Cnet author advocates theft
I’m simply stunned by a recent article written by Cnet columnist Rafe Needleman. In his post, he blatently advocates buying “lesser” versions of Microsoft products to take advantages of the discounts available to certain classes of users, regardless of whether you actually fall into that user class. His cavalier attitude towards the vendor (telling his [...]
Amazon’s Orwellian Behavior
As many are reporting, Amazon.com “recalled” an e-book remotely in response to a request by a publisher. This is all kinds of scary and most folks are centered on the purely tangible nature of the problem. I’m also concerned about the precent it sets, but I’m more concerned about the sapping of intellectual property rights [...]
License Resale
Vinnie Mirchandani at deal architect pointed out a Ray Wang article on the resale of unused licenses. My thoughts are in the comments on Ray’s article. But generally speaking, regardless of what Ray suggests, you can’t do it in the US (or the rest of the Berne Convention countries) under most licenses which have express [...]
Caulfield on Copyright
Madisonian pointed me towards a recent decision by the US District Court in Manhattan regarding a potential satire/parody of JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Granted, this has nothing to do with software… but it has everything to do with copyright. So it’s still applicable. The Licensing Handbook Blog is the companion site to the [...]
A Few Licensing Issues with Amazon
Many of the technologies we use every day come with a license agreement of some sort. You might not even realize that it’s so because of where you are in the transaction chain – either as a buyer or as a seller. Content, for instance, is created, licensed/sold, packaged, re-licensed/re-sold, bundled, re-licensed/re-sold, and on and [...]
More interesting copyright issues
According to this article from Wired, Apple is involved in some very interesting copyright violation cases related to their fairplay copy protection scheme and DMCA takedown notices they provided to folks discussing how to circumvent Apple technologies. I would pay attention to what the US Copyright Office decides based on their review – and on [...]
Facebook’s Voting on ToS
[Disclaimer: While I'm a Facebook user, I do not know all of the ins and outs of this particular issue, as I've not paid too much attention since they rolled back to the old ToS.] Facebook has announced that they plan to have members vote on the new Terms of Service they’ve been working on. [...]
DMCA’s 10 Year Anniversary
Wired has a great re-cap of the history and impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, signed ten years ago today (and 3 years before the new millenium, just in case anyone noticed). Here are a few more reactions: Electronic Frontier Foundation Amrit Williams Blog Wired Blog Network Public Knowledge Freedom to Tinker TechDirt Free [...]
J.K. Rowling: $4.5Billion, Copyright: 0
Back in May, I wrote about the copyright infringement suit filed by J.K. Rowling against the author and publisher of the Harry Potter Lexicon. At the time, I hoped that the courts would realize that, on its face, the Lexicon qualified as fair use. Apparently not. Ms. Rowling’s response is that the potential publication of [...]
Public Domain Tool
Ever wonder whether the copyright on a particular work has expired? Trying to figure it out amongst all of the various copyright extensions isn’t exactly simple. So Michael Brewer and the American Library Association has done it for you – with pinache! Check out the Public Domain Tool. Make sure you read the astericks, though. [...]
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