Category Archives: Intellectual Property

Hedy Fry’s Copyright Balance

Honourable Member of Parliament Dr. Hedy Fry responded to Bill C-61 in a letter to constituent Chuck LeDuc Diaz, which he published on his blog. I respond to Dr. Fry’s letter. She is correct on certain critiques of the Bill, but misses a crucial point in her statement about balanced rights between creator and consumer. 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

Posted in Civil Liberties, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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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Microsoft’s Ironic Poker Game: But are they bluffing this time?

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 as … Continue reading

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Hulu and the NHL, follow-up

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, … Continue reading

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Hulu and the NHL

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 comment on … Continue reading

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Why the RIAA should be subject to Judicial Review

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 called SoundExchange, … Continue reading

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Collective mens rea? Or a lack of musical supply…

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. What’s … Continue reading

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Nine Inch Nails in the RIAA’s Coffin

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 … Continue reading

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