Carolina Symposium Hashes Out IP Dilemmas
“The organizers of the recent Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and the Innovation Process must possess extraordinary confidence in their mastery of the kind of intellectual crowd control required to manage the range of people they invited to the conference, from computer hackers shouting ‘Let me be free!’ to businesspeople asking, ‘How can I find a revenue model in the new technologies and media?’ alongside artists asking, ‘How can I find a revenue model in the new technologies and media?’ (yes, artists are just businesspeople with funny haircuts) to librarians claiming, ‘Whatever emerges, we want a part of it,’ and a bevy of lawyers wondering, ‘How do all the doctrines I learned in law school–or (more urgently) teach in law school–hold up in the path of the current technological and social onslaught?’
“The glow of this conference lingers on in the shape of a new center that has just been announced by the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a conference sponsor.”
Andy Oram. Autumn Symposium Rakes Over Copyright and Patent Law. O’Reilly Policy DevCenter. Nov. 10, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
HP’s Love-Hate Patent Dance
“Hewlett-Packard, in some ways, illustrates both sides of the debate over intellectual property. The company has increasingly been forced to deflect claims from companies and individuals who assert that HP owes them royalties.
“But HP, like Microsoft and IBM, is also extracting more from its own patents and intellectual property. The company created a group in January 2003 to better market and defend its intellectual property.”
Michael Kanellos. HP Plays the Patent Game. News.com. Nov. 10, 2005.
See also:
CopyCense. HP IP Head Discusses Patent Licensing. Oct. 13, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Web Control At Issue in Tunis
“The United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society began with a high-minded purpose: to bridge the technological gap between richer and poorer nations. But now the WSIS event, which begins Nov. 16 in Tunisia, has transformed into a week-long debate about who should control key portions of the Internet.
“Delegates from nations like Iran, China, and Cuba have been clear in what they want: less control by the U.S. government. Instead, they’ve suggested creation of some sort of cyberbureaucracy—perhaps under the U.N. International Telecommunication Union.”
Declan McCullagh. Newsmaker: Internet Showdown in Tunis. News.com. Nov. 11, 2005.
See also:
United Nations. World Summit on the Information Society.
Bill Thompson. Development Matters More Than Domains. BBC News. Nov. 11, 2005.
Associated Press. Showdown Over Control of Net Expected at U.N. Summit. SiliconValley.com. Nov. 10, 2005.
David Talbot. ICANN Feud: It’s So 1995. Technology Review. Nov. 9, 2005. (“The original grand goal of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society was to devise a strategy for lifting the developing world into the information age. But another issue has risen to the fore: multi-national control of the naming system on the Internet, a job now done by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based organization that oversees the Internet’s domain name and addressing system. All of this discussion over back-end architectures, however, misses the point of the U.N. summit, which should focus on basic questions of access, security, and censorship.”)
Gene J. Koprowski. Academics Take Sides in ICANN Tug of War. eWeek. Nov. 4, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Justice Dept. Proposes Stronger Copyright Penalties
“The Bush administration announced on Thursday that it is lobbying for new laws that would bump up criminal penalties for pirates, expand criminal prosecutors’ powers and punish anyone who ‘attempts’ to infringe a copyright.
“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, speaking at an antipiracy summit in Washington, DC hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Department of Justice recently submitted to Congress a ‘legislative package’ aimed at toughening up intellectual-property enforcement amid evolving technology.”
Anne Broache. Justice Dept. Pushes Stiffer Antipiracy Laws. News.com. Nov. 10, 2005.
See also:
Public Knowledge. Public Knowledge Statement on Justice Department Proposals. (Press Release) Nov. 10, 2005.
Public Knowledge. Section by Section Analysis of Intellectual Property Protection Act. No date.
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. Intellectual Property Protection Act. (Draft Proposal) No date.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
New Yorker DVD Finds Copyright Loophole
“When the Complete New Yorker hit bookstores in September, many loyal readers rushed to buy it. But Web-savvy users accustomed to navigating easily through online content find The Complete New Yorker a bit of an anachronism.
“Each page of content is literally a picture of a magazine page. Readers can’t copy text from a story and paste it elsewhere. They can’t search for keywords within the text of articles, only within titles and abstracts. Why does The Complete New Yorker feel so low-tech? The explanation lies in a years-long battle over a clause in U.S. copyright law concerning the ownership of rights to magazine articles written by free-lancers.”
Jessica Mintz. New Yorker on DVD Is Readers’ Delight, Surfers’ Frustration. The Wall Street Journal. Nov. 10, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Amazon.com Could Be Publishing’s iTunes
“Amazon.com’s plan to sell individual pages from books will test whether the online retailer can do for publishing what Apple’s iTunes has done for the recording industry.
“It is a novel idea indeed, or at least little-seen since the days when the writings of Dickens and others were serialized, even if it’s difficult to imagine anyone wanting to buy a great literary works in snippets. I can’t even conceive of buying my coffee-table books — on art, architecture and top golf courses around the world — by the section.”
Bambi Francisco. Launching the ‘Mashup’ Book Genre. MarketWatch. Nov. 7, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
CopyCense Returns Monday, Nov. 14
CopyCense will not publish on Friday, November 11 due to the Veteran’s Day holiday. CopyCense will resume publication on Monday, November 14.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
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