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To Prevent Free, Frictionless Access To Human Knowledge, Publishers Want Librarians To Be Afraid, Very Afraid - 14 novembre 2020
After many years of fierce resistance to open access, academic publishers have largely embraced — and extended — the idea, ensuring that their 35-40% profit margins live on. In the light of this subversion of the original hopes for open access, people have come up with other ways to provide free and frictionless (...)
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Found Him : This Has To Be THE Dumbest Criminal - 13 février 2014
In our ongoing coverage of the crossroads of technology and stupid criminals, we’ve seen quite a bit of dumb, ranging from really stupid to the kind of stupid that is so painful one wonders how faith in humanity persists. I now submit to you that we’ve found the purist expression of stupidity in a criminal known to (...)
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Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain ; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees - 17 juin 2013
Happy Birthday remains the most profitable song ever. Every year, it is the song that earns the highest royalty rates, sent to Warner/Chappell Music (which makes millions per year from "licensing" the song). However, as we’ve been pointing out for years, the song is almost certainly in the public domain. Robert (...)
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NASCAR Abuses DMCA To Try To Delete Fan Videos Of Daytona Crash - 26 février 2013
Joseph M. Durnal was the first of a whole bunch of you to send in a version of this story showing how NASCAR abused copyright to take down some videos. You may have heard that there was a big NASCAR crash at Daytona that sent debris flying into the stands. Well, a video from those same stands, which shows a wheel (...)
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The DVR That Watches You Back : Verizon Applies For ’Ambient Action’ Detecting Device Patent - 10 décembre 2012
Here’s another patent application to keep an eye on, following on the heels of Microsoft’s patent app for a TV that counts noses in order to charge each viewer for content, potentially turning your living room into something akin to a porn store viewing booth or bus stop TV — "please insert $2 to continue viewing." (...)
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German Gov’t Inadvertently Reveals Police Monitor Gmail, Skype, Facebook & Use Snooping Malware - 12 octobre 2012
Transparency is worth having for itself, since governments often tend to behave a little better when they know that someone is watching. But occasionally, requests for data turn up something big and totally unexpected because someone failed to notice quite what the information provided implies.
Here’s a great (...)
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Google’s Copyright Crackdown Punishes Author For Torrenting His Own Book - 29 septembre 2012
Over the years, we’ve pointed out repeatedly a massive Achilles Heel for Google : its often dreadful customer service. Trying to communicate with Google can often be like facing a giant white monolith, rather than any sort of human being. More recently, we’ve been concerned about Google’s willingness to be overly (...)
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Even Obama Is A Pirate : BMG Issues New Takedown On Original Obama Singing Al Green Clip - 18 juillet 2012
Wow. So earlier today, we wrote about how BMG issued a takedown on the new web-based ad put out by the Romney campaign, which included a brief clip of President Obama singing Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together." As we argued, this use seemed to be pretty clearly "fair use." And, of course, it was noteworthy that BMG (...)
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PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act ; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America - 30 octobre 2011
As was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it’s ridiculously bad. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it’s clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns (...)
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Son Of COICA : PROTECT IP Act Will Allow For Broad Censorship Powers, Even Granted To Copyright Holders - 13 mai 2011
As expected, it appears that a new version of COICA is on its way, and it looks like those behind it have ramped up their efforts to make the positioning sound better. Rather than COICA, it’s been renamed the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act" or the.... (...)
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US Proposals For Secret TPP ’Son Of ACTA’ Treaty Leaked ; Chock Full Of Awful Ideas - 16 mars 2011
We’ve mentioned a couple of times that now that ACTA is "complete", if not yet approved, USTR negotiators have moved on to what many are calling the son of ACTA in the form of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The USTR has shown what it’s learned from the ACTA negotiations : which is that it can (...)
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Microsoft Suggests Android Violates Its Patents... But Gets HTC To Buy A License - 11 octobre 2010
Ah, the patent games Microsoft plays. For years, it’s spread FUD, claiming that open source operating systems, such as Linux, violate its patents — though it has never detailed what patents or really sued anyone directly over those patents (though some have argued that it has done so with a couple patents (...)
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AdWords Collections Attempt By Google Mutates Into Antitrust Lawsuit - 4 mars 2010
Last year, we wrote about an odd antitrust lawsuit against Google by a company named TradeComet. The lawsuit was a joke. Basically, the company was an arbitrage player that tried to create spam-like pages that people would find on Google searches, and would make money by then getting people to click on (...)
