My friend and colleague Renata Avila has asked an interesting question on Twitter: “If the NSA is storing, reproducing – copying my data and works, are they violating Copyright Law?” I do not think that it has been asked before, so I am trying to tackle it today. This is Read more
[Text of a presentation I gave before a screening of The Lives of Others at Wolfson College, Oxford]. Although I am nowadays more interested in IP issues, I started my academic life as a privacy lawyer. My first publications dealt with something called Habeas Data, an obscure constitutional right that Read more
All of this week blogs and websites around the globe have been celebrating Copyright Week, an initiative by the EFF to celebrate two years of the defeat of SOPA/PIPA. Copyright Week consists of a series of articles analysing the future of copyright reform, showcased in a number of sites and Read more
In a world where online security has become an important element of our lives, it is becoming more difficult to trust information, even if they present a trust and/or security seals. A new report by the EU’s cyber security agency ENISA analyses the conditions under which online security and privacy Read more
Imagine a world where there is a secret society with the capacity of listening into all sort of private communications all the time. This organisation has managed to build backdoors into hardware that allows them to check on sensitive data throughout the world seemingly at the click of a button. Read more
I finally managed to read the latest (and hopefully last) instalment of the long legal saga that is SAS Institute v World Programming Ltd. This has been an interesting yet long case that made it all the way to the European Court of Justice, and it deals with several questions Read more
As a follow-up of the interesting dispute between CrunchBase and People+ involving Creative Commons, CrunchBase has announced that it will publish all of its data under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence, specifically CC-BY-NC. At the same time, they announced that People+ has agreed to comply with the new terms and Read more
With the excitement of the release of the 4.0 version of Creative Commons licences, it is possible that another really important development will have been missed. Creative Commons has announced the release of one of the last ports that will probably be drafted in a while, the Creative Commons Intergovernmental Read more
Consider the following scenarios: A person has all of their money taken from their bank account by fraudsters. An armed gang enters a bank and takes all of the cash stored there. A person has their credit card stolen and the thief goes on a shopping spree. A group of Read more
Do not try this at home I lead a secret life Blogging for the masses There’s a method behind the madness Get past those awkward periods waiting for inspiration Waiting for an audience can be difficult But the rewards great And can make you and your audience smile…