e-commerce
A licence or a contract?
I have been involved in an argument on a mailing list with regards to the legal nature of copyleft licences such as the GPL. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine (and talking to other lawyers, it Read more
Creative Commons
Update on Dutch CC case
Professor Bernt Hugenholtz has distributed a translation of the Dutch CC case, very useful for those of us who have never been to the Netherlands (unless you count transfers at Schiphol Airport). The relevant text reads: “All four photos that Read more
e-commerce
Online gold farming
(Via Terra Nova). There has been a lot of talk in online gaming circles about the gold farming phenomenon. Gold farming is the use of “virtual sweatshops” in which gamers from developing countries spend hours earning in-game currency, rare items Read more
P2P
EDonkey server shut down
Last weeks there were reports that police in Belgium had shut down an EDonkey server called Razorback. This server did not hold actual infringing material, it held contact data of people using the EDonkey network. As the P2P weblog suggests, Read more
Cases
Creative Commons enforced in court
The first case (as far as I’m aware) enforcing a Creative Commons licence has come out in the Netherlands. The case involves famous podcaster Adam Curry, who had a number of pictures in Flickr under an Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike licence. Some Read more
Web 2.0
Changes in media consumption patterns
Two unrelated stories indicate that there may be a large shift in the way in which we consume media, which could have implications for policy (if only policy was informed by empirical evidence). The first is that 2005 saw a Read more
Spam
The wild and wacky world of chain letters
A new chain email has been making the rounds recently, it is a message that claims that MSN is about to charge for their email service, and links to a story on the BBC website. The problem is that the Read more
Open source
Report clears GPL of securities threat
The Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) has produced its first white paper, which deals with the potential threat to developers who distributes software under the GPL. The alleged threat comes from a securities legislation called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002, which Read more
Google
Google Drive
Google is set to roll out another service for its users that takes advantage of its seemingly unlimited storage and processing power. GDrive is a service that will allow users to store their files online in Google’s servers, where they Read more
DRM
Napster blames Microsoft
Napster has come out criticising Microsoft Media Player for their inability to catch up with leader iTunes in the music download market. iTunes has 80% market share despite Napster’s instant name recognition. Apparently, Napster has been plagued with problems with Read more