Jeffrey Zeldman pointed out the dangerous Orphan Works Acts making their way through Congress. This act has far-reaching implications for everyone, but the impact is even larger for those who work or publish on the ‘Net. Ultimately Congress is attempting to reduce your…
About six months back, Microsoft was forced to hobble the usability of Internet Explorer as a tactic in their legal battles with Eolas. This lead to much consternation within the Web development community and too much time and money spent…
As noted on Copyfight, the Cato Institute has released Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which takes the law to task for being anti-competitive and derides “Congressional interference in the market for digital rights management technologies.”…
I haven’t had a chance to read Intellectual Property and the Public Sphere from the “UK’s leading progressive think tank”, but I hope to over the weekend. It should be interesting to read the take of a non-US based group as…
Freedom to Tinker introduces a great way to understand the implications of current pushes to extend copyrights: Pizzaright Principle. This litmus test is pretty straightforward, replace the intellectual property term under discussion with ‘pizzaright’:
Pizzaright - the exclusive right to sell pizza…
In a move that has brightened my day, and reaffirmed the strength of our system of checks and balances, the Supreme Court has ruled that the “Commission acted outside the scope of its delegated authority when it adopted the disputed…
Downhill Battle, a “non-profit organization working to end the major label monopoly and build a better, fairer music industry”, has set up a great campaign to raise funds for IPac, EFF and Public Knowledge. “For every $100 given to these groups in…
As mentioned on The Technology Liberation Front , “Greg Aharonian, Editor/Publisher of the Internet Patent News Service—and one of America’s leading intellectual property experts—has just filed a major lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of software copyrights. In his complaint to the U.S. District…
Check out the Wired News story titled Battling the Copyright Big Boys, which provides a great introduction to what we, at IPac are building, and the goals we aim to accomplish. There is a lot to do, so if you have…
Wired News reports that the Senate may try to pass a hellish cornucopia of copyright and IP laws during the current lame duck session:
The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could…