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Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
In early October 1998, Congress reached a compromise on legislation intended to protect copyright in cyberspace. President Clinton signed the legislation in late October 1998. The new law makes it...
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US Supreme Court shocker for freelance writers
I guess this week’s US Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v Tasini answers the age-old conundrum of when a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear? The trees fell, and we all heard. But...
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The long arm of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Publish software and go to jail. That’s the lesson learned by Russian cryptography expert Dmitry Sklyarov earlier this week in Las Vegas. As reported by Planet eBook, who broke the story, Sklyarov had...
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Copyright blackmail
Some nights I have a nightmare: I’m living in a quietly horrifying scene that’s dark, wet, and narcotic. Right out of Blade Runner or Max Headroom, media drips everywhere. I dream that, as a whole...
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When elephants dance
[Ed. note: Minor clarification changes have been made to this article since it was published in its original form. For complete details, see the revision history section at the bottom of the...
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The purpose of copyright
I’ve been getting a good bit of push back on the copyright bits in “When elephants dance.” Interestingly, most of the push back is coming from customers of copyrighted works, not producers. [Ed. note...
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Lawrence Lessig on dinosaurs taking over
Business Week online technology reporter Jane Black has a good interview with Lawrence Lessig covering Lessig’s concern about the entertainment industry’s power grab for control of the Internet....
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The case for dumb plumbing
Imagine if you paid for your home’s plumbing by the type of waste transported through the system. You’d pay one rate for solid waste, another rate for liquid, and yet another for any, um, mysterious...
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NPR linking policy
If you don’t want to be linked, you shouldn’t be on the Web. What is it going to take for organizations to understand that? National Public Radio is the latest organization to attempt to dictate a...
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The war against customers
[n.b.: This is a condensed version of an article originally published here, written at the request of, and is scheduled for publication in, spiked.] While the Copyright Act of 1790, Title 17, Chapter...
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RIAA feels its oats
Late last week, 13 record labels filed a federal lawsuit in New York, seeking a judicial order to force four major Internet backbone providers — AT&T, Cable and Wireless, Sprint, and UUNet — to...
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Gnomedex: Doc Searls
Doc is supposed to be speaking about the future of Linux, but he damn sure had a better time last night than I did. After all, he’s a former marketer and readily acknowledges he can’t turn down a...
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Internet too moral-free for News Corp. president
Last week Peter Chernin, president of News Corp., told attendees of the Progress & Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit that the Internet has become a “moral-free zone” full of pornography, spam, and...
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Apple says DVD burning okay only on its equipment
Steve Jobs’ infamous reality distortion field is a powerful thing. I almost get sucked into it on a semi-regular basis. My last Macintosh was a “WallStreet” PowerBook. I loved it, but it was pre-OS X...
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The coming copyright storm
With a fisted left hand, the entertainment industry pays BayTSP run by former black-hat cracker, Mark Ishikawa, up to US$50,000 per month to determine who is illegally copying protected works on the...
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Digital Choice and Freedom Act
Last week, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) introduced the Digital Choice and Freedom Act, proposed legislation that would amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to specifically...
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Technology Consumer Bill of Rights
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Representative Christopher Cox (R-California) have introduced legislation in both US congressional bodies that would protect the rights of consumers to use digital...
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Bad code in Washington
It’s midterm election day in America when some percentage of us — usually less than half — hold our noses and go to the polls. Hopefully by now you’ve taken the time to inform yourself and you’re...
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EFF and the doctrine of pre-emptive litigation
Call it the doctrine of pre-emptive litigation. EFF has filed a lawsuit against Diebold, Inc., the manufacturer of an electronic voting machine that is said to be “unverifiable.” When a citizen votes,...
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Republican staffers may have hacked Democrat computers
Senate Judiciary Committee Republican staffers have reportedly hacked into Democrat computers for more than a year, copying documents and passing them on to sympathetic corporate media hands. So says...
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