Slashdot reports that anti-virus developer Mcafee has been granted U.S. Patent 6,839,852 for monitoring network traffic with a firewall. The patent is for: A system, method and computer program product are provided for tracing a traffic event utilizing a firewall. Initially, a firewall is executed on a local computer. Next, Read more
In a similar move to IBM’s much talked about patent handout for OSS developers, Sun Systems are offering more than 1,600 patents that they own for open source developers in Solaris projects. Although many will complain that this is another PR exercise, it must be said that there seems to Read more
Poland has saved Europe once more from the proposed software patent directive. The item was to be viewed as an A-item in the Agriculture and Fisheries agenda, but Poland has once more opposed its inclusion there. The official Polish statement reads: “In regard to the news about the possible inclusion Read more
Firefox is increasing its market share in detriment of Internet Explorer, an increase that has been fueled by security fears in Microsoft products. Firefox is said to have taken 5% of the market, as opposed to a 1% during Mozilla times. I can say that I have noticed that Firefox Read more
I watched I, Robot last night. While the movie wasn’t all that bad, there were certain IP practices in the rental that annoyed me considerably. The first was an annoying commercial right at the start of the DVD (which can’t be forwarded) from FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). This piece Read more
This is a great project from the Washington and Lee Law School Library, which is collecting a list of legal journal RSS feeds. The list includes 137 legal journals at the moment, ranging from philosophy of the law to Gaming Law (yes, there is a Gaming Law journal!). SCRIPTed has Read more
If you believe all sort of technology horror stories, you would think that Wi-Fi is the source of all evil on the web. Check this story for example, or this one. The common denominator is that the risks of having a Wi-Fi network in your house are completely blown out Read more
The good folks at FFII are announcing that the software patent directive will once more be presented as an A-Item in the Agriculture and Fisheries meeting next Monday. Yes, you heard right, Europe’s agriculture ministers will decide whether we are stuck with software patents. I apologise in advice for the Read more
A report by the BBC says that legal music downloads are up almost tenfold during 2004 . In other news, snow is cold, rain is wet, and young people have no taste in music.
A new bill in California is asking for jail time for P2P developers. That’s right, if you produce some software that can be used to exchange files through a network, then you can be thrown to jail. The stupidity of this bill is monumental for so many reasons, and works Read more