In a masterfully well-written decision that shows a keen understanding of the underlying technologies, Federal District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled on Friday that the file-sharing software distributed by StreamCast and Grokster was legal. Specifically he found them not guilty of contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement. First, what’s the difference?
From Judge Wilson’s […]
The U.S. government will not give Zacarias Moussaoui, who is charged in the 9/11 attacks, access to individuals that could prove his innocence. “The judge in the case, Leonie Brinkema, ruled in January that Mr Binalshibh, who is being detained at a secret location overseas, could be questioned through closed-circuit video transmission.” The US rejected […]
Dan Bricklin, best known as a co-creator of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, has posted a great essay entitled How will the Artists Get Paid?. Bricklin looks at the issue from a historical perspective and is optimistic that new technologies do not doom creative people to a penniless existence. Here’s a little taste:
In computers, […]
Glenn Kessler and Dana Priest, of the Washington Post, are reporting that the US is growing worried as Iraqi Shiites gain clout. State department officials are admitting that they were just focused on removing Saddam Hussein, and had not given careful enough thought to what would replace him. Now, as the Shiite majority is demonstrating […]
The story is just breaking today, but US officials have admitted that they are holding around 6 children (under age 16) as prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Given that most of these detainees were taken prisoner two years ago, this would mean that, when captured, the juveniles were even younger than they are now! Let […]
Readers may recall a Slashdot interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor at NYU, and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs. Vaidhyanathan is working on a new book, The Anarchist in the Library, and was interviewed on the blog, Eyeteeth. This is a brilliant and amazing interview where Vaidhyanathan discusses how creative communities share, the DMCA, the American […]
A Washington Post article describes how the city council of Arcata, CA has passed a law making it illegal for the top nine managers of the city to comply with a request for information under the USA Patriot Act. The small town’s 16,000 residents favor this form of non-violent disobedience to a Federal Government that […]
Suppose a stalker wants to know where you live. The stalker can easily be a copyright holder by, for instance, publishing anything on the web. (Since anyone who fixes anything original in tangible form has a copyright on it.) Then the stalker just needs your e-mail address or your IP address. He gives that information […]
Patriot Act Signs For Your Library from librarian.net are chilling, funny, and unfortunately necessary to raise awareness about the absurd and unconstitutional USA Patriot Act and how it invades your privacy. I love librarians. They get it. (Link from Education Librarian).
Here’s the point: New technologies can enable a breakthrough in the reach of information. Example: the printing press. Prior to Gutenberg’s printing press, the average person simply had no access to books or to the accumulated knowledge of the world. By creating a technology that made distribution of that information faster and cheaper an enormous […]