copyright-law 19

Netflix doesn’t charge you if you lose DVDs in the mail. Nice of them. The only way I see it work is if they have the right to copy a DVD if they lose it in transit. Do they?

Pirate Bay has been receiving threats from various firms, like Microsoft, EA, SEGA, etc. Their response has been straightforward. via Dhar Hello and thank you for contacting us. We have shut down the website in question. Oh wait, just kidding. We haven’t, since the site in question is fully legal. Unlike certain other countries, such as the one you’re in, we have sane copyright laws here. But we also have polar bears roaming the streets and attacking people :-(. ...

The Economist on how copyrights aren’t really helping creativity, which is what they were intended to do in the first place. via andersja

Kazaa is next. Even though it’s not based in the US, Kazaa has been ruled to be subject to US laws. No matter what the outcome, Kazaa is going to be in trouble. Well, time to move on to the next P2P software.

This one is funny. It’s legal to write software that pirates DVDs.

After Lessig’s hearing at the Supreme Court, here’s the next step towards rationality on copyrights. The US Copyright Office is asking for public opinion on what could be considered an exception to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. via Scripting News

Lessig argues copyright to the Supreme Court. Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford, and argues against excessive legislation of the Internet and related technologies. Good guy.

The flip side of copyright: Hindi songs featured in albums.

Now the UK wants a DMCA-like law.

A different approach to spam. Habeas is using haikus to morph spam into copyright violation – making it more prosecutable. Clever, but practical?

Maybe the DMCA is not as Draconian as we thought.

The 4'33" is a work by John Cage, comprising of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence. (A tribute to absolute zero: 273 seconds of silence). Is there a copyright issue here?

Is there hope? Could the copyright duration be brought down from 70 years?

Kazaa is up for sale. Thanks to copyright. But file swapping continues.

The SSSCA bill appears even worse than the DMCA.

Big Brother took a little longer than 1984, but by 2001, it has arrived. Even if you didn’t upload an copyrighted file, your ISP can shut you down. Oh, they can monitor what you’re doing too – literally, by face. And imprison you without trial. Better read up your “copy rights”.

In some quiet corner, something different is happening to copyrights. The law of eminent domain is being applied to content. Not good enough, but its a start.

Two MIT students have written a 7-line program that unscrambles protected DVDs. It’s downloadable. The legal issue is whether source code deserves protection on par with freedom of expression.

Every Night Josephine is out of print. If not for copyrights, one could just copy an old print.