Posts tagged as:

copyright

Good news on copyright, but bad news on protection for sources

April 2, 2009

Some great news from Brussels on the attempt to extend copyright terms, again: “Copyright term extension was dealt another serious blow last week when COREPER, the European Committee representing EU member states and the Council of Ministers, voted against the proposal. In a surprise move the UK government joined others in a blocking minority, rejecting [...]

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Lessig is wrong (mostly)

October 13, 2008

Via Doc Searles comes this quote from Lawrence Lessig: …our attention is not focused on these creators. It is focused instead upon "the pirates." We wage war against these "pirates"; we deploy extraordinary social and legal resources in the absolutely failed effort to get them to stop "sharing." This war must end. It is time [...]

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What’s the point of copyright law?

August 8, 2008

One of the things that is making me happy at that moment is that Danny is blogging again. Of course, with Danny being Danny and me being me, we don’t always agree – and there’s a great example in that in his post on "Copyright, Fraud and Window Taxes (No, not that Windows)". Comparing copyright [...]

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In what way is slavishly copying something “original”?

August 1, 2008

Joseph Jaffe is generally great, but I really do have to pick him up on his post about how "Hasbro should change its name to Hasbeen": "Proof that you can’t keep a good Indian programmer down comes from the Agarwalla brothers, creators of the original and popular Facebook app (arguably the only one that actually [...]

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It’s not OK to steal content, even if you’re The Daily Mail

July 9, 2008

Back when I was a proper journo, I went on a course about media law. One of the basics – the very, very basic elements – was that all pictures are copyrighted and you are likely to get sued if you just grab one and use it. For photographers, pictures are their living and they [...]

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Kid Rock: Copyfighter

June 18, 2008

Link: BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Kid Rock boycotts iTunes over pay. "The performer – whose real name is Robert Ritchie – said his record company Atlantic had asked him to "stand up for illegal downloading" a few years ago because it told him "people are stealing from us and stealing from you". "And I [...]

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Paul Carr on Mike Arrington and copyright

May 27, 2008

Paul Carr writes a brilliant response to Mike Arrington’s idiotic post on reforming copyright law (by which he means "killing it"): "But for all the fancy talk about “finding new business models” to “remove friction”, which is the thrust of Arrington’s argument (in the same way as Rohypnol – and try not to wince at [...]

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