COPYCENSE

"UK music lovers are getting frustrated with restrictions placed on digital music tracks once they buy them from online stores, says PC Pro magazine.

"The magazine reported that people are also being turned off net music stores because of pricing and disappointing sound quality compared to CDs."

BBC News. Online Music Lovers ‘Frustrated’. April 25, 2005.

See also:
Alun Williams. PC Pro Online Music Exposé: UK Public Pays Too Much for Too Little. PC Pro. April 22, 2005.

"Lady Thatcher is suing the BBC over unauthorised use of one of her most famous phrases.

Papers lodged with the High Court show she has teamed up with the television presenter Hugh Scully, to demand thousands of pounds in damages."

Richard Alleyne. Thatcher Sues BBC Over Use of Famous Phrase in Ad. Telegraph News. April 25, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"Thomas Macaulay told us copyright law is a tax on readers for the benefit of writers, a tax that shouldn’t last a day longer than necessary. What do we do? We extend the copyright term repeatedly on both sides of the Atlantic. The US goes from fourteen years to the author’s life plus seventy years. We extend protection retrospectively to dead authors, perhaps in the hope they will write from their tombs.

"Since only about 4 per cent of copyrighted works more than 20 years old are commercially available, this locks up 96 per cent of 20th century culture to benefit 4 per cent. The harm to the public is huge, the benefit to authors, tiny. In any other field, the officials responsible would be fired. Not here."

James Boyle. James Boyle: Deconstructing Stupidity. FT.com. April 21, 2005

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.

"While we tend to think of UCITA as being dead outside of a few jurisdictions, its evil spirit is still very much with us. It’s haunting us in the form of the spyware problem, as I think spyware researcher Ben Edelman’s latest piece on spyware installation methods amply illustrates.

"Edelman provides a step-by-step examination of all the deception that can lie behind one "I agree" click to an innocuous-looking license agreement. 3D Desktop’s Flying Icons screensaver is initially presented to the user as shareware available for a 15-day free trial. Only by scrolling down in the little text window to the end of the EULA does the user find a hint that there’s another component to the deal. If you install the software, you’re also agreeing to the terms of something called Blazefind. The only way to find out what that means is to follow a link to Blazefind’s EULA."

Ed Foster. Spyware and the Ghost of UCITA. InfoWorld. April 15, 2005.

See also:
Benedelman.org. 3D Desktop’s Misleading Installation Methods. April 12, 2005.

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"Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton has warned UK publishers to beware the blandishments of Internet search engine Google.

"Newton argued that the project to digitize books and allow the content to be searched on Google could lead to the ‘Napsterization’ of the publishing industry. The comment preceded a presentation of the Google Print project at the PA‘s annual general meeting, held today (April 19) in London."

Philip Jones. Bloomsbury Exec Warns Against Google Print. The Book Standard. April 20, 2005.

SNTReport.com™ The Online Journal for Social Software, Digital Collaboration & Information Policy. A Seso Group™ Venture.