The Obama administration's proposed internet sections of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have been leaked, the analysis says it's very bad. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges on Nov 4, 2009 - 78 comments

Last month, the makers of Monster Energy Drink (Warning: Flash, Ads) sent a cease and desist letter (PDF) to Rock Art Brewery, makers of The Vermonster beer. Brewer Matt Nadeau plans to fight back, even though such a fight would be nasty, time consuming, and very, very expensive. [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding on Oct 14, 2009 - 79 comments

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a criticism of Burning Man, LLC's Terms and Conditions, saying that the automatic rights assignment to BMOrg for photos & video taken during the event is "creative lawyering intended to allow the BMO to use the streamlined “notice and takedown” process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to quickly remove photos from the Internet" and that this is corrosive to our freedom of speech. Burning Man responds.
posted by scalefree on Aug 14, 2009 - 123 comments

USA ♥'s Antigua ∴ Zookz
posted by bigmusic on Jul 16, 2009 - 10 comments

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act has added a whole other dimension to the term "copyright infringement." Sponsored by the US entertainment industry, it allows seizure of assets before the accused is found guilty and the creation of a new executive branch led by an "Intellectual Property Czar" who would report directly to the President on IP crimes--similar to the Drug Czar of the War on Drugs. Financial penalties for copyright crimes have increased dramatically. More information here, and a summary of critiques here. Is this a useful addition to the War On Copyright Infringement or just more bureaucratic red tape?
posted by schroedinger on Oct 14, 2008 - 45 comments

Give us your secrets. The Chinese government plans order foreign manufacturers to reveal information about their digital products, a Japanese newspaper reported on Friday. It will introduce rules requiring foreign firms to disclose secret information about digital household appliances and other products from May next year, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing unnamed sources. If a company refuses to disclose information, China would ban it from exporting the product to the Chinese market or producing or selling it in China, the paper said. [more inside]
posted by caddis on Sep 22, 2008 - 38 comments

“I actually ran it by a number of colleagues who teach administrative law and constitutional law,” Professor Duffy said, recalling his own surprise at finding such a fundamental and important flaw. He thought he must have been missing something. Law prof notices that every US patent approved since 2000 was approved unconstitutionally and thus are all probably invalid. Looks like he may be right. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on May 7, 2008 - 49 comments

Barbie vs Bratz: Mattel sues MGA, claiming the Bratz designs were created by a Mattel employee and smuggled to its rival.
posted by Artw on May 5, 2008 - 40 comments

"I mean he quite literally -- and in no way do I exaggerate when I say -- [Paul Simon] stole the songs from us." [more inside]
posted by Sys Rq on Apr 19, 2008 - 75 comments

Toymakers Hasbro and Mattel claim that the popular online game Scrabulous (available on Facebook) infringes on the trademark for the board game Scrabble. They have not yet filed suit, but have asked Facebook to desist in its alleged infringement. Scrabulous is one of the top ten plug-ins on the site, developed by brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla in Calcutta, India. "There has been speculation that the challenge to Scrabulous had been launched as Hasbro and Mattel prepare their own online version of Scrabble." Electronic Arts holds the license to the electronic rights to Scrabble. Facebook users are rallying to save the game. [more inside]
posted by ericb on Jan 17, 2008 - 94 comments

Sexy girls moaning your IP address. (probably NSFW)
posted by mr_crash_davis on Aug 22, 2007 - 36 comments

Lawrence Lessig moves on Lessig has spent the last 10 years fighting for IP reform and open culture, He's decided to focus on fighting what he calls "corruption" (with quotes)... the pernicious effect that moneyed interests have in crafting and controlling public policy.

_{Finally, I am not (as one friend wrote) "leaving the movement." "The movement" has my loyalty as much today as ever. But I have come to believe that until a more fundamental problem is fixed, "the movement" can't succeed either. Compare: Imagine someone devoted to free culture coming to believe that until free software supports free culture, free culture can't succeed. So he devotes himself to building software. I am someone who believes that a free society -- free of the "corruption" that defines our current society -- is necessary for free culture, and much more. For that reason, I turn my energy elsewhere for now.}

posted by delmoi on Jun 22, 2007 - 61 comments

The end of one-click patents? The Supreme court recently handed down a decision in the case of KSR v. Teleflex requiring courts to use "common sense" in determining what is an is not "Obvious" and therefore not patentable. According to SCOTUSblog, this will greatly affect "combination" patents that involve combining two already existing ideas in a new way.
posted by delmoi on May 9, 2007 - 32 comments

The Fallout 3 that never will be. As far as western RPGs go, the Fallout series was one of the crown jewels. A spiritual successor to EA's Wasteland, the games combined tragedy, black humor and all the cool of the retrofuture apocalypse. Although much of the creative team left to form Troika Games, and two (barely related) follow-up games were made, Black Isle Studios (who were also responsible for the Dungeons and Dragons-based Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate series, along with the epic Planescape: Torment) was planning a third sequel, but now Bethesda picked up the IP and plans to make an MMORPG. That little tech demo is all that's left of one of the most demanded video game sequels in western RPG history.
posted by griphus on May 1, 2007 - 107 comments

While Courtney pulled an Albini, Jeff handed out the bread. Are the peasants acting like emperors, or do they still want something shiny, aluminum, plastic, and digital? Debacle or cage, something's got to give (pdf). Alternatively, you can just roll your own.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Feb 4, 2007 - 32 comments

You may have seen this excellent map of the internet from xkcd. Still lost? You are here.
posted by loquacious on Dec 16, 2006 - 26 comments

Dapper: The Data Mapper
A recently launched service that allows users to extract data from any website into XML, and transform or build applications and mashups with that data. Described by it's creators as a way to, "easily build an API for any website... through a visual and intuitive process". Plagiarism Today, meanwhile, has cause for concern, "Dapper is a scraper. Nothing more... now the technologically impaired can scrape content from any site... the potential danger [is] very, very real".
posted by MetaMonkey on Sep 5, 2006 - 31 comments

Saving Corporal Shalit: "I think the only danger to the soldier's life is if there is an actual incursion by Israel into the Gaza Strip."
posted by kliuless on Jun 27, 2006 - 42 comments

We know Magnatune aren't evil, but as web record labels go, are Beatpick less evil still? In his response to a post at the Creative Commons blog, Beatpick's David D'Atri sets out their philosophy, and highlights some differences.
posted by nthdegx on Mar 7, 2006 - 10 comments

editors from the range of IP addresses belonging to the United States Congress have been banned from wikipedia.
posted by delmoi on Jan 30, 2006 - 59 comments

In Technology Review, Lawrence Lessig and Richard Epstein are debating intellectual property, free software, and digital rights management. Shamelessly lifted, verbatim, from a post by Reason's Jesse Walker
posted by Kwantsar on May 19, 2005 - 14 comments

Fair Use and "Digital Environmentalism" - NYU journalism head Robert Boynton reviews four recent books (the 4th) about intellectual property and the public domain.
posted by mrgrimm on Jan 28, 2005 - 2 comments

EA Plays Hardball Just in case locking up the NFL license wasn't enough...
posted by ga$money on Jan 18, 2005 - 36 comments

Farmer Homer McFarland is being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Monsanto corporation. His crime? Replanting his crops' own seed, as farmers have done for millennia, which violates the biotech giant's intellectual property rights, the company claims. Quietly, Monsanto's aggressive "seed police" have been suing farmers in 25 states for years, often settling out of court for huge sums, according to the Center for Food Safety's new report, Monsanto vs. US farmers [PDF link]. For more information, also see a new documentary called The Future of Food.
posted by digaman on Jan 15, 2005 - 55 comments

Finnish police raid BitTorrent site "Around 30 volunteers who helped moderate the site were also arrested....MPAA is co-operating in criminal investigations with police in Finland, the Netherlands and France, so it is reasonable to infer that reports of raids in more European countries are likely to surface shortly." I was about to look into using BitTorrent given the positive feedback - maybe I should wait.
posted by Voyageman on Dec 15, 2004 - 82 comments

CNET's music.download.com, aka the new look mp3.com beta launches in a week or two. Artists are asked to submit music from now, however. (Previously on metafilter: exhibts A and B.)
posted by nthdegx on Apr 15, 2004 - 13 comments

An attempt by developing countries to put management of the Internet under United Nations auspices is likely to be shelved at next month's world information summit in Geneva - but the issue is now firmly on the international agenda.
posted by Mick on Nov 10, 2003 - 14 comments

Think the RIAA is doing something new by threatening and suing? Think again... it's all part of a 4-step process.
posted by clevershark on Nov 10, 2003 - 13 comments

U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. Privacy & Piracy: The Paradox of Illegal File Sharing on Peer-to-Peer Networks and the Impact of Technology on the Entertainment Industry. View the hearing of September 29. [Real Media].
posted by nthdegx on Oct 1, 2003 - 3 comments

Eolas® Technologies Inc. owns the plugin concept. Meet US Patent 5,838,906: "The patent claims to cover mechanisms for embedding objects within distributed hypermedia documents, where at least some of the object's data is located external to the document, and there is a control path to the object's implementation to support user interaction with the object." Eolas sued Microsoft, was awarded $521 million, Microsoft is appealing, and the W3C held (Macromedia hosted) an ad hoc meeting on the recent court decision and launched a discussion list. Microsoft plans to promptly make changes to Internet Explorer. If this follows through, what are the negative and positive implications?
posted by aaronshaf on Sep 2, 2003 - 29 comments

Selling a used item as a copyright infringement? Used knitting patterns are often resold by the original buyer when they've used them. "Alice Starmore(R)" is a company that makes patterns and yarns for knitters. Ebay is a big clearinghouse for knitters, and "Alice Starmore(R)" has repeatedly insisted that ANY auction of their yarns or patterns be pulled as the auctions violate their trademark and/or copyrights. So the knitters are getting a defense fund together to claim anti-trust and restraint of trade. Didn't we sort this all out over selling used books and cd's already? You really shouldn't mess with people who have a hobby that makes them adept with big metal needles. (BTW Alice Starmore is from the Hebrides, hence the whole "KnittingBeyond..." business.)
posted by Salmonberry on Nov 29, 2002 - 19 comments

Left Gets Nod from Right on Copyright Law - A darling of the conservative movement, federal Judge Richard Posner criticizes the Sonny Bono Act and attacks the Patent and Trademark Office for granting "very questionable" business method patents at a lecture organized by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. (via How Appealing)
posted by ajr on Nov 21, 2002 - 11 comments

The ThreeRing Web Mapping project adds a dot to a blank canvas showing your geographic location (or that of your ISP, as best it can guess based on your IP address). They've also got a code snippet to put on your own site that automagically adds your visitors to the map. The US is already clearly defined, Europe is getting there, and Oceania is coming into view. (They've also got one of them Tag-Board thingies, which is painful to read for any length of time.)
posted by gleuschk on Apr 5, 2002 - 26 comments

Interesting article from The Guardian discussing the fact that people seem willing to pay for annoying ringtones, but seem unwilling to pay for near-CD-quality music. Unfortunately it doesn't really address the question of "why?"
posted by jedro on Jan 11, 2002 - 15 comments

A rare (in the US) view of the conflict in Israel from the point of view of a Palestinian. His conclusion: young men are making suicide attacks because "death is a better option than the life they are leading." Meanwhile, Sharon's long term plan is to make things even worse for the Palestinians.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Aug 27, 2001 - 94 comments

aw, so sweet... it seems lately that everyone's first response to copyright and trademark infringement is to jump down the offender's throat and rip their guts out. this company just corrects the spelling of their name and sends presents.
posted by centrs on Apr 19, 2001 - 17 comments

Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? What's happening to copyright law lately, why, why ignoring it may well be the best thing to do to fix it, and why Mickey Mouse is a Yakuza. Very nice piece from (former?) EFF Legal Counsel Mike Godwin
posted by baylink on Jun 21, 2000 - 6 comments

An interview with the lawyers from Napster and Metellica. Good points, both.
posted by Mick on May 22, 2000 - 6 comments

Does the Star Trek Coffee pose a threat to Starbucks?
posted by tiaka on May 15, 2000 - 2 comments