Copyright

What’s in the Box?! Piercing the Pointless Secrecy of ACTA

I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you. – Tom Cruise, Top Gun

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Avast! The Pirate Bay's Intellectual Property's Been Boarded!

If you haven't heard of The Pirate Bay by now, you may want to emerge from that cave, wipe the sleepies from your eyes, and start getting caught up on your backed up WIRED magazines in the bathroom. The Pirate Bay (TPB) is a website run by a few Swedish intellectual property anarchists. TPB provides a comprehensive indexing service for BitTorrent files.

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Former Rep Ted Klaudt claims "common law copyright" in his name to try and suppress news stories about him raping his kids

We sure do see a lot of intellectual property abuse around here. This has to be the best one yet. Former South Dakota State Representative Ted Klaudt claims that he has a "common law copyright" in his name, and thus any news organization or other publication that uses his name must pay him a licensing fee of $500,000. (source)

It gets better.

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One of the Classic Blunders: Microsoft’s De-Listing Campaign Makes No Sense

Before the Thanksgiving holiday, Microsoft held talks with News Corp. in an attempt to convince the titan of information to de-list its content from Google.

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The MPAA Lottery: Town of Coshocton Draws the Black Spot

“’It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,' Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”
- The Lottery, Shirley Jackson

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Fox News DMCA-Bombs News1News on YouTube

Like many former newspaper employees, I hate the 24-hour "news" networks.  Be it Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN, I think they're just across-the-board awful.  The only time I'll pay any attention to them is in the midst of some event that demands real-time attention, say a presidential election or a terrorist attack (and even then, I may just switch to BBC coverage instead).  Other than in those situations, the news channels are just echo chambers for the dreck spewed by your Becks, O'Rei

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A New Leistungsschutzrecht? Say It's Nicht So!

It's tough being a publisher these days.  Of course, no one is having much fun in the current economic downturn, but publishers were up against it even before the slowdown.  Circulations have been down across the board for years now, which in turn has slashed the advertising revenues that print publications have always relied upon to survive.  It's just a bad time to be publishing newspapers and magazines, at least while using the classical publishing business model.

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The Online Odyssey: Internet Use in the Age of HADOPI's Scylla and Holder's Charybdis

Last week was a tough one for Internet users worldwide.

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