Some readers may remember that some time ago I wrote a post about Bitcoin, an interesting online payment experiment in the shape of a cryptographic currency. My conclusion was that the currency was probably illegal in the U.S. and Europe, Read more
Last week yours truly attended the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, a meeting of like-minded activists and academics who got together to discuss and frame a positive agenda in the IP debate. The “progressive” side in Read more
Last Sunday Fidel Gamboa, the lead singer of Malpaís, died at the painfully young age of 50. I wish I had known him enough to call him a friend, we had met several times and I admired his music, his Read more
Consulting firm Gartner has produced a report suggesting that interest in social media may have peaked. The report says: “Of the respondents, 24 percent said they use their favorite social media site less than when they first signed up. These Read more
This week yours truly has been thinking about net neutrality prompted by a call for regulation in one of the national newspapers (my response here). For those not familiar with the term, net neutrality is one of those annoyingly slippery Read more
Issue 8-2 of SCRIPTed, a journal of Law and Technology, is now online. This issue has a distinct emphasis on medical technologies, particularly issues around neuro-imaging: Editorial Twitter Chip, Simon Biggs, pp.120-123 Reviewed Articles Does Technology Trump Intellectual Property?: Read more
The modern copyright system owes a lot to collective copyright management. Intellectual property is all about enforcement, but it tends to be expensive and time-consuming endeavour. Collecting agencies offer a system by which copyright enforcement is allocated to a society Read more
The UK has had a glimpse of what the total societal collapse looks like. The UK riots of August 2011 have struck me as an example of systemic failure of government and society at almost every level of organisation, as Read more
(via Mathias Klang) I highly recommend this excellent video about filter bubbles: The filter bubble was a phenomenon that was described in its early shape by Cass Sunstein in his seminal Republic.com, where he narrates the rise of the Daily Read more
This is an excellent podcast from NPR about software patents Some truly eye-opening interviews and in-depth investigation looking at patent trolls, the reason East Texas District is the epicentre for patent litigation, and the effect of software patents on innovation. Read more