Oh woop de do it's Tetris on the internet. No seriously, Tetris Friends is awesome. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla on Sep 8, 2009 - 48 comments

Sgt. Alvin C. York was the most decorated individual US Soldier in WWI. Subject of the top grossing movie of 1941, He was credited with capturing 138 German soldiers nearly single handedly by flanking a Machine gun nest, and killing its occupants. The Machine gun in question may be destroyed because the library that owns it does not have a proper license.
posted by Gungho on Apr 23, 2007 - 44 comments

Free Beer! ...but free as in "Open Source Beer", mind you. Students from Copenhagen's IT-University have produced and released a powerful beer recipe under a Creative Commons license. Microbrewers, start your machines...
posted by betobeto on Jul 12, 2005 - 31 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

An Open Letter to Zed. Someday people will realise that the GPL offers no protection from anything, and use a real free software license instead.
posted by reklaw on Aug 30, 2004 - 41 comments

Angry at something? Have Calvin pee on it. (gallery here) Perhaps the most popular form of American expression in the last decade (Aside from Jesus Fish Vs. Darwin Fish), I've personally seen Calvin pee on at least 5 NASCAR drivers, prayed to 2 religions, and given me the finger twice. What does Bill Watterson think about this? Wait... no, I'm sorry, this is what he really thinks about licensing. I think if you've proliferated the rape of my favorite comic strip you should spend an eternity with Jeff Gordon peeing on your head.
posted by Stan Chin on Jan 17, 2003 - 66 comments

Open Source Copyright. As a follow-up to this thread, Creative Commons has now officially launched. I'm quite interested to see the various content creators who take these licenses and run with them - amateur filmmakers, independent musicians, authors, writers, and technologists .....should have groups like the MPAA and RIAA quaking in their boots.
posted by bkdelong on Dec 16, 2002 - 17 comments

Apple announced QuickTime 6 today with MPEG 4 support but refused to release it. Apple, along with other members of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance are not happy with the the MPEG-4 licensing scheme. And they have good reason, among other fees, the plan includes per minute charges for viewing content, with no maximum amount.

Is this the Moving Picture Experts Group and their licensing partners admitting that content will be worthless in 5 years? Is the financial future of the entertainment industry modeled on the utility companies?
posted by joemaller on Feb 12, 2002 - 5 comments

The W3C's RAND Patent Policy commenting deadline has been extended. At first glance, the new policies seem to encourage software patents, but after reading the whole thing and the W3C's response to current comments, it looks, to my admittedly naive eyes, as though the W3C is trying to make it so that companies using proprietary software are going to have to make it available to other people for licensing. Why is this new structure potentially a bad thing?
posted by cCranium on Oct 2, 2001 - 8 comments

World Domination (the Microsoft way) Included in the Front Page 2002 licensing: "You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services ... " [link via slashdot]
posted by kd on Sep 20, 2001 - 18 comments

ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves? Read interested in the internal machinations of the music industry may be interested to read this essay describing how ASCAP works, who it targets, and who it benefit.
posted by faisal on May 2, 2001 - 2 comments