Samba developer Jeremy Allison has resigned from his position at Novell, as Groklaw reports. He states that he is taking this step to protest against that company’s infamous patent agreement with Microsoft: "Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing," Read more »
Heise.de‘s usually excellent Stefan Krempl, who does most of their articles on copyright and patents, has sweetened my Friday afternoon with a minor slip. In an article about various EU folks crying wolf about how the Chinese will eat our lunch if we don’t introduce tight patents on really, really everything (ok, I’m exaggerating, but Read more »
heise.de (in German) reports that patent examiners at the European Patent Office (EPO) are protesting changes to the patent assessment process. The protests, which have been going on for a while, have repeatedly culminated in strikes. While EPO head Alain Pompidou publicly touts high quality of patents as his goal, it seems that in reality 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 first day of the Yale A2K conference saw a great many interesting presentations. Luckily, most of them are summarised in the conference wiki, thanks to the thrifty students doing this important legwork. For example, Jack Balkin gave an overview of the many different topics that the slogan "A2K" refers to. Davinia Ovett showed how Read more »
Today I arrived in New Haven, CT, USA, where I will be attending the Yale Access to Knowledge conference. The schedule promises very interesting panels and discussions. I am excited about the opportunity to personally meet some of the most forward-thinking people in copyright and patent reform. On Sunday, I will be moderating a panel 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 first panel of the afternoon – “New political paradigms” – was a rather visionary affair. Predictably, it has the conservative minority steaming. Declan McCullagh of Politech, whose presentation this morning centered exclusively on the US (how Hollywood has bought the Democrats), was rattled by the suggestion of Tunisian professor Mohamed Ben Ahmed, who said 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 »