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 ...

Michael Geist lauds CRIA; jeers RIAA’s “hassle” policy

Monday, March 10th, 2008 Posted in Intellectual Property | 1 Comment »

The difference between commercial piracy and private copying was clear in the Copyright Act's s.80, it was made clearer by BMG v. John Doe, and now we can see the difference in action. Professor Michael Geist compares the RIAA's ...

Congratulations, Professor Michael Geist!

Monday, February 25th, 2008 Posted in Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Prof. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa is the Canada Research Chair in E-Commerce and Internet Law, an advocate for users' rights in the copyfight, and the recipient of an EFF Pioneer Award: Slaw Electronic Frontier Foundation Professor Geist rallied the Canadian ...

Reconstituting the Copyfight Polarization, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Corporation

Monday, February 18th, 2008 Posted in Business Law, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

I was recently discussing with a colleague on Tazzu the new allies the Copyfight seems to have found: Tazzu Discussion Thread: "The Forces of CopyRightness gain another ally" Ars Technica: The Privacy Commissioner is not a big fan of the ...

The Hacker Crackdown – a podcast

Sunday, January 13th, 2008 Posted in Communications, Information Technology | No Comments »

Cory Doctorow has read aloud Bruce Sterling's book, The Hacker Crackdown. He has created a podcast of the whole thing. Follow the link below: Cory Doctorow's announcement on Boing Boing of the podcast of The Hacker Crackdown. For those of you who ...

DMCA-Free Canada: a land of opportunity

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 Posted in Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) are the fortresses of code, silicon, and/or law that enforce Digital Rights Management (DRM). By not criminalizing (as a per se offense) the circumvention of TPMs, Canada keeps the doors open to innovation. Period. Innovation is not ...

Copyfight: it’s about use

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 Posted in Communications, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Why does the history matter? From Stationers to Sony, it’s about use. In this discussion about the Canadian Copyright Reform Bill, we are really discussing several legal ideas, which though often conflated are subtly different. History demonstrates this conflation through the ...

Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of Copyfight!

Sunday, December 16th, 2007 Posted in Communications, Information Technology, Intellectual Property | 2 Comments »

Not discussing the latest Canadian copyright reform bill, or the Canadian DMCA as it has been touted, to kick off weblawg.net would be like Han Solo ignoring his friend in need barreling down the trench of a moon-sized space station. Discussing ...