Category: Intellectual Property

Goodbye SOPA, Hello OPEN

The recent victory over SOPA is to be shorter-lived than anyone might have thought. The very same day over 7,000 websites went dark to protest SOPA, the OPEN bill was introduced. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) introduced H.R. 3782, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, the same day as an Internet… Read more →

The Pirates of YouTube

Cory Doctorow has a great article over at The Guardian on how corporations are trying to exercise copyright over content long in the public domain. FedFlix is a charitable project launched by Carl Malamud, a “rogue archivist” who raises funds to digitise and upload videos created at US government expense. Under US law, government creations are in the public domain… Read more →

What Salon Doesn’t Get about Bookstores (and Slate’s Article)

The other day I blogged about Slate’s article, Don’t Support Your Local Bookstore. Salon has replied to Slate’s article, which I think severely misses the point of the article – which is that unlike local culture which is produced locally, the books available in bookstores are the same everywhere you go and thus the perennially snobbish should stop pretending bookstores… Read more →