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KEI's James Love ended up on an airplane with USTR Ron Kirk, and was able to ask him some questions about ACTA secrecy . Kirk's response was that the document would be revealed after it was finished -- i.e., after those who it will impact most could have a say in the matter. He also claimed that ...
Other
Scott Rosenberg has a column up at The Guardian where he discusses Salon's experience with a paywall back at the beginning of the decade, highlighting how the damage from a paywall can be a lot more troubling than many people take into account. He points out that Salon's various paywall ...
Other
ethorad writes "In the UK, in an attempt to promote the work the police do, some forces name and shame criminals that they catch and prosecute. All good so far as it helps the community see that crimes are being tackled (assuming they are ...)
However the Ministry of Justice has now said ...
Other
There's been some buzz about a recent research report claiming that streaming services are popular. There have been a few such reports, and there's not much surprising in them. They basically point out that if people can stream certain content, that's often easier than firing up a ...
Online
Some Senators have introduced a bill that would limit early termination fees from mobile operators , saying they couldn't charge more than the subsidy they provided for the phone itself, and that the rules for any early termination fee needed to be quite clear. Not surprisingly, the mobile ...
Software
Bill Gates
Luca Leonardi alerts us to the news that at least some politicians in the UK are pushing back against Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill , with Lord Lucas specifically pointing out that the real problem seemed to be one of the entertainment industry's own making:
"We need to bear in mind ...
Software
Bill Gates
Earlier this year, The Daily Sho did a segment about the New York Times, where correspondent Jason Jones had the classic line where he referred to the paper newspaper as providing "aged news" . Danny Sullivan has posted an interesting rethink on that, noting that rather than "aged news," what if ...
Home Theater
TiVo
A bunch of folks have submitted the story of Henrik Anderson, a Danish man who ripped a bunch of DVDs for personal storage, and then turned himself in , noting that even though Danish law says it's okay to make a backup copy of content for private purposes, it also forbids circumvention of DRM, ...
Other
DRM
John Obeidin points us to the news that The Dallas News has basically wiped away the standard "church" and "state" separation of journalists and ad sales and has reorganized such that editorial and journalism positions now report to ad sales managers (nicely renamed "general managers"). Of ...
Other
Shocklee points us to an odd, totally unsubstantiated article by a University of Southern Illinois professor insisting that "piracy" is creating tremendous harm to West African content industries . This goes against numerous studies, including those by the WTO on how developing nations often ...
Home Theater
Dave Allen, who is both a successful musician (founding member of Gang of Four ) and a successful digital marketer and strategist for music business models , is preparing for next week's SFMusicTech event (reminder: Techdirt readers can get a discount ) with a brilliant new manifesto of sorts, ...
Other
techdirt.com - 7 hours ago
—
techdirt.com —
This happens all too frequently. I recently wrote
a short post about something that was apparently happening...
with YouTube and soon after received an angry email from a PR person at the company first scolding me for not contacting Google PR first and ...
(more)
Yes, We Can Write Our Opinions Without Contacting The ...
Comments
vote down
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
found this 7 hours agofound this
A bunch of folks have sent in this column by freelance writer Anne Wollenberg claiming that there is no defense for file sharing and that free riders and freeloaders are simply bad, stop, end sentence. Oddly, looking over Ms. Wollenberg's own website, we find links to many of her works , ...
Other
Ok, perhaps the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly appears to be what a Microsoft exec in the Philippines implied in a recent interview concerning Windows 7. Basically, he said that using unauthorized copies of the OS were really unsafe, so doing things like online banking or ...
Software
Microsoft
Windows 7
There was a lot of reasonable concern earlier this year when a much needed federal shield law proposal appeared to ignore participatory journalists and only cover those employed by major media companies. After people complained about this we were relieved to see Senators Chuck Schumer and Arlen ...
Other
There are a few countries out there that have "artist resale rights," which make little sense and do a lot more to harm artists than help them. Earlier this year, we wrote about plans for Australia to implement such a right and Michael Scott alerts us to the news that a watered down version of ...
Other
A bunch of folks have been submitting the recent Patently-O post by Martin Goetz, the guy who claims to have the first "software patent," defending the concept of software patents . The argument boils down to pretty much the same argument we've heard a thousand times before: that what people ...
Other
We've been seeing a ton of stories in the last year concerning collection societies around the world increasing their efforts to collect money from any sort of entity that plays music ever -- even if it actually ends up causing significant harm to new and up-and-coming musicians. The efforts ...
Other
With the movie industry's lawyers recently demanding that ISP Portlane shut down the OpenBitTorrent tracker, claiming (without any evidence) that it was just a rebranded version of The Pirate Bay's tracker, it seemed possible that the Swedish courts would roll over again. However, in a bit of a ...
Online
The Pirate Bay
A bunch of big name tech companies have come out against Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill . They're most concerned with the clause that gives Mandelson (a guy who resigned elected position in disgrace twice) the ability to flat out change copyright laws on a whim with no real oversight. ...
