derivative work

I am really grieving the loss of Aaron Swartz, who killed himself the other day. His family attributes his suicide in part to depression triggered by the federal CFAA prosecution for his JSTOR hack. JSTOR had withdrawn their charges long ago — but the federal government continued to prosecute. Who knows why — maybe the [...]

The court finally issued its order dismissing the case in the AIME v. UCLA case. (The second amended complaint, in case you’re counting.) In short, it was another big victory for libraries. The court affirmed all its earlier reasoning, and deepened its reasoning in a few key areas. Here’s a quick summary — more discussion [...]

Иконописиконографияиконимека мебелRosalind Picard, a co-inventor of software that can assess people’s expressions, is marketing the software for people with autistic spectrum disorders, and other users. However, she notes that: Affectiva, Dr. Picard said, intends to offer its technology as “opt-in only,” meaning consumers have to be notified and have to agree to be watched online [...]

“I do think it’s true that the large contours of national and international policy are much harder to keep secret today,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “It would not be possible to conduct a secret war in Cambodia, as took place in the Nixon [...]

THIS. Glenn Greenwald on “The media’s authoritarianism and WikiLeaks”. Please note Greenwald’s excoriation of the widespread misstatement about what WikiLeaks has actually done: WikiLeaks has only posted 1269 of the 250,000 cables they possess. They have not “posted” or “published” all of them; they have not “dumped” them. They have published a very small, screened [...]

DRAFT A few big losses. Russ Feingold, the only Senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act, lost. Rick Boucher, Representative from Virginia, a regular supporter of fair use, lost. DRAFT

My partner sent me this article about the furor over a public school field trip to a local Muslim community center. Folks seem to be upset because a few kids participated in religious observances / prayer. Personally I’m not too bothered by that — it appears to be voluntary participation at the event, and likely [...]

Or rather, the phenomenon that is Google cries out for Tom Lehrer. Come out of retirement, Tom! Political satire is not obsolete, notwithstanding Kissinger’s Nobel …. A colleague posted on a listserv a brief note about an article on “Google’s planes”. I thought, no, really? Google is buying planes? for streetview, I imagine — holy [...]

Grabbing a couple of my paperback books, my two-year-old pages through them and engages in a lengthy monologue. A: “This is about Mamiche’s copyright car. I’m just going to read this page and then go back to the cat page. Okay! Let’s go back to the cat page. This book is your book and it [...]

матрациFacebook has deleted “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!”, a user-created page, and apologized to the Pakistani government which had blocked Facebook. A Pakistani minister said Facebook had assured them that “nothing of this sort will happen in the future”. Yeah, good luck with that. And fuck you, Facebook. How about not knuckling under to paternalistic theocratic [...]

Broadsheet @ salon.com is usually a pretty fair source for recycled news and commentary about women, gender, and sexuality. But Tracy Clark-Flory’s recent commentary about yet another celebrity sex tape — Kendra Wilkinson, who I had to look up after reading this article — is possibly one of the most pointless articles on the phenomena [...]

American Needle v. NFL is out ….

Summary judgment against Limewire on a number of key points, including inducement à la Grokster. As predicted, footnote 13 of Grokster is troublesome.

Olivia Judd’s science blog in the NYT today is about the effect of libel on science writing — very interesting.

Some interesting commentary on Sotomayor and the First Amendment from Paul Levinson: * http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/search/label/Sonia%20Sotomayor * http://paullev.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=497539 * http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/search/label/Sonia%20Sotomayor I haven’t had time yet to dig into Sotomayor on intellectual property, telecomm, and other information law issues, but this is discouraging. Franken of course I have hopes for: After Fox News sued him for trademark infringement [...]

God we so need patent reform. What happened to the non-obviousness requirement? Can someone please explain to me how a cat / dog diaper can have a “patented tail hole”???? What else would a pet diaper have except for a tail hole? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is the knowledge economy: the patenting of tail [...]

it’s so delightful to read those two areas of law in a single news article. The ACLU is suing to invalidate a patent on a gene. Yaay Chris Hansen. (Psst. They’re also patenting algorithms and business methods and even tax strategies.)

So sorry to learn that Judith Krug has died. She was a lion among — well, among everyone. NYT obit

Obama has appointed Julius Genachowski to head the FCC, which I think is pretty good. Genachowski is on the record as supporting network neutrality. Also, there’s a fair amount of eco-friendliness and tech-savviness in his background — he headed up the Obama team’s internet campaigning, and also worked on Obama’s tech plan. And, to boost [...]

Just like Maddow after Jindal, I am rendered speechless by the DOJ memos released on Monday. Most were by my former Con Law professor; among the notable exceptions was the repudiation of these policies last October. Holy Constitutional Law, Batman. * DOJ – Office of Legal Counsel memos * NYT (3/3) * LAT (3/3) * [...]