The “Deliverance” of C-61 Begins
Thursday, June 19th, 2008 Posted in Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »Here we go... [UPDATED: Links added] It's been a week since the Minister of Information Industry, Jim Prentice, dropped a piano Bill C-61 on us. Thanks to Prof. Michael Geist, we had some warning: This bill would ...
RIAA and MPAA hijack the border (or someone like them)
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 Posted in Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »Cyberion, at Tazzu, posted a link to the Vancouver Province story on the threatened border checks on the legitimacy of electronic media. (Cyberion's post) I had some rather strong feelings, and ranted the following: This is one of the nastiest and ...
Selling your Everything II: More on non-competition clauses, IP assignments/waivers, and employment contracts
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 Posted in Business Law, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »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. Between ...
Microsoft’s Ironic Poker Game: But are they bluffing this time?
Saturday, April 12th, 2008 Posted in Business Law, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »Back in February, Network World ran a story that Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux operating system and guru of the Linux kernel, believes that Microsoft is bluffing in its threat to sue for patent infringement. NW quotes Torvals ...
Hulu and the NHL, follow-up
Monday, March 24th, 2008 Posted in Business Law, Communications, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »In response to a comment received putting succinctly Mr. Bettman's effect on the NHL, I would like to present two screen captures comparing the customer relations aspects of licensing issue manifestations. We have the new South Park Studios web site, which ...
Hulu and the NHL
Monday, March 24th, 2008 Posted in Business Law, Communications, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | 2 Comments »Michael Geist pointed out that the NHL webcast on Hulu.com is blocked to Canadians. It was pointed out in the comments that it seems blocked to other non-Americans as well. I added my $0.02 (i.e. this is my ...
Why the RIAA should be subject to Judicial Review
Monday, March 24th, 2008 Posted in Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »Nate Anderson of Ars Technica published a piece on March 11 entitled, "RIAA tells Ars: We're not hypocrites". Essentially it boils down to this: The RIAA's collective spin-off -- in some ways similar to SOCAN here -- is ...
Collective mens rea? Or a lack of musical supply…
Thursday, March 20th, 2008 Posted in Business Law, Intellectual Property | 1 Comment »Ben Jones of TorrentFreak published an article a couple of weeks ago discussing the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey in the U.K., in which it was revealed not only that so-called "piracy" is rampant, even among the generally non-criminal element. ...
Nine Inch Nails in the RIAA’s Coffin
Thursday, March 13th, 2008 Posted in Humanities, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »According to Prof. Larry Lessig, Nine Inch Nails' latest album has been released under Creative Commons. Kudos to Trent Reznor! http://lessig.org/blog/2008/03/nin_goes_cc.html I tried to comment but Prof. Lessig's blog is giving me some sort of SQL error. Here is my ...
Fair Play and Griefing in Second Life
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 Posted in Intellectual Property, Video Games, Virtual Worlds | No Comments »Terra Nova has an interesting piece on the issue of fair play in virtual worlds. I think the question is whether "griefing" could be considered infringement to fair play, which implies that fair play exists as a principle, and ...
