/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ the politics of IP en-us wex@hovir.com 2013-05-18T09:07:47-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/05/18/its_a_cartel_not_a_class_action.php Reuters reports (here on HuffPo) that U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton has denied a request by a group of "copyright owner" - which we understand to mean giant media corporations - to be certified as a class for class-action lawsuit status. That giant media corporations have no class should come as no surprise.... 76425@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-05-18T09:07:47-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/05/09/the_legal_structures_prenda_exploited.php Over at Boingboing, Cory has a nice article up linking two good investigations into Prenda's abuse of the system. The two pieces are linked by an understanding that the way that copyright law has been structured - to enable the Cartel to sue as many people as possible as efficiently as possible - can be exploited by someone else to sue other innocents.... 76404@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-05-09T12:56:00-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/05/08/prenda_law_gets_broadsided.php This has been well-covered elsewhere. I just wanted to point out - thanks to Ken White at Popehat - that the Judge clearly understood how Prenda were taking advantage of the horrible state of copyright law in the US. "[Prenda] discovered the nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social stigma, and unaffordable defense costs [...] So now, copyright laws originally designed to compensate starving artists allow, starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to plunder the citizenry."... 76399@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-05-08T09:53:11-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/05/03/oh_and_by_the_way.php The Harry Potter e-books are going out without DRM. Just sayin'.... 76389@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-05-03T13:41:01-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/05/02/free_publication_on_seismic_shift_in_ca_copyright_law.php Michael Geist blogged today about "The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law". This free-to-download (Creative Commons) collaboration is an attempt by a group of scholars to help people understand the shifts in Canadian copyright law that came as a result of their Supreme Court issuing five new copyright-related rulings hard on the heels of copyright reform legislation being passed by the government.... 76385@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-05-02T11:29:48-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/29/microsoft_appears_ready_to_relent_on_xbox_drm.php Polygon.com is reporting that at its Xbox announcement next month, Microsoft will have a pleasant surprise for gamers and developers. Up to now there's been a steady drumbeat of insistence that the new Microsoft console will require always-on DRM, but now it looks like there will be the option for always-on, but the console will also support one-time authentication as well as fully DRM-free models. It will be up to the game developers to choose which models to use. We'll have to wait for the official announcement to know if this is true but if so it's a huge boon... 76374@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-29T09:55:16-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/23/aereo_expands.php I got a press release from Aereo today indicating that they are going to launch in Boston in mid-May. Significantly, this is outside the Second Circuit, where Aereo recently won its appeal. If I was a betting man I would bet that this will be an invitation for the broadcasters to file a new round of lawsuits in hopes of finding a friendlier ruling and creating a variance in opinions that could pressure the Supreme Court to revisit the 2nd's decision.... 76361@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-23T08:25:00-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/22/msf_joins_opposition_to_tpp.php Doctors Without Borders is urging its members and donors to call Congress with four clear talking points opposing TPP, the secretly negotiated treaty that would establish strict protocols and laws favoring patent holders, including those whose life-saving medicines can currently be subject to compulsory licensing.... 76359@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-22T15:33:53-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/18/opensource_creativity.php Mark Ruffalo just got about 100x cooler in my book. One can only hope the executives at Marvel and associated entities share his enlightened views.... 76354@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-18T17:42:51-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/17/bn_tries_to_compete_in_selfpublishing.php Barnes & Noble, as part of its effort to save its Nook reader, has rolled out its second-generation self-publishing platform. Authors can set prices and pay a percentage as they can under Amazon's program - it's not clear what advantages this program will offer. It's clearly a good thing for B&N to have a self-publishing program, but tying it to Nook is just continuing a fundamental mistake of e-books that I've been complaining about for years: device lock-in.... 76350@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-17T15:32:36-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/17/no_kidding_matt.php In a very short piece for Salon, Matt Yglesias points out that the entertainment industry (or as we call them here, the Copyright Cartel) enjoy "special status" with the Obama administration. The result is what we've seen - the DOJ and DHS turned into copyright cops, outlandish maximalism at the Librarian of Congress's office, and of course the vampire-like rise of CISPA from the grave.... 76349@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-17T14:26:41-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/10/patent_monetization_entities_which_is_to_say_trolls.php A study report out of UC Hastings College of the Law reports that "patent monetization entities" - called "trolls" in the headline - filed 56% of patent lawsuits last year, more than double the percentage of five years ago. Hear that, Apple? You get cracking now! On a more serious note, the study also looked at public notification systems and determined that they are woefully inadequate. People and companies are not able to find out when patents are being asserted in lawsuits, which deprives them of the chance to avoid infringement.... 76339@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-10T08:15:38-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/04/02/spolsky_discovers_npes.php I'm generally a fan of Spolsky's philosophies and discussions on software development and business practices, but his blog entry on "The Patent Protection Racket" isn't one of his best. As I've noted in the past, we appear to have created this NPE monster ourselves and it's not really anything new. Efforts to prevent bad patents from getting issued sound better to me, but it's probably also going to be necessary to encourage more small developers to band together to fight NPE abuses.... 76323@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-04-02T11:54:04-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/03/22/legal_snark_is_good_snark.php David Post, writing at Volokh Conspiracy on the Kirtsaeng decision, is worth quoting entirely: The Court – in a utterly brilliant opinion by Justice Breyer, a minor classic of the “here are all the reasons why my arguments are better than yours” school of opinion-writing — rejected Wiley’s argument and refused to impose the geographical restriction Wiley sought.... 76297@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-03-22T20:31:59-05:00 http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2013/03/19/as_usual_scotusblog_is_spoton.php Ronald Mann's first-look analysis of the Kirtsaeng opinion is excellent. He notes that the opinion is quite strong, particularly given that last time the Court split 4-4 on a closely related question. He notes that the oral arguments and the amici briefs definitely seem to have swayed doubting Justices.... 76289@/home/corante/public_html/copyfight/ Blink › 2013-03-19T13:12:46-05:00