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LOL. They should ask Monster Cable about how this worked out: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081212/1622033110.shtml Monster Cable actually filed a trademark infringement suit against Cookie Monster at one point. Good luck with that, Facebook! TAN5TAAFL

Do you really, really just want to listen to such music? Because you know, you can already. You can go listen to local bands and ask for their demo tapes, and stay away from all the artists that belong to some label working with RIAA.

Except, you can't. Venues have to pay "preemptive royalties" (mafia protection) so they don't get sued for local artists playing cover songs. They can collect royalties for songs they don't even own. And they have no intention of making sure even their own artists are fairly paid, either.

The huge fallacy in your argument is the assertion that people are ONLY motivated by financial gain. You have fallen victim to two errors of reasoning: the "false dichotomy" and the "straw man". In fact money can actually demotivate people and lead to poorer productivity, especially for so-called creative and knowledge workers.

Perhaps you should do some googling, before claiming that RIAA can't raid your house, or put you in jail.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070117/163531.shtml

http://www.allbusiness.com/retail-trade/miscellaneous-retail-retail-stores-not/4385453-1.html

http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2007/11/albumbase-down/

http://features.rr.com/article/0bAa6maaGCexM?q=North+Carolina

http://www.riaa.net/newsitem.php?news_month_filter=5&news_year_filter=2004&resultpage=&id=482BFD6A-C0C6-71B2-F544-6E181B92A80A

Personally, I would just LOVE to have RIAA invade my home, my place of business, or even to just shake me down at a flea market or some such thing. I'm armed. SOMEONE will die. Hey, it could be me. But, the day that a RIAA rent-a-cop kills a US citizen over a civil matter, all hell will break loose.

Come on, RIAA - try to take me down. I can't lose.

What is the point of spending time, money and effort designing something, when anyone can copy the design and produce their own?
If anyone could just plagerise your work, there is less incentive to do any work.

Somebody should really explain to you the difference between proof and unsubstantiated opinion.

Read this for a counterexample:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080327/002456664.shtml

Note I'm not speaking about SOFTWARE patents (those are rubbish), nor do I agree with patents on life-saving research (such as pharmacy)

Unsubstantiated opinion again. You are the weakest link, goodbye!

Are you sure?

and no NEW states secrets policy is more stringent than anything that came before

Uhm... reality check.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/congress-considers-rules-for-invoking-state-secrets.ars

- That new state secrets policy that is WAY more stringent than anything before.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090313/1456154113.shtml

- The Obama admin claiming that the details of a copyright treaty are "state secrets."

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/02/10/obama

- Obama administration invoking "state secrets" FAR MORE OFTEN than the previous administration

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/foia-filtered

- Obama administration having political appointees vetting FOIA requests intended for the Dept of Homeland Security, and making decisions on what can be released on the basis of political expediency...

The question of no "new" Gitmos - Yes, but the one we have isn't anywhere close to shut down.
The question of "no new pointless, unwinnable wars have been started" - How many are we on the brink of still?

Project Vigilant is a hoax.

Look, you either have a: freedom of the press, or b: you give it up for "safety of civilians". There isn't an imbetween.

However, this would never be an issue in the first place had the gov't released the information via FOIA. It wouldn't have had this much coverage. Read that and you'll understand why Amnesty International attacking Wikileaks is avoiding the real problems entirely.

There was this highly-publicized story a year ago about Demigod, a DRM-free game that suffered server problems due to excessive traffic from pirated copies. As much as it pains me to say it, DRM may have been a boon for this game.

Demigod, Piracy And Good Business Models...

DRM is a fantasy. Snake oil. It doesn't work. It's been proven time and time again for the last 25 years. EVERY copy protection system ever devised has been defeated quickly.

The PS3 still doesn't have any measurable piracy.

no, actually I don't think I'd be surprised.. Let me quick copy and paste the most important part, wikipedia's reply.

"Entertainingly, in support for your argument, you included a version of 701 in which you removed the very phrases that subject the statute to ejusdem generis analysis. While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version of Section 701 that you forwarded to us.

In your letter, you assert that an image of an FBI seal included in a Wikipedia article is "problematic" because "it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting violations" of 18 U.S.C. 701. I hope you will agree that the adjective "problematic," even if it were truly applicable here, is not semantically identical to "unlawful." Even if it could be proved that someone, somewhere, found a way to use a Wikipedia article illustration to facilitate a fraudulent representation, that would not render the illustration itself unlawful under the statute. As the leading case interpreting Section 701 points out, "The enactment of 701 was intended to protect the public against the use of a recognizable assertion of authority with intent to deceive." ... Our inclusion of an image of the FBI Seal is in no way evidence of any "intent to deceive," nor is it an "assertion of authority," recognizable or otherwise."

Access and ownership are two different entities. For instance, the taxpayer pays the salaries of the police force, but you certainly can't expect them to follow your orders, at least not in a general sense. Although you could have laws changed which the police would then have to follow, they are not your personal servants who will perform to your every whim.

In terms of ownership though, that is a different story. Development of ideas (intellectual property), fully funded by taxpayer dollars, are technically owned by the the public. A government office claiming copyright to something that is publicly owned isn't exactly logical to my mind. The state can't come in and sue you for using something which you technically already own unless it violates some law that states as much.

Oregon has already tried to claim copyright over the right to publish state laws. They eventually saw the stupidity of their claims, although they didn't learn their lesson either.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091030/1537066744.shtml

...what they are doing right now doesn't make any sense.

And as an organization run by the members, I suspect Mr. Williams won't be speaking for ASCAP much longer. The backlash by ASCAP members has been significant.

shielding service providers from responsibility of their users infringement was a pretty good idea.

Yes, but not being punished for sending fake DMCA takedown notices is bad.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100323/1915138686.shtml

http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-disney-20100708,0,4051564.story

Musicians, by and large, get into music because they enjoy it. Present anyone with an opportunity to do what they enjoy and earn money from it and they'll be hard-pressed to turn such an offer down.

A few days ago, Techdirt ran a very interesting article about the way in which major record labels perform accounting for their royalty statements to artists. It makes for fascinating, if horrifying, reading on how artists get a very raw deal most of the time.

With that said, the answer still doesn't lie in piracy or copyright infringement, as the end result of that scenario will be exactly as the BBC article predicts: "...you need good musicians to create the music we all love and unless they are rewarded, unless they can pay the bills, they'll drift out of it"

Techdirt is probably making a killing off of Slashdot this week, but here's another article about several musicians who are able to be successful without the RIAA:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091119/1634117011.shtml

The danger is if musicians start to think that the RIAA is their only connection to the fans. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jane,
What you wrote in reply to me is unpersuasive. I continue to claim that you are wrong. It is hard to go against what you've been taught for so long about the benefits of patents and copyrights, so it isn't surprising that you don't immediately change your mind. Keep that mind open and follow up on the subject, and you probably will find eventually that you have been misled by your well-meaning teachers. When I was younger, I, too, believed that patents and copyrights were good things that did what people always said they did. I've learned otherwise.

Okay, so I misinterpreted your statement about how important you thought lack of copyrights and patents were in the former Soviet Union. I think you do have to admit that you gave the impression that you thought it was a significant cause of their problems. In fact, their problems would have been even a bit worse if they had had strong copyrights and patents, but since that isn't your argument, I won't go farther in that direction.

Quoting the Constitution as evidence that copyrights and patents bring real benefits? Sorry, again you are wrong. That quote proves that some of the Founders suffered from the same fallacy that you've been taught. In fact, various Techdirt articles over the years have pointed to writings from that time detailing rather sharp arguments the Founders had among themselves about whether copyrights and patents were justified. If the arguments had been settled the other way, our country might have made yet another contribution to human progress. Unfortunately, it didn't.

The idea that granting a writer or inventor a (limited) monopoly over his creation would be good for society is a seductive one. It sounds so attractive: Give people that incentive and they will produce more new things than they would otherwise. But, without any actual evidence that people really respond that way, it is just wishful thinking. It turns out that copyrights and patents benefit, at least in some ways, the person who holds them, but in most cases, they do not provide the motivation to do the creative effort, and the benefit to the holder is, almost always, far outweighed by the detriment to society as a whole. The fact is that granting such monopolies, retards progress rather than promoting it.

Keep reading Techdirt and you will come across articles that explain this much better than I can, and will contain references where you can read more. You don't have to read every article. The title usually is enough to tell you whether it is likely to contain something relevant to this topic. I have not saved the references to journal publications that have appeared there, so I cannot give them to you. I did save links to a couple of articles at Techdirt mainly about patents, which, of course, are not the same as copyrights, but the references there might lead indirectly to similar works about copyrights, as well. (I don't know -- I haven't tried that.) Here are those two:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080313/031128532.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080929/0224182399.shtml

Links to other Techdirt articles from those two might also lead to copyright discussions. Do look at the comments on the Techdirt articles. Mike sometimes responds there with additional information and references.

What I've learned from reading the Techdirt articles over the years is that there never has been real evidence that patents and copyrights actually promote the progress that the Constitution says they were created for. Much research has been done that shows many instances spread over hundreds of years of times and places where much innovation has taken place when there were no patents or copyrights. There are a few cases that have been found where innovation was cut way back after patents or copyrights were introduced to a s

Jane,
What you wrote in reply to me is unpersuasive. I continue to claim that you are wrong. It is hard to go against what you've been taught for so long about the benefits of patents and copyrights, so it isn't surprising that you don't immediately change your mind. Keep that mind open and follow up on the subject, and you probably will find eventually that you have been misled by your well-meaning teachers. When I was younger, I, too, believed that patents and copyrights were good things that did what people always said they did. I've learned otherwise.

Okay, so I misinterpreted your statement about how important you thought lack of copyrights and patents were in the former Soviet Union. I think you do have to admit that you gave the impression that you thought it was a significant cause of their problems. In fact, their problems would have been even a bit worse if they had had strong copyrights and patents, but since that isn't your argument, I won't go farther in that direction.

Quoting the Constitution as evidence that copyrights and patents bring real benefits? Sorry, again you are wrong. That quote proves that some of the Founders suffered from the same fallacy that you've been taught. In fact, various Techdirt articles over the years have pointed to writings from that time detailing rather sharp arguments the Founders had among themselves about whether copyrights and patents were justified. If the arguments had been settled the other way, our country might have made yet another contribution to human progress. Unfortunately, it didn't.

The idea that granting a writer or inventor a (limited) monopoly over his creation would be good for society is a seductive one. It sounds so attractive: Give people that incentive and they will produce more new things than they would otherwise. But, without any actual evidence that people really respond that way, it is just wishful thinking. It turns out that copyrights and patents benefit, at least in some ways, the person who holds them, but in most cases, they do not provide the motivation to do the creative effort, and the benefit to the holder is, almost always, far outweighed by the detriment to society as a whole. The fact is that granting such monopolies, retards progress rather than promoting it.

Keep reading Techdirt and you will come across articles that explain this much better than I can, and will contain references where you can read more. You don't have to read every article. The title usually is enough to tell you whether it is likely to contain something relevant to this topic. I have not saved the references to journal publications that have appeared there, so I cannot give them to you. I did save links to a couple of articles at Techdirt mainly about patents, which, of course, are not the same as copyrights, but the references there might lead indirectly to similar works about copyrights, as well. (I don't know -- I haven't tried that.) Here are those two:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080313/031128532.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080929/0224182399.shtml

Links to other Techdirt articles from those two might also lead to copyright discussions. Do look at the comments on the Techdirt articles. Mike sometimes responds there with additional information and references.

What I've learned from reading the Techdirt articles over the years is that there never has been real evidence that patents and copyrights actually promote the progress that the Constitution says they were created for. Much research has been done that shows many instances spread over hundreds of years of times and places where much innovation has taken place when there were no patents or copyrights. There are a few cases that have been found where innovation was cut way back after patents or copyrights were introduced to a s

Therefore, "creative accounting" = "piracy performed in the accounting dept"

Bloody right - seen this? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix "lost" $167 million.

Sione's Wedding http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464184/ which is a New Zealand made film, was claimed to have been heavily hurt by piracy (people were distributing this via burnt DVD's as well as torrents before release... (another indication that people in the movie industry are the source of such releases, imo).

according to wikipedia, "This movie is also well known for a high profile court case over breach of copyright law. An employee of a post production company was found guilty and sentenced to 300 hours community service.[1] Movie producer John Barnett estimates the movie lost $500,000 in lost box office takings and DVD sales."

however, this ignores 2 things... first, the movie was pretty bad... everyone ive talked to who have stated they have watched it said theyd not watch it again... secondly, hollywood accounting http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml as shown here on slashdot, hollywood tends to use creative accounting to show paper losses for movies such as the last Harry Potter movie, which can take nearly $1b USD in revenue... how can we believe much if any of what they say?

***...New Hampshire... 9 Mbit/s***

In your dreams ... Maybe in parts of Concord and the Southern tier cities that are part of the Boston metro area. In rural New Hampshire? Not a chance. US broadband figures remain -- as they have been for two decades, a work of fiction. Even the FCC admits in its better moments that their broadband penetration data has essentially no connection with reality. "Stunningly meaningless" is the term they used a couple of years ago.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080319/164249588.shtml

Actually, it now appears the whole site http://www.techdirt.com/ is slashdotted.

Generally I respect what you have to say but this post you're off your nut.

A, B & C: The Humble Indie Bundle hit 1 million sales on May 11th and to my knowledge has not been ported outside the realm of PC gaming. I won't mention the annual behemoth WoW, EVE Online or the confusing amount of pre-orders for Starcraft II.

Regarding finding people to play games with, well that is a matter of who your friends are. I only know one or two people interested in console gaming and have extreme difficulty finding people to play games with. Conversely, every Monday is either L4D2 or TF2 night for me and half a dozen others, like clockwork.

I enjoy both PC and console gaming but I often find myself behind the keyboard rather than the controller (which, I can also plug into my PC if I want to play ported console games which, confoundedly, is not true the other way around...) so to hear someone say that PC gaming was "dead" was baffling and irritating.

This content featured in this article is very similiar to the talking points highlighted by astroturf organizations funded by organizations such as the RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, etc... For example: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100420/2228169126.shtml http://balancedcopyrightforcanada.ca/about

Yes, they produced an edited video that demonstrated a point of view. Quelle horreur! That's completely unlike the Washington Post, the IHT, the Economist, the NYT... Ahem.

In fact, what is completely unlike them, Wikileaks published the unedited video at the same time. Unlike establishment journalism, Wikileaks offered source material from which you can form your own opinions.

Given the choice between an organization that offers an opinion and also the unedited information from which they formed that opinion, and one that only offers the opinion while withholding the unedited information, which one do you want to call a "propaganda group"?

no, I'm not wrong. ASCAP's customers are also customers who have potential to be RIAA customers. So they are in the same boat. They both are licensing schemes.

In ascap's case, going after: coffee shops shows that Ascap is doing the same thing as the RIAA.

Same results, too. I mean really? going after creative commons?

1. I haven't met any programmers suffering from Asperger's Syndrom (I assume this is what "aspy" means, correct me if I'm wrong)

Some of them sure are suffering from something. From obsessive hand-washing (they won't even touch their mouse without 3 kleenex in between), to raging paranoia ...

2. I haven't known any "sneering arrogant IT guys". The IT guys I've met have been normal, helpful human beings.

Get into a code meeting and watch the pissing contests begin.

3. I have seen some harsh emails, but not often and nothing like the venom you describe

I've seen emails from guys to their girlfriends - while they're married, living with their wife and kids. I've seen worse than emails - like guys coming in and sleeping because they spent the night cheating on their pregnant wife. That's pretty harsh.

4. I can't recall any "phallic compensation gadget consumerists", but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough...

Studies show that men try to use their cell phones to impress women. Women look at that and go "You are SO lame!"

5. I haven't met any "constantly helpful types who insult while trying to rescue"

Men who assume that women are too stupid or helpless to have tried the obvious? Or refusing a woman's help because "what could she know?"

6. I have seen some teenage male type usage of naked women pictures, but that's been quite rare. Do you think that teenage male types only exist in the tech industry?

I have *never* seen a guy that doesn't have p0rn on his computer, with one exception. a 30-something virgin who thought that the boss was spying on *everything* he did (I ended up having to write his on-line dating ads to TRY to get him a social life). No telling what he had on his home machine.

I'm not saying it's limited to one sex - just that from what I've seen, there's plenty of sexist behavior.

People on /. think it is, but then I'm not convinced many people here have a good grip on copyright. A non-trivial number seem to think that any copyright is a bad thing, that it hurts the economy, etc. There is some pretty good evidence to indicate that's not the case, but they aren't interested. They have an all or nothing stance on it. As such, this treaty is automatically and "obviously" a bad thing to them, since it increases copyright.

There's plenty of evidence that contradicts the "all or nothing stance" that the copyright industry holds, claiming that more copyright is always a good thing.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and say they are perhaps not the best to make that call, due to their bias.

Huh? Did you seriously just use the bias argument to argue against people who are arguing against changes being lobbied for by industries with a direct financial stake in the outcome? Really? The opponents of ACTA are biased you say? Wow.

That doesn't mean I think they are wrong that the treaty is a bad thing, I think they are arriving at that conclusion incorrectly and that is why they might think it "obvious" when maybe it isn't.

So this is the kind of thing I like to see. Some real analysis to determine what benefits and costs it has (everything has benefits and costs) and if those result in a net benefit for the public. Looks like these experts say that no, it doesn't.

I think that is far more useful than just trying to claim "It is obvious!" When you think something is obvious, especially something complex (as any new law is) ask yourself: Is it really, truly obvious, which would mean that nearly everyone should see it, or do I think it is obvious because of my biases?

I think that the industry hasn't done a thing to prove that longer and more restrictive copyright serves the public interest, yet you, and the government, seem to accept their views as true until proven otherwise. Where's the skepticism for their claims?

Some in the audience where he gave his talk pointed out that Intel, the company he remains chairman of, is a big part of the outsourcing trend, and Grove responds with something of a cop-out, saying that without public policy assistance they have no choice but to export jobs

Still trying to find more ... most of the intarweb is all what a great guy and genius he is and crap promoting his books.

Self publishing and small labels are still a road to obscurity

No. The average return self-publishing is probably significantly greater than spending your life trying get to signed to an RIAA company. An internet web site has global reach, unlike radio stations. And even after signing the odds are pretty grim.

To be a "serious" pop star is a million to one event with a world population of billions and a few hundred "serious" pop stars. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning.

And that's ignoring RIAA company creative accounting that drastically lowers the financial return to the artist.

The odds of becoming big are tiny whatever road an artist decides to take.

---

Who owns the copy?

Just a brief note on the fake ssn comment. While you may go to jail for fraud if you use a fake ssn, make sure that you randomly make up a ssn and don't use a social security number of someone you actually know of, ie identity theft. Otherwise you'll get a heavier sentence.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20100520/0032159501.shtml

http://techdirt.com/articles/20100521/1529489535.shtml

Has a couple of interesting tidbits.

Seriously, http://www.techdirt.com./ Mike Masnick is blogging on this topic since forever. But most of you probably know this already.

As is often the case here the cited article http://techdirt.com/articles/20100511/1018059377.shtml is just a highlight of a more thoughtful article http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/05/as-the-battle-of-e-book-readers-heats-up-amazon-is-trying-to-beat-the-competition-by-continually-adding-new-features-to-its.html which reveals far more detail (yes, not only did I read TFA but TFAFA as well).

This "feature" is not required; a user can turn off "Annotations Backup" on their Kindle.

My concerns are these:

1) When privacy issues are implicated the default option should always require explicit "opt-in."

2) While this provides a helpful feature (the ability to retrieve one's annotations should they lose the data and wish to go to Amazon for a back-up) the only way to receive the benefit is by allowing aggregation of one's personal notes.

3) Will users understand the potential privacy implications? When dealing with tech issues I think of what my Mom would think and I doubt she'd realize that this could be a "bad" thing.

So... although this issue isn't necessarily as alarming as the summary above it is an issue that needs to be addressed. I've always liked Amazon and am hopeful that the Kindle privacy issues are the result of the same lone asshat who decided to delete "1984" and "Animal Farm" from Kindles last year. If so then it's time for said asshat to move on (Facebook would be a logical place) and allow the Kindle to flourish without any undue asshattery.

Oh, and could we stop playing "telephone game" with the articles on here? It doesn't take much time to locate a relevant (and more authoritative) source. I don't fully understand the "article approval process" but it seems that poorly cited / inaccurate summaries are more often the rule than the exception. My attempts to have any articles approved have been wholly unsuccessful and I'm not keen on engaging in deceptive hyperbole to change that.

Perhaps.

Read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
and this
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091201/1957497156.shtml

Then tell me why I should take these guys seriously. When they say Star Wars and Forest Gump are 'financial disasters'. I think when I stop laughing they can go to hell.

They do not 'make' anything other than ripping off the very people who make them money. Want to know why you hear about actor xyz getting some crazy check up front for some bomb of a movie? Because they have been burned so many times it is the *ONLY* way to get it back. They know its a crap movie and that it will actually *BE* a financial disaster. But they get checks up front this time.

Ask the cast and crew of one of the lowest budget horror films of all time Texas chainsaw massacre how much money they got out of the movie. Then remember it was one of the highest grossing file of its time.

They do not even bother to keep track of what the actual losses are. So that way even if by some magic it does 'break even' they do not have to pay anyone as they do not even really know.

Its funny when I hear about artists bitching about people 'stealing' their shit on the web. They go after the the brats who may or may not have bought something. Then ignore how much money they are loosing in their contracts.

Think this is only 'movies and music'? Think again. You think infinity ward and half the crew just walked out because of a personnel issue? No Activision is playing fast and loose with the numbers and not wanting to pay out one of the highest grossing games ever. Think this is a new thing? Go watch videos on the old Atari guys.

LG v. Quanta would beg to disagree.

The case you mention appears to be largely unrelated, being a case of one company that is part of a consortium hiding patents from a consortium in violation of the patent sharing agreement they had with the consortium. It has absolutely nothing to do with rights to use a lawfully manufactured product that you purchase lawfully, and certainly does not suggest that they would win such a case.

It does, however, reinforce the idea that MPEG LA is willing to sue everybody and their mother. Doesn't mean they will win. In fact, they basically have ZERO chance of winning, at least in the U.S. Like I said, LG v. Quanta covered this ground only two years ago and ruled that once you license a patent for use in manufacturing a product, you lose all rights to demand license fees from the downstream purchasers of that product even if they build products based around that product, which is much, much more significant use of the patented product than mere commercial use would be....

Actually, even that wouldn't happen. LG v. Quanta pretty conclusively settled this whole debate in favor of the end user/purchaser almost two years ago.

The only thing a patent holder can do as far as charging different licensing fee in different markets is to choose different rates to charge different manufacturers for licensing use in different products. For example, if they wanted to charge ten times as much for implementing the CODEC in pro camcorders, that's within their right. Maybe. If they didn't license the CODEC to a chip maker. If they did, then any pro camera vendor could legally use that chip to do their encoding/decoding and MPEG LA would have no right to prevent that use of the chip, much less pro use of the camera that holds that chip.

Once a patent is licensed for use in manufacturing a piece of hardware, the patent licensor has no right whatsoever to specify what the purchaser of the product can do with that piece of hardware unless the hardware product was manufactured without obtaining a patent license. A patent license granted to a manufacturer for the purposes of building a product constitutes an irrevocable license to that patent for any future purchaser of that product according to LG, and even to anyone who incorporates that product into another product!

Translation: if MPEG LA thinks anyone who buys a camcorder will EVER owe them royalties for using hardware that they lawfully purchased, they can get bent. Such legal threats have no basis in patent law. As Shakespeare would have put it, they are suits brought by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.

bingo. Android marketshare is going way up, and all apple has is hype. Now that they've locked down the codebase, they're slowly bringing the DRM to the masses. Patent infringement lawsuits are a sure sign that apple knows they're fucked real soon.

Apple is a master of spin, not unlike MS, but when you try to bring policies like the RIAA (restrictions of what you can do with something you purchase) people are eventually going to adapt and just move on altogether.

So the first reaction is obvious: who's behind this? From the linked article:

Consumer Watchdog sent a letter to the DOJ Wednesday asking that the agency investigate Google for antitrust violations. "For most Americans -- indeed, for most people in the world -- Google is the gateway to the Internet," the letter said. "How it tweaks its proprietary search algorithms can ensure a business' success or doom it to failure."

...

Google has manipulated search and advertisement placement results to shut out potential competitors who counted on Google results to drive traffic to their sites, said Joseph Bial, a lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft who represents myTriggers.com and TradeComet.com. Both companies have filed antitrust lawsuits against Google alleging that the search giant shut out their attempts to advertise on Google.com.

Apparently, people who make a business out of gaming Google's algorithm. The very folks that muddy up searches with crap links to various questionable "offers", link farms, and johnny-come-lately web apps. And they're claiming Google has a bias in their search results? Do tell.

Granted - conspiracy theorists might find the possibility of other actors bing involved too hard to pass up. It does look intriguing. But I'm reminded of the whole Occam's Razor thing.

as it has been shown before, when it comes to software it's better to innovate than waste time on patents. Unfortunately a lot of people think it's a great idea to get something patented and don't even consider that hundreds of other people may have done the same thing before.

I work in an industry where I hear the phrase "I'm applying for a patent on my product" all day long. It doesn't mean shit, and you can get sued for claiming a patent on a product that doesn't get approved. You're applying for a patent for x? guess what, so are the other 25 people for doing the same thing. This goes double or triple for anything involving software in any form.

There is an article related to this on TechDirt: Here. Basically everything from vandalism to espionage is being lumped under "Cyberwar." With vandalism being much the more prevalent. The issue of "Cyberwar" itself is mostly made for good talking points in the media, after all anything that drives readership drives advertisers and funding. Think you can actually get at a GPS satellites operating system over the internet?

Sherlock Holmes? Wasn't he pre-Disney?

Much of Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. Not all of the stories are, though (the exception being the latest work from the 1920s). The relevant rule appears to be creation +95 years, which in this case protects longer than death of the author +70 years.

Complicating matters is trademark law. While you can certainly distribute the text of old Sherlock Holmes stories (and Project Gutenberg does), what protections do the trademarks provide with regard to adaptations and the creations of derivative works with the same characters?

[quote]Unlike the US version, the European one actually revived already-dead copyrights so that they could be extended as well.[/quote]
The US act did the same thing actually, but the courts didn't like it.

I do actually think so. These ISP's clear your traffic data and have gone to court to defend your privacy and won. Some mail providers do the same, and some utilize encryption so that they wouldn't even have access to your emails even if they needed to.

Funny, TechDirt explains why this is good.

1997:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

2009ish:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090623/0415565326.shtml

Are we there yet?

A recent study suggests that IT people really don't seem to like their jobs very much. Apparently, only 4% of IT people found themselves "highly engaged" with their jobs -- a number that has dropped from the still low, but not as low, 12%, two years earlier. There are concerns, of course, for what this means for companies and their IT staff. It certainly raises some questions about whether or not this is a potential issue going forward, and how companies might deal with this. Are the problems caused by the way IT people are treated? Or does it have more to do with their own worries about the future of the IT profession? And given that so many people in IT aren't particularly enthusiastic about their jobs, how can that be dealt with?

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/itinnovation/articles/20100216/0318428178.shtml

• Assuming this story is correct. As described in IEEE Spectrum, Intrinsity is an unique company that produces technology capable of significantly boosting the performance of many ARM processors. Considering the ubiquity of ARM, this technology could've potentially benefited a large range of consumers; but, apparently, that benefit will, now, only fall on those purchasing Apple products.
• Apple's suit against HTC: This is an obvious ploy to impede if not completely halt the ascent of Android. Apple sues HTC for infringing on its questionable soft patents while refusing to pay Nokia for the use of its hard patents.
• E-book Price Increase: This is an instance of Apple using its virtual monolopy in the mind share if not the market share of mobile devices to hurt the consumer. Perhaps, previous e-book prices were artificially low; I won't argue that point. The fact remains that Apple's entry into the e-book business has resulted in higher prices for the consumer -- with one concrete instance being the 43% increase in NY Times subscriptions.
• Banning of Google Voice App: In additional to a multitude of other features, Google Voice allow users to make free domestic VOIP calls; so, the adverse affect to consumers of this rejection should be obvious. Furthermore, this isn't an isolated instance: Apple has a history of rejecting apps that compete against its products or those of its business partners.

One other thing: What few inventors DID succeed in providing themselves amply with patents seem to have been charlatans appropriating other people's works:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091218/1100247426.shtml

I know maybe nobody has argued with me yet on this topic, extensively, but I just can't find a single justification for the status quo of our patent system, and have to wonder what benefits we can possibly imagined having gotten as it was arrived at in it's current form?