shouting loudly

I think it’s good that a French company failed to trademark the smell of fresh strawberries. I found the argument surrounding this decision a little odd, though: The company argued that while strawberries may look and taste different, they all smell the same, and as a result could be trademarked. The [European Union] court took [...]

Every 3 years, the Copyright Office, headed by Marybeth Peters, conducts a rulemaking to determine exemptions to 17 U.S.C Sec 1201(a)(1), which prohibits the circumvention of access-controlling technological protection measures (TPMs). Most commentators believe that TPMs, aka Digital Rights Management (DRM), reduce the general public’s ability to make otherwise noninfringing uses (e.g., fair use, as [...]

ZDNet has a story declaring that iMesh is open for business. Here’s the part where it becomes patently obvious that it’s not exactly a red-carpet, world-premiere-sized start to the legal P2P biz. Go to the site; I think they do too little to convince people that there’s some there there. Also, even their forums express [...]

Now this is a high-tech way around your local cable/DSL broadband monopoly. Alas, the best they can do is 512 Kbps. Scheduled to roll out next year; I wish them well but suspect it will be another solution that is out of most budgets. Props to Media Tank for the link; their news list rocks.

Few companies are better at making me violently angry than Verizon; little wonder, then, that they’re joining SBC in lobbying for the right to exclude poor, largely minority communities from the digital millennium. The telecom giants are lobbying for the right to roll out advanced digital TV and broadband services only in the most upscale [...]

There’s been a lot of hubbub in the video game industry regarding what DVD format the next-generation systems will be using—HD DVD or Blu-Ray, either of which should have significantly increased capacity over the current DVD format. This doesn’t just affect home gaming consoles, of course, as the success of one format over another could [...]

It is always good to remind ourselves from time to time why we do the things we do. Why we get angry about issues of copyright, why censorship is problematic, etc. Why we care about, what this website calls ‘a healthy information ecosystem.” As a response to Jimbo Wales’ (founder of Wikipedia) ten things that [...]

They’re hardly the first folks to cover it, but the Times explains that the cost of clearing copyright fees is a huge drag on documentary production. Considering the constitutional mandate to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences, it is tragically ironic that copyright law keeps many doc’s from getting produced and drains [...]

The Washington Post reports that donations for relief have come in slowly in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Pakistan. According to this article, the death toll in Pakistan is currently at 30,000; according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, millions are left homeless. Pakistan’s government simply isn’t equipped to handle this alone. [...]

This just in from the New York Times. And the power of the oligopoly further frustrates anti-trust efforts.