Some people fear that the net may be suffering from a balkanization of the internet, with a broken up network consisting of people who inhabit a space that only accepts trusted users, coming from trusted domains. This is made evident by some ISPs blocking email from Europe, and also about Read more
This is a very good article in The Economist talking about the problems with the American patent system and IBM’s 500 patent handover. They state that studies claim that 30% of all patents awarded in the United States are duplicate claims. 30%? I am surprised, I thought that the figure Read more
Open biotechnology continues to gather momentum in the press. This is a new article in Wired, very similar to many other articles that have been showing up since The Economist produced an article where the phenomenon was explained. The article doesn’t really say anything new, but it is nice to Read more
This sounds like a badly written zombie movie. A man in Scotland is being held under suspicion of keeping a zombie network. A zombie is netspeak for a computer that has been hijacked to produce a certain effect, such as serving spam, serving viruses or sending DoS attacks (denial of Read more
This is the first UK case of a man being fired because of something that he wrote on a blog. Joe Gordon, was a senior bookseller at Waterstone’s store in Edinburgh, and had been with the company for 11 years. He has a blog called the Woolamaloo Gazette, in which Read more
Jailed for a song is a new campaign in the U.S. that is trying to get sensible IP legislation passed through the American Congress. The idea is to turn the tide of IP protection to regain liberties and freedoms enjoyed by the public, and to attack preposterous legislative proposals that Read more
Those singing the demise of the Bittorrent network should not get ahead of themselves. The existing technology can still be used for countless purposes where the sharing of large files is needed. There is also a lot that can be done with a system that marries torrent technology with the Read more
There have been several interesting moves about software patents in Europe. The proposal was introduced sneakily by members of the Commission to an Agriculture meeting dealing with fishing, which was struck down by Poland (thank you Poland, again!). Now, 61 MEPs have pleaded for the directive process to be restarted.
(Registration required) IBM continues to champion the open source movement by allowing access to 500 software patents that it holds to open source developments. However, IBM is only allowing access to a minimal amount of its patents, as it was awarded more than 3,000 patents in 2004.
One of the most important things to happen in recent days is that several torrent rtepositories have been shut down. This is an excellent post in the blog Cyber Divide about the implications of the technology.