shouting loudly

Professor Lee Hollaar has just produced a fairly brief piece for the Institute for Policy Information called, “A Bad Trade: Will Congress Unwittingly Repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Violate Our Trade Treaties?” I have to be honest here: Hollaar’s “bad trade” is a bad article. Before I get into my extended rebuttal, however, [...]

If your Senator sits on the Commerce Committee, call NOW to support the Sununu amendment to the Senate telecom bill. The bill as it is now written would instruct the FCC to ban any new digital TV or radio receivers that did not obey the draconian copyright wishes of the broadcasters. Sununu’s amendment completely removes [...]

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing considering the “problem” of the analog hole. Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn was the last witness, and the 3 Senators in attendance seemed to react well to her message and the concerns of our allies in the tech sector. First, let’s cover some technical and legal background. [...]

Update: This post has been edited. Thanks to Tim Schneider for his excellent legal insight. The new draft of the Stevens Telecom bill (pdf) features a shameless attempt to deliver just enough compromise on net neutrality to buy off political activist groups (e.g. the Christian Coalition) who are worried about being censored online. It’s not [...]

Congressmen including Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Howard Berman (D-CA) were among the Representatives who used a hearing yesterday as a chance to take rhetorical swipes at patent trolls. The hearing, held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, was called, “Patent Trolls: Fact or Fiction?” A patent troll is a [...]

Props to my fellow Public Knowledge intern Tim Schneider, who smartly incorporates Blair Levin’s Senate testimony into his latest blog post about network neutrality. Levin served as Chief of Staff at the FCC, and he is now a Wall Street analyst. Levin makes four key points about the likely economic impact of neutrality regulations (or [...]

From the “wholly inappropriate corporate behavior” department: Microsoft is hell-bent on getting all users to install its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notifications software. The program “is used to validate the authenticity of Windows software installed on a PC,” as explained by Joris Evers on CNet. That’s all well and good, but the software is still [...]

Perhaps this isn’t the same as Tim Wu’s elegant reasoning, but it’s pretty funny nonetheless. Ask A Ninja explains why we need net neutrality. Incidentally, this isn’t the funniest Ask A Ninja; I encourage you all to go find the rest of them.

Here’s an interesting panel on the politics of sampling, including Kembrew McLeod and DJ Spooky.

Here’s a pretty funny flash animation about the perils of proposed copyright laws. It’s called “The Corruptibles!” The common theme of these proposed “reforms”? Content industry desires to keep you from making “unauthorized” uses of your own digital media equipment.