Archive for April, 2006

New bill: DMCA + war on drugs

Monday, April 24th, 2006

My goodness, copyright holders are just never satisfied. No matter how much Congress gives them, they always want more, and the Bush Admin is just dying to give it to them. Read this story at CNet RIGHT NOW. Then call your Representative and Senators and tell them this is the worst ...

Condemnation inadvertently promotes violent game

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

Several politicians and groups advocating for law enforcement officials have spoken out against 25 to Life, a cops-and-robbers game that allows players to act as a good cop hunting down evil criminals – or, alternatively, a drug dealer with a heart of gold battling against crooked cops. Some legislative bodies ...

Why we need net neutrality legislation now

Thursday, April 13th, 2006

A friend of mine, Todd Wolfson, asked me to write an article on the net neutrality piece for the Philly IMC. This is it. It's a much shorter take on a law review submission I'm about to send off. If you'd like to see the longer piece, lemme know. Okay, here ...

Skittish New World

Thursday, April 6th, 2006

In London, a British man was escorted from a plane by police because a tip from his cab driver indicated he could be a terrorist. Who knew it could be so dangerous to sing along to the Clash's "London Calling"?

creative common license now available in (simplified) chinese

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

a breakthrough for the creative commons: the cc licenses are now finally available in (simplified) chinese, with some help from renmin university. the enablers and constraints on its diffusion process and to what degree these will be 'culturally' influenced will be a fascinating development to watch itself unfold in the ...

Barton’s bill makes me ill

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

The Barton telecomm bill not only fails to create a network neutrality mandate, it actually prohibits the FCC from creating a generalized neutrality mandate. As of today, it has passed out of subcommittee with full backing from every Republican in the room and, shamefully, a little Democratic help. I am not ...

Will podcasting kill your NPR affiliate?

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

It just might, and too bad if so. Read more here. I doubt it will kill MY affiliate, WHYY, which appears to be the closest thing to the NPR mothership outside DC. But I may not always live in Philly, and the affiliate stations are a vital part of the public ...

New Orleans to Telcos: Buzz off

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

There's a great article at Wired about how the New Orleans city government is successfully running a free wifi network on a million dollars' worth of spare parts. Big shock: the telecomm companies want to shut it down. But the Big Easy is goin' down hard. City tech chief Greg Meffert ...

One Step Lower Than Stealing Sheep

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Ars Technica has a nice report on Microsoft losing a font trademark in the EU. Officers of the Invalidity Division of the Office of Harmonization agreed that Microsoft's Segoe, to be used in its new Vista operating system, is actually Linotype's Frutiger LT 45 Light. The funny thing about this, ...

Just back from DMCA hearing

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Yesterday, I was certainly the youngest witness at the Copyright Office's triennial anticircumvention hearings. I spoke in support of the two exemptions proposed by Peter Decherney (pdf). I really don't have a lot of time to blog about it just yet (if I get started, I'll spend all day), but it ...