For any film-maker, it’s only a short step into copyright hell. Who’s got the copyright on the script? How to deal with outtakes from other movies? Questions like that can break a low/no-budget short film. At the International Short Film Festival in Hamburg, Germany, my friend Meike Richter will present Creative Commons as an alternative Read more »
Last weekend (yes, I know, it’s been a while), librarian organisation eIFL-IP (Electronic Information for Libraries) held a workshop in Kiev, Ukraine. Participants came from countries of the former Soviet Union, from Mongolia, Arabia, Ghana and Cambodia. Quite an international environment, and very interesting people. Libraries for me have always been a wellspring of knowledge, Read more »
Sorry for being silent for a week and a half. Vacation? I whish. In fact, I was working through the aftermath of the Yale A2K conference and preparing for my talk at GNU/Linuxtag on Saturday. The good thing about travelling so much, though, is that sitting on airplanes with no power outlets in economy class Read more »
The Yale A2K conference has started today in the afternoon, and what a whale of a conference it is. Even during the opening panel and a short coffee break, I have already run into a number of people I was (and am) extremely keen to meet. Academics such as Yochai Benkler and Sisule Musungu mingle Read more »
My favourite think tank, Tom "I won’t say who pays my bills" Giovanetti, has taken the time to do a little writing on the Yale A2K conference coming up in two weeks. This blog entry shows Tom at the top of his game. Don’t miss it. Among about a bazillion other things, Tom takes issue Read more »
Though I saw this a bit late, it’s still a great text. In the New York Times, Michael Crichton (of Jurassic Park – fame) writes about how absurd patents in the US have become. He uses the case of a mere natural fact being patented for a well-done, very readable show of what’s wrong with Read more »
The strictly libertarian Cato Institute (in the US, of course) has spoken out last week against the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and – even better – DRM. Its main criticism is that the DMCA is "circumventing competition": The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology companies that distribute their content—the legal power to Read more »
The second day of TACD‘s conference is in full swing. There have been several interesting presentations, and I can’t possibly keep up with all of them. So I’ll just raise the points that seemed most interesting to me. Forgive my liberal omissions. Mark Cooper of Stanford University gave a passionate presentation, talking about how digital Read more »
The consumer group organisation Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) has organised a really interesting conference in Brussels. Today and tomorrow, about 130 participants will listen to panels and discuss among themselves. Most of the attendants come from the reform-oriented side of the debate, but there are some traditionally minded patent and copyright attorneys as well. As Read more »