Kittens, with the Viking Kittens following in a close Read more
So, the MPAA is filing 286 more “John Doe” suits against internet users from logs obtained from old bittorrent sites LokiTorrent and SuprNova. I am sure that those who paid money to LokiTorrent to mount a legal defence will be feeling a bit silly by now, and proves that those Read more
This is an event at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival. From the event’s advertising blurb: “Why should you care about film and video piracy if you can get a DVD cheaper than the retail price? Film piracy is theft. Black market DVDs are not just terrible quality but deprive the Read more