Lawrence Lessig has not laid down the gauntlet in his crusade to amend the term of copyright protections despite last week’s Supreme Court decision. See his Op-Ed, Protecting Mickey Mouse at Art’s Expense, in the January 18 New York Times, as well as his announcement about a new effort to tackle the issue on the legislative front via The Eric Eldred Act FAQ, “a proposal to help move work that has no continuing commercial value into the public domain.”
Also worth noting is After the copyright smackdown: What next?, an insightful commentary on the digital rights advocacy movement whose consumer supported agenda is gaining momentum, and some strong support in Congress.
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Daily Archives: January 20, 2003
Hollywood v. PlanetReplay TV and SonicBlue
Chad Little, owner of Planet Replay, a P2P service that allows users to share TV shows they have digitally recorded using SonicBlue’s ReplayTV, has issued a press release indicating the discontinuation of part of his website’s service. This was done to protect the privacy of site users as a result of the entertainment industry’s copyright… Continue Reading
Censorship of U.S. Military Websites Escalates
U.S. military websites are subject to a new directive issued on January 3 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to remove sensitive, unclassified information published on the huge DOD web databases (comprising 770 gigabytes of total data), that could potentially be of assistance to the intelligence gathering efforts of our enemies. Continue Reading
MIT Spam Conference
A Spam Filtering Conference was held on January 17, 2003 at MIT. The conference was organized by Paul Graham, author of A Plan for Spam (published August 2002), and had 580 attendees. Brief abstracts of papers presented at the conference, including titles and authors, are here. Topics included applications solutions for specific platforms, legal efforts… Continue Reading
USPTO Issues IP Law Enforcement Report
The National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council Report 2001-2002 (in PDF) to Congress is a joint effort by DOJ, USPTO, State Dept., U.S. Trade Representative, Commerce, and the Copyright Office. “The mandate of the Council is to coordinate domestic and international intellectual property law enforcement among federal and foreign entities.” See also the DOJ… Continue Reading
PBS Program on Copyright
On January 17, PBS aired a program on Copyright in America, which included a useful timeline on the history of copyrights. In addition, they also published the transcript of an interview conducted by Rick Karr, called Tollbooths on the Digital Highway, with such industry advocates of copyright fees as Jack Valenti, Chairman, Motion Picture Association… Continue Reading
Insurance Company Snoops Online DMV Records
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles apparently caught personnel from Allstate Insurance illegally accessing online records for personal purposes, and subsequently banned the company’s direct access to the system pending further review. Previous incidents involving obtaining personal data through online DMV searches has resulted in criminal acts, and is therefore an issue of significant concern for… Continue Reading
