Group items tagged

This is a blog posting discussing the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) which recently added Indonesia, Brazil and India to its 'Special 301 Watchlist' which marks nations as a threat to intellectual property for encouraging their government departments and companies to use open source software

The emergence of nanotechnology and cascading media nowadays have resulted to clash of two newly found realms. New discoveries of Nanotechnology and shifts on how people define intellectual properties had imposed legal and non-legal questions like how to classify and who should benefit from the technology.

A blog post covering the Pirate Party UK and the recent launch of it's manifesto. The Pirate Party is fighting to reform 'intellectual property' law but also covers freedom of speech on the Internet an other web related issues. After winning seats on the European and German parliament, could they also be successful in the UK?

Blog posts

Article from PC World dated 19/3/2010 Talks about the the enduring legal battle between Viacom and Google over intellectual property rights which have been (arguably) 'violated' by the Video sharing website, Youtube. This is another prime example of the indefinable nature of the digital medium and the problems inherent in resolving issues of ownership and distribution of information in the context of the internet. The inability to fully implement control in free flowing information forums again raises the question who can really be made responsible for copyright infringements?

Another case in which intellectual property rights come into question. Apple is suing HTC for infringement of 20 Apple patents. It is interesting to note, that the majority of handsets which been specified in this case are powered by Google's Android operating system which is open source. I feel that corporations using open sources to power their products need to consider the potential repercussions. Although open source communities tend to operate with an ethic of contribution and collaborative innovation; it is inevitable that ideas and the products which stem from it will crossover from one realm to another, which in turn will lead to a figurative 'stepping on one another's toes' and ensuing law suits. In saying this, it is clear that whether or not it is open source product or not, that cases like this have almost become a symptom of the modern tech-business climate.

Cybersquatting complaints dropped 9.5% from 2008 when a record complaints were logded. WIPO head mentions drop may just be due to economic climate, and companies limited budget to start litigations. This article mentions even the fifa world cup site lodged a cybersquatting complaint.

New Zealand is getting ready for a potential patent reform? Predominantly this bill includes an exclusion of patents on software which is a big development in a digital commercial industry which is rife with conflict over intellectual property. Personally, I feel it is a step in the right direction? But I guess that is the point of view of an end user.

A scene from a German movie where the actor impersonated Hitler has been curbed by claims of copyright infringement. (I'm not surprised!) The movie produced in 2004 was asked to remove its scene of humorous Hitler impersonation and rendered the Germans as lacking a sense of humour. Despite the removal, dismay fans has reenacted the scene as new parodies are added over the internet.

A dispute between two letting agencies "Mantra Group Pty Ltd (Mantra) VS Tailly Pty Ltd (Tailly)" over a domain name of an apartment complex at Surfers Paradise. Mantra had alleged Tailly of breaching its registered domain in gaining commercial advantage since Mantra is a letting company that run on a bigger scale. The court is till in the midst of deliberation.

A lad from washington dc, aged 22 was sentenced to jail for 29 months for selling copyrighted movies over the INTERNET. He has been managing USAWAREZ.COM since 2006. This is a sign where of the pathway that we are paving for Copyright policies.

Article although from earlier this year is an interesting comment from Lessig in which he praises Google for the Book Settlement allowing the public more access than fair use, but which he speaks out against in the level of control control the settlement which allows different types of licensing on word/quote/page basis. Potentially it could be a permissions nightmare for people who would like to use excerpts from the books.

Microsoft Corp and I-O Data Device have entered into an agreement that will provide I-O Data's customers with patent coverage for their use of I-O Data's products running Linux and other related open source software.

Find the whole idea vaguely repulsive. See Slashdot: "The Japanese computer manuracturer IO Data is the latest in line to license Microsoft's so-called 'Linux patents,' following the likes of Novell, Samsung, and Amazon. Yes, even the press releases use the word 'Linux' to describe these patents. From the press release: 'Specifically, the patent covenants apply to I-O Data's network-attached storage devices and its routers, which run Linux. Although the details of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicated that Microsoft is being compensated by I-O Data.'" http://bit.ly/bmxIO4

Surprisingly, a Spanish judge has ruled today in favor of a file-sharing website since P2P networks as a mere transmission of data between Internet users, would not violate, in principle, any right protected by Intellectual Property Law. Furthermore, he decided that "offering an index of links and/or linking to copyright material is not the same as distribution." The decision was based on the notion that the file-sharer doesn't make any direct or indirect profits off the site

Well here's a good old fashioned police crackdown on online copyright infringement. The largest illegal download site in Greece had its alleged key players arrested in their homes after a complaint was made by a copyright protection agency.

The European Parliament overwhelmingly voted to explicitly oppose any law or global agreement which would entail ISPs to punish customers for breaches of copyright. They have also demanded that documents surrounding the secret worldwide negotiations, which Australia is also involved in, be released publicly. 

I believe Apple will not be very happy about this.

A group of independent film producers have initiated court actions against over 20,000 Bit Torrent users, through an organisation of their own design, a group of lawyers known as the U.S Copyright Group. This group are demanding users to either defend themselves in court or alternatively, to settle outside of court for downloading particular movie titles. Most accused will settle to avoid the costs of litigation. Actions such as this are worrying as may give rise to a standard in which large numbers of corporates, not only in film but in all types of media, may start bringing forth unrelenting actions against individual users- holding them personally accountable. This is problematic (amongst a variety of reasons) that in the identification process through IP addresses is not 100% accurate, leaving room to wrongly accuse some users.

If you are going to look at copyright on the internet, you really can't go past this settlement. This is Google's next step at world domination: control of our intellectual property. No one likes it, but everyone is going ahead with it because Google has them over a barrel ... The basic deal is that Google wants to digitise every book ever written and make them all searchable online by google customer. On the surface this is all shiny; it seems commonsense that all material should be digitised - we have to keep up with technology. The problem arises when you get to the sticky situation of copyright - generally with books, owners get royalties every time someone buys a copy. With the digitisation, Google wasn't too keen on the idea of pay-per-view. Ideally, they would have loved to present all that information free and just reap the benefit ... well, however Google reaps benefits. There was litigation all round - publishers were against it, yahoo and other internet giants were against it (because it wasn't their idea) and it went to the doors of the US Supreme Court, but not quite to trial. Google's rivals were not too sure that they wanted to go to trial, because the outcome was a little on the uncertain side. So the Google book settlement was drawn up, objected to, fought, signed up to, taken to the US Supreme Court for approval, rejected, modified, fought over a bit more, and sent back to the judge. The last move was in Feb 2010; we're still waiting for Critics argue that the deal gives Google too much power over digital books and will not benefit customers in terms of cost, possible censorship issues, privacy. Copyright owners will also lose out, as Google's royalty policy cuts them out of the system and reduces their royalty - and they are automatically included in the agreement unless they 'opt out' (even if they have not 'opted in'). Really, Google is the only party that seems to benefit, and yet for all of the fighting, the settlement seems

Head programmer of Wolfire games, David, also talking about the methods of measurement for analysing economic losses through piracy that do not truly reflect losses terms of real world consumer spending