Tag: Tech/Law/Policy Blogs
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R.I.P. Napster
A judge has nixed Bertelsmann’s purchase of Napster. This looks like the end of the road for Napster. From now on Napster will be nothing but a cautionary example – though precisely what cautionary lesson it offers, and to whom, will be a subject of vigorous debate.
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Source Code and Object Code
[This item is long and geeky. Sorry about that. I hope that at least some of you will find it interesting. The rest of you can skip right to the (slightly) pithier items below.] When lawyers discuss software, they typically draw distinctions between source code and object code. These distinctions often fail to account for…
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Misleading Term of the Week: "Content Owner"
Many discussions of copyright refer to “content owners.” The language of ownership is often misused in these contexts, for example by saying that Disney “owns” The Lion King, or by saying that I “own” the content on this site. The simple fact is that I don’t own the content on this site – at least…
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Sites Blocked In China
Jonathan Zittrain and Ben Edelman at Harvard have a site listing URLs that are blocked in China. In addition to some obvious sites (related to things like Chinese dissidents, the Taiwanese government, and Falun Gong), there are some curious sites on the block list, including the U.S. Federal Court system (uscourts.gov). You can go to…
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Apple Uses DMCA Threat Against Competing Product
Declan McCullagh at news.com reports on Apple’s use of a DMCA threat to force a useful product off the market. Apple’s iDVD application allows the user to burn DVDs – but only on Apple-brand drives. A DVD drive vendor called Other World Computing shipped its drives with a “DVD Enabler” program that modified iDVD so…
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Business Week: Internet is Evil
Business Week has an amazing article characterizing the Internet as a cesspool of crime and depravity. The article approvingly quotes somebody saying “[More than] 70% of all e-commerce is based on some socially unacceptable if not outright illegal activity.” To give you an idea of the tone, the main body of the article starts with…
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Who Controls Your PC?
One of the most interesting issues in technology today is the battle for control over users’ computers. Ray Ozzie offers some thoughts, and a nice tutorial.
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Misleading Term of the Week: "Broadcast Flag"
[This posting inaugurates a new feature. Each week I will dissect one widely used but misleading bit of terminology. See my previous posting on the term “piracy” for more on why terminology is important.] This week’s misleading term is “broadcast flag,” which is used by Hollywood to refer to a wide-ranging ban on video technologies…
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What's Up At CNet?
Declan McCullagh interviews Verizon lawyer Sarah Deutsch, over at CNet news.com. (Welcome back, Declan.) Verizon is taking the side of their customers, against Hollywood. But check out the headline: “Why telecoms fly the pirate flag” (on the front page) and “Why telecoms back the pirate cause” (on the article itself). The pirate flag? The pirate…
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Lessig on Software Copyright
Larry Lessig defends his view of the best copyright law for software. Lessig advocates that (1) software copyrights expire after ten years (but a new version of a program would acquire a new copyright), and (2) source code be put in escrow, to be released when the copyright expires. Whether you think the optimal term…