Category Archives: Information Technology

EU suggests reason and logic behind ACTA

According to the EU, ACTA will ignore “infringing goods [that] are not part of large scale traffic.” ACTA will also not force already taxed enforcement officers “to look for a couple of pirated songs on an i-Pod music player…” Continue reading

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New ways of looking at video game IP

This is where we tread the line between copyright and patent – between creative work and invention – that has plagued software intellectual property protection for a very long time. The game bears enough in common with its paper-and-dice ancestors to merit some form of patent consideration; yet the invention here is in fact a platform for storytelling – a tool to inspire and facilitate the creation of content by its users. Continue reading

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Software IP and Games – which model applies?

At the moment, video games, because they are software, are covered by copyright.  But traditionally, games were covered by patent. Hmm.  I’ve argued before that software should be sui generis, governed by a hybrid model of patent and copyright: The … Continue reading

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Are there benefits to “piracy”?

The pro-copyright lobby groups would have you believe that all unauthorized reproduction (and distribution), colloquially known (inaccurately) as piracy, is horrid for the industries concerned, and is destroying them. Many say that unauthorized copying actually benefits the concerned industries. Do you think this is true? If so, which industry benefits the most? I’ve created a poll and I would like you to let me know what you think. Feel free to comment to this post. Continue reading

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Alternatives to C-61, part II

Here’s the rest of that post: GOALS The goal of any legislation is to balance concerns of interested but competing parties, and to approach this balance, as much as possible, with a public interest bias. The concerns were these:

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Alternatives to C-61: Statutory concerns for the protection and encouragement of creative works

I want to suggest an alternative paradigm to the statutory regime for creative works as intellectual property, a.k.a. copyright.  I’m not going to get into detailed explanations of the existing Copyleft and other alternative paradigms to copyright.  But I’m going … Continue reading

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Is there a Master Chef at Bell?

Bell claims that they have to throttle bandwidth or Internet access will be slow for everyone. Since it was only with the discovery that Bell was shuffling high-payload users into a slow lane that we found out that there were people moving along faster, it now recasts the entire argument as follows:

Bell originally marketed ultra-high speed access as a fast lane since everything was getting slow. Now we know that it was only slow for those upon whom slowness was being forced by Bell so that they could then justify the higher price of ultra-high speed (i.e. allegedly unthrottled) access. Bell claims this is necessary, as there is an imminent threat to everyone’s bandwidth. But unlike a concrete highway, bandwidth is not based on scarce real property. It is based on virtually limitless fibre-optic trunks and always-improving server technology. The physical space occupied by these bandwidth highways is minimal; the physical space required for expansion, if it is in fact necessary, is negligible. Continue reading

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The “Deliverance” of C-61 Begins

Costin’s Analysis of C-61 begins: This bill is not a brave surge forward into the 21st century for Canada, embracing the Information Age and showing the world that we lead in promoting innovation and civil liberties, that we have the wisdom to strike balance where others are stricken with fear, and that we anticipate rather than kowtow.
This bill is instead sycophantic obsequiousness to groups that should be politically and legally notwithstood according to any definition of Canadian sovereignty or democracy. Continue reading

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RIAA and MPAA hijack the border (or someone like them)

Cyberion, at Tazzu, posted a link to the Vancouver Province story on the threatened border checks (ACTA) on the legitimacy of electronic media. (Cyberion’s post) I had some rather strong feelings, and ranted the following: This is one of the … Continue reading

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Selling your Everything II: More on non-competition clauses, IP assignments/waivers, and employment contracts

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on the subject of over-reaching employment contracts. Click here for it. Anyway, I promised that I would have the next part up within days and well, it’s been kind of crazy. … Continue reading

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