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"The six classes of works are: (1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances: (i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students; (ii) Documentary filmmaking; (iii) Noncommercial videos (2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset. (3) Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network. (4) Video games accessible on personal computers and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully obtained works, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing for, investigating, or correcting security flaws or vulnerabilities, if: (i) The information derived from the security testing is used primarily to promote the security of the owner or operator of a computer, computer system, or computer network; and (ii) The information derived from the security testing is used or maintained in a manner that does not facilitate copyright infringement or a violation

Smita Srinivas is Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning program at Columbia University, Director of the Technological Change Lab (TCLab), and a Faculty Associate of the South Asian Institute (SAI), Columbia University. Current and past projects include primary research in India and Finland, and comparative and collaborative work in the USA, Brazil, South Africa, and elsewhere. She advises students for their M.S. and PhD. dissertations on diverse settings: Yemen, Kenya, S. Korea, Mexico, Spain, Germany, USA, Uganda, India, and others.

"Meeting of the 14th session of the Intergovernmental Committee on the Universal Copyright Convention as revised in 1971 . 7-9 June, 2010 UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France. "

"Oded Shenkar, Professor of Business at Ohio State University, has written widely on the Chinese economy, notably in his acclaimed book "The Chinese Century" (2004). He has argued that China has been one of the main drivers and a primary beneficiary of the emergence of a 'copycat economy', where imitators increasingly win over innovators in capturing economic value. It's a subject he explores further in his new book, "Copycats: How Smart Companies Use Imitation to Gain Strategic Edge" (Harvard Business Press). In this talk, he will discuss whether Chinese businesses will, in the coming years, succeed in adding innovation to their repertoire, and whether this could result in a hybrid imitation/ innovation formula which will enable them to trump the competitive advantage of the world's major multinationals - or whether these multinationals will respond by learning the art of imitation themselves. Edwin Chan of the Harvard Design School and Tony Chen of Jones Day in Shanghai will also join in the debate on innovation and imitation in China. Moderated by Russell Flannery, Shanghai Bureau Chief of Forbes magazine."

"In this article the author examines the impact that copyright law has on the issue of censorship and government regulation of mass media. The author states that copyright legislation pits international media conglomerates that control the availability of their products, against the consumer right to have access to information resources at a reasonable charge. It is suggested that the court cases Huntsman v. Soderbergh and Universal Studios v. Reimerdes tilted the advantage toward the proprietors of mass media outlets and away from consumers."

The Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors. (The Microsoft DreamSparkProgram is an initiative by Microsoft where all the students of the VTU would be allowed to download free versions of Microsoft original software and portraying an act of benignity from Microsoft for the student community. Microsoft through this program (with the real intention of suppressing any development of intellectual self reliance of the students), was able to make a deal with the VTU.)

The Long Tail was a response to an essay by Clay Shirky, a prominent technology writer who also teaches at New York University. Shirky's argument dampened much of the nascent utopianism about blogs, pointing out that the readership of early blogs followed what economists call a Pareto curve, or "power curve": a small number of sites (the "head") attracted a huge number of readers, but most (the "tail") had few or none. This jarred with the utopian notion of the internet as a new kind of democracy. Why bother to participate if our fates were decided for us by a few block votes? So Anderson turned the notion upside down. The blockbuster was over, he proclaimed, and, like a man possessed, he began to see long tails everywhere. It was the Guardian that lauded this logic by comparing Anderson to Copernicus. The implicit message was that the little people would win. Many people were so keen to believe that Web 2.0 would make the world fairer that they rejected any evidence to the contrary. It was only last year, with an exhaustive study of online music sales by the economist Will Page and an experienced digital retailer, Andrew Bud, that a more useful picture of digital markets begin to emerge. Page and Bud found that most of the songs available for purchase had never been downloaded, and that the concentration of hits was more pronounced than ever before. On the file-sharing networks, the same pattern emerged. So, carrying a huge retail inventory, though cheaper than before, was of little or no value. Now, with Free, Anderson has turned to the criticism that the internet destroyed the value of movies, newspapers and music. Firms could, and now should, cross-subsidise this unprofitable activity, he argues. But cross-subsidies aren't new: they have been the subject of decades of observation by economists. Nor are they a panacea. Alan Patrick, co-founder of the Broadsight media and technology consultancy, points out that despite falling marginal costs, th

But the settlement would also create a class that includes millions of people who will never come forward. For the majority of books -- considered "orphan" works -- no one will claim ownership. The author may have died; the publisher might have gone out of business or doesn't respond to inquiries; the original contract has disappeared. Google would get an explicit, perpetual license to scan and sell access to these in-copyright but out-of-print orphans, which make up an estimated 50 to 70 percent of books published after 1923. No other provider of digital books would enjoy the same legal protection. The settlement also creates a Book Rights Registry that, in conjunction with Google, would set prices for all commercial terms associated with digital books. Broad access is the greatest promise of our digital age. Giving control over such access to one company, no matter how clever or popular, is a danger to principles we hold dear: free speech, open access to knowledge and universal education. Throughout history, those principles have been realized in libraries, publishers and legal systems. There are alternatives. Separate from the Google effort, hundreds of libraries, publishers and technology firms are already digitizing books, with the goal of creating an open, freely accessible system for people to discover, borrow, purchase and read millions of titles. It's not that expensive. For the cost of 60 miles of highway, we can have a 10 million-book digital library available to a generation that is growing up reading on-screen. Our job is to put the best works of humankind within reach of that generation. Through a simple Web search, a student researching the life of John F. Kennedy should be able to find books from many libraries, and many booksellers -- and not be limited to one private library whose titles are available for a fee, controlled by a corporation that can dictate what we are allowed to read.

The latest debate in the legal world is that intellectual property right (IPR) laws, meant to protect original creations, are serving private and not public interest. In order to highlight this fact, two students from Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), Gandhinagar, have authored a book on IPR laws. The book, Copyright Law Deskbook Knowledge, Access and Development, by Akhil Prasad and Aditi Agarwala examines the growing significance of IPR in today's knowledge-based economy. "In the chapter 'Debunking the Myth,' we have argued that the term intellectual property is a misnomer and should be replaced with the term intellectual asset. The term 'property' is tilted more towards private interests," says Prasad. The duo has also drawn attention to the fact that currently converting any book into Braille comes under copyright infringement and should be changed. "Whenever you convert a book into any other form without the author's knowledge, it is infringement of the copyright law and this holds true for books converted into Braille as well. Since it is difficult to take permission for each book before it is converted into Braille, we have drawn attention to the fact that this issue needs to be addressed," says Agarwala. Both Prasad and Agarwala started taking interest in IPR laws while pursuing their internship in Mumbai. "We had prepared an exhaustive 70-page petition on IPR during our internship. When we showed it to our former registrar he suggested we convert it into a booklet. However, we soon realised that there was a lot to write about and many issues needed to be addressed. So, we decided to author a 400-page book instead," says Agarwala.

The new policy will allow businesses to place trademarked terms directly in the copy of text advertisements that run in the U.S. starting next month, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday. The move, which Google said will improve the quality of its advertisements, comes as advertisers have begun bidding less money for the individual search terms that their ads appear alongside and as Google's revenue growth slows in the dismal economic climate. Until now, Google has forbidden companies from placing trademarked terms in their advertising copy unless they owned the trademark or had explicit permission from the trademark owners. Brand owners have historically had serious concerns about Google's policy with regards to trademarks, said Eric Goldman, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law.

Spammers have already written software able to match humans at some CAPTCHAs. But when CAPTCHAs finally fail, their co-creator Luis von Ahn at Carnegie Mellon University says there will be reason for celebration as well as concern. Software that can solve any text-based CAPTCHA will be as much a milestone for artificial intelligence as it will be a problem for online security.

How many children today are becoming Socrates' nightmare, decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes? Will they become so accustomed to immediate access to escalating on-screen information that they will fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination, and knowledge that have led us to this stage of human thought? Or, will the new demands of information technologies to multitask, integrate, and prioritize vast amounts of information help to develop equally, if not more valuable, skills that will increase human intellectual capacities, quality of life, and collective wisdom as a species?

Excellent post by Feroz Ali Khader on Bayh-Dole. "Ideally, the move to commercialise university research must have come after removing all the barriers that hinder research and restrict its produce. Till such time, the temptation of putting the horse before the cart must be resisted."

Recently, countries from China and Brazil to Malaysia and South Africa have passed laws promoting the patenting of publicly funded research [1,2], and a similar proposal is under legislative consideration in India [3]. These initiatives are modeled in part on the United States Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 [4]. Bayh-Dole (BD) encouraged American universities to acquire patents on inventions resulting from government-funded research and to issue exclusive licenses to private firms [5,6], on the assumption that exclusive licensing creates incentives to commercialize these inventions. A broader hope of BD, and the initiatives emulating it, was that patenting and licensing of public sector research would spur science-based economic growth as well as national competitiveness [6,7]. And while it was not an explicit goal of BD, some of the emulation initiatives also aim to generate revenues for public sector research institutions [8]. We believe government-supported research should be managed in the public interest. We also believe that some of the claims favoring BD-type initiatives overstate the Act's contributions to growth in US innovation. Important concerns and safeguards-learned from nearly 30 years of experience in the US-have been largely overlooked. Furthermore, both patent law and science have changed considerably since BD was adopted in 1980 [9,10]. Other countries seeking to emulate that legislation need to consider this new context.