Category: Free Culture
October 23, 2006
Free as a Songbird
Proponents of open software have been bothered by iTunes for some time. It’s a very slick program, but it’s also very locked in to Apple’s Fair Play DRM and the iPod hardware. So far, the alternatives have been pretty few and far between. The aptly named open source developers, Pioneers of the Inevitable, may be about to change that. I’ve… 
August 12, 2005
Project Ocean Ruffles Publishers’ Feathers
The New York Times, BBC News, Wired, and Boing Boing report that Google has put portions of its Google Print Library Project (formerly codenamed Project Ocean) on hold until November. A post on Google’s official blog explains that the company is trying to be consistent in their policies towards indexing web and print content. On the web it’s well established…
January 4, 2005
Lessig on The Connection
Lawrence Lessig is interviewed today on WBUR’s The Connection. The show is an excellent overview of the issues surrounding intellectual property, copyright, and free culture. “The future is illegal, that’s the problem.”…
September 15, 2004
Wired: Don’t Mess with Librarians
Wired has an article today on librarians’ resistance to the USA Patriot Act. In case you were unaware, the Patriot Act allows the government to access personal records without a subpoena or even suspicion of a specific crime. The ALA challenged Ashcroft to reveal the number of times law enforcement had requested library records. In response, the Department of Justice…
August 16, 2004
Lesson Plans from the Business Software Alliance
A Wired article last week talks about how the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and others are working to “educate” schoolchildren about copyright. The American Library Association (ALA) has decided to release it’s own materials this year in an attempt to provide a more balanced perspective. Business Software Alliance’s website, Play It Cyber Safe,…
August 4, 2004
Using P2P to Spread the Word on INDUCE Act
P2P Congress is making the Congressional hearings on the INDUCE Act available via peer-to-peer networks including BitTorrent, eDonkey, and the Gnuetella network. This is brilliant — they are using the very technology the act would jeopardize to spread the word and keep our government processes open. It demostrates precisely why the technology is necessary, and a good thing. Why is…
July 23, 2004
Microsoft Patent and the Future of Advertising
The patent system may be getting out of hand (understatement). Microsoft’s WebTV has received a patent for, “methods and apparatus for encouraging viewers to pay attention to television programs, commercials in particular, by offering viewers some incentive to watch.” What it boils down to is some sort of electronic quiz where you rack up points/prizes for correctly answering questions that…
July 23, 2004
Wired Covers INDUCE Act
Wired has an article on the “geek” view of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s INDUCE Act (S. 2560) [PDF], which seeks to make companies liable for produces that “induce” people to violate copyright law. My favorite part is Sen. Hatch’s introduction of the bill, which includes this great bit: In the film “Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang”, the leering “Child-Catcher” lured children into danger with…
July 14, 2004
Outfoxed - Fair and Balanced Use
Interesting not only for its attack on the supposedly “fair and balanced” FOX News, the new documentary Outfoxed also creates an interesting case to defend fair use. It strikes me that this has connections to the study released last October by the Program on International Policy Attitudes Misperceptions, The Media and The Iraq War [PDF]. It found that people who…