Current themes evident in copyright arguments from 100 years ago
From thepublicdomain.org comes this interesting and revealing series of excerpts from the legislative history of the 1909 Copyright Act.
Amazon's Kindle DRM strikes again
With physical books — or even electronic sales — the “first-sale” doctrine applies, and the seller cannot unilaterly reverse the transaction and take back the item (even if they credit the consumer for the price). Nor can the seller in a traditional sales transaction prevent resale, etc. — which Amazon also prohibits.
Will consumers adjust to this new model, or will we rebel and insist on our traditional first-sale rights?
New law journal launches that focuses on open source
There’s a new law journal in town: “The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about Free and Open Source Software issues. Topics covered include copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes.”
WordPress and the GPL
Any WordPress theme is so entwined with the main WordPress code as to make it a “derivative work,” and thus subject to WordPress’ copyright and licensing (which is the GPL).
Should ringtones count as a "public performance"?
Should someone — either you or your carrier — have to pay additionally for a “public performance” of a song when your phone rings?
BlawgIT's introduction to "fair use"
Brett Trout has a useful introduction to “fair use” up on BlawgIT. The goal is to help you “spot the issues” and avoid some common urban legends. Recommended.
The myth of "original creation"
Techdirt has an interesting article up about the myth of the “original creator” — the idea that copyright protects individual creators working in a vacuum come up with new, unique ideas that are not based on anything that precedes them. This is, as any author, musician, or inventor knows, not the way it works in practice.
Judge Posner: Expand copyright to protect newspapers?
Judge Posner recently suggested that copyright law might need to be expanded to protect the news industry, including barring linking to copyrighted content or paraphrasing it.
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