Yet another study about the economic effect of music downloads. This one says that downloads are damaging to sales. The link will only take you to an abstract, the paper is offered for sale, or can be downloaded while in a developing country.
Students don’t like copyright? You don’t say! Seriously though, FreeCulture.org is an international student movement that tries to promote the ideas expressed in Lessig’s Free Culture. The site includes calls to action, ideas about how to promote Creative Commons, and other cool stuff such as ways to convert your backpack Read more
So, Microsoft wants to do to Google what it did to Netscape. MSN Search Beta has been launched in an attempt to make Google a thing of the past. This follows a number of attempts by other search engines to dethrone Google. There is Copernic, which searches stuff in your Read more
The ECJ has returned rulings on four different cases that seriously diminish the claims of companies that claim that the investment in synthesizing data compiled in a database does not count as substantial investment as required by the Database Directive. In each case brought before the court, an organizer of Read more
For all of us old enough to remember the early days of the internet, Internet Explorer was not always the only browser around. Most people used Netscape (before it was seduced by the dark side and was bought by AOL). Netscape has the great honour of prompting the coining of Read more
A couple of days ago we commented that Tesco’s music download service is now online, a move that we believe is the death of the music download coolness. There appears to be a conspiracy by the music industry to make music download a thing of the past. It is now Read more
For those of you following the BELETS scam saga, here is the latest reply from our friend, Mr. Dubs Parker. I think that I will stop the scam baiting here, I am not willing to give Mr Parker any physical info. Here is his latest email: Dear A, Thank you Read more
35% of all internet traffic is Torrent traffic. As Kazaa and other P2P sites diminish because of legal attacks, BitTorrent increases. The problem for copyright owners is that Torrent technology is very much capable of non-infringing uses, as the recent lecture by Cory Doctorow proves. Nevertheless, the first case against Read more
So, music downloads are now officially uncool. Yes, once Tesco starts offering “legal” music downloads; you know that the whole thing is now as cool as buying broccoli. Who is next? Asda? M&S?
A very interesting link that arrives courtesy of Bob Rietjens. A German court has given users the right to return items purchased from eBay within two weeks of purchase, provided that it has been bought from a commercial supplier. This seems consisten with the Distance Selling Directive, but this only Read more