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12.31.2008
Update on Capitol Records v. Thomas: Motion to Certify an Appeal Denied; Petition for an Extraordinary Writ May Follow

Earlier this fall, the Court adjudicating Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas, vacated a $222,000 jury verdict because the Court found it had erred by instructing the jury that U.S. law provides a "making-available right." I have discussed the profound and numerous flaws in that ruling here. I discussed the downright disturbing flaws in Section K of that ruling, (which contains the Court's associated advisory opinion on copyright reform), here.

After the ruling, the Thomas Plaintiffs did just what they should have: They filed a motion to certify the Court's making-available-right ruling for an interlocutory appeal. Thomas is an ideal case for an interlocutory appeal: the recent self-reversal in Thomas would require the parties to re-try the entire case because the Court used internally inconsistent reasoning to adopt a minority position on a pure question of law that admittedly causes the United States to violate nine international agreements. Stronger grounds for an interlocutory appeal are scarcely conceivable.

Unfortunately, on December 23, 2008, the Court in Thomas denied the motion to certify an interlocutory appeal--for an absurd reason. According to the Court, there can be no substantial disagreement that it was bound to deny that a making-available right exists by the "binding precedent" established in the second of three alternative holdings in the contract-interpretation case National Car Rental.

Continue reading Update on Capitol Records v. Thomas: Motion to Certify an Appeal Denied; Petition for an Extraordinary Writ May Follow . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 4:24 PM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security , Universities

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12.23.2008
Wired Accuses a "Conservative" of Attacking a "Democratic" Judge By Defending the Rationality of, um, the Judge and President Clinton?

This fall, as the likely outcome of the 2008 elections became increasingly clear, I was feeling more than usually grateful that debates about intellectual-property rights tend to be largely non-partisan. Granted, these debates are often quite heated, but that heat tends to be generated by constituent interests or strong personal views, not partisan politics.

So I found it funny when a Wired magazine blog tried to put a partisan spin on one of my recent papers. This paper criticized the vacatur of the jury verdict in Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas. Wired tried to spin this paper as "Republican think-tank attacks Democratic judge." I can see why this spin might have fooled a harried editor, but it is laughable.

Continue reading Wired Accuses a "Conservative" of Attacking a "Democratic" Judge By Defending the Rationality of, um, the Judge and President Clinton? . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 12:15 PM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Media: Video, Music...

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12. 4.2008
Internet Piracy: No, Virginia, There Really Is No "Competing" Against Yourself for "Free"

CNET and others report about a charming new steal-don't-buy browser extension that reminds Amazon.com shoppers that much of Amazon's legal content can be downloaded illegally "4 Free" from The Pirate Bay. If correct, such reports expose the truly self-destructive venality of Internet piracy. They also expose the vacuity of an argument favored by defenders of piracy--the claim that content creators (and law-abiding distributors) can or should "compete against free." Usually, persons spouting this claim cite the case of "bottled water" as a real-life example. For two reasons, this example refutes their vapid claim.

Continue reading Internet Piracy: No, Virginia, There Really Is No "Competing" Against Yourself for "Free" . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 12:30 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Economics, Game Theory & Public Choice , Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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12. 2.2008
Has Boston University Left Its Safe Harbor and Become Liable for Students' Piracy?

Defenders of the most egregious, blatant forms of online copyright piracy often suffer from what could be called Wile-E.-Coyote syndrome: They can become so fixated on throttling the roadrunner of copyright protection that they fail to notice that they have just run off a cliff and begun plunging downward.

For example, a federal judge has reportedly held that Boston University (BU) is such an incompetent internet-access provider that it cannot disclose the identities of allegedly infringing users of its network. In London-Sire Records, Inc. v. Does 1-4, Judge Gertner's recent order granted BU's "Motion to Quash" because "[BU] has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty."

Continue reading Has Boston University Left Its Safe Harbor and Become Liable for Students' Piracy? . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 5:11 PM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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11.21.2008
TechDirt's Backfiring Defense of the Thomas Decision--and the "Effective Freedom" of Totalitarian Terror (Part II).

Having dealt with Mr. Masnick's self-immolating attack on my analysis of Thomas, I must now even more emphatically reject Mr. Masnick's absurd claim that he "proved" that my paper on Free Culture mischaracterized the views that Professor Lawrence Lessig expressed in Code, a deplorable book advocating government control of the Internet and lawsuits against programmers. Frankly, mischaracterizing Lessig is pointless: quoting him suffices. Nevertheless, Mr. Masnick claimed, "The worst was when a variety of others pointed out Sydnor's out of context comments [sic] and put them back into context--and Sydnor still stood by the paper, refusing to admit he took a single comment out of content."

Nonsense: I stand by my paper because Mr. Masnick and "others" failed to quibble successfully even about details wholly tangential to its main argument. As Mr. Masnick's post indicates, his quibbles claimed that I had unfairly portrayed Lessig as a "communist sympathizer." But my paper said:

To be clear, I do not think that Lessig, Fisher, or other Free-Culture-Movement academics and interest groups are literally 'communists' or 'socialists....' But they do still display the flaws that made communists and socialists dangerous to themselves and others: Inherent distrust of and contempt for the utility of bilateral private exchange conjoined with boundless, unshakeable faith in the potential wisdom, foresight, and benevolence of vast and coercive governmental power.

Continue reading TechDirt's Backfiring Defense of the Thomas Decision--and the "Effective Freedom" of Totalitarian Terror (Part II). . . .

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 11:10 AM | Academia , Economics, Game Theory & Public Choice , Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Liberty and IP

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07.24.2008
The UK Acts Against File-Sharing Piracy

Today, the Financial Times reported a significant development in the fight against online copyright piracy. The U.K. is reportedly ready to announce an agreement between copyright owners and ISPs under which UK ISPs will agree to work to achieve "a 'significant reduction'" in illegal file-sharing. As a first step, the proposal would have ISPs send warning letters to 1,000 prolific illegal downloader per week during the three-month trial period. If that fails to significantly reduce illegal file-sharing, other alternatives would be considered, including a variation of the graduated-response/three-strikes proposal that would eventually disconnect Internet access services of persons who ignore repeated warnings or--of course--another European media levy, this time on internet-access services.

Personally, I hope that the U.K. opts for the graduated-response option. I realize that the usual "public-interest" groups say that disconnecting infringing users after repeated warnings is unfair, but, seriously, as compared to what? Forcing copyright owners to incur thousands of dollars filing John Doe lawsuits that must then be recovered from the families of teenagers and students unless copyright enforcement is to become a money-loosing proposition? Putting college students in jail? Those are the options available to deter illegal file-sharing under existing U.S. law. Are these options honestly less punitive or more enlightened than a graduated-response program? And by the way, libraries also provide access to knowledge, but if you don't follow their rules, they will throw you out and revoke your borrowing privileges. Is that unfair?

Granted, these "public interest" groups may really think that suing teenagers and imprisoning college students are good ways to enforce copyrights on the Internet. For example, in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and many associations of university and law-school librarians argued that for-profit corporations that encourage or dupe teenagers or students into downloading infringing files should not be held liable for the intended consequences of the business models that gave those corporations "no product costs to acquire music" and "the ability to get all the music." Why? Because these guardians of the public interest argued that the teenagers and college students that these corporations induced could just be sued into ruin by copyright owners or imprisoned by the United States Department of Justice. So remember, university students, if your file sharing causes you to receive a prelitigation letter or subpoena from a copyright owner--or a visit from the FBI--do be sure to say "thanks" to the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and your campus librarians: They all told the Supreme Court that bankrupting or imprisoning you should be the preferred means of enforcing copyrights on the Internet....

But for those inclined to think seriously about how copyrights should be enforced on the Internet, this new U.K. proposal ought to be viewed as a wake-up call, though it need not be a roadmap for what we should do here. It should, however, remind us that we have a serious problem, and that we need to think seriously about how that problem ought to be resolved.

History suggests that if we do think seriously about all of the interests involved--consumers, copyright owners, artists, and ISPs--then we probably can identify means short of compulsory licensing or levies that can reconcile those interests and significantly reduce piracy. Consider, for example, the balance that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") struck as to sites hosting user-generated content ("UGC").

UGC sites have enormous potential to encourage creative expression, but it would be difficult to imagine how they could operate were they governed by the strict-liability that copyright law has traditionally imposed upon distributors of expressive works. But simply exempting UGC site operators from liability for infringing third-party uses of their sites would only encourage piracy and shift copyright enforcement onto individual Internet users.

As result, the DMCA created a so-called "safe harbor" that exempts UGC site-operators from liability for monetary damages if they take several measures to redress or deter infringing third-party uses of their sites. The most important is the so-called "notice-and-takedown" requirement. It prescribes an iterative process of dispute identification and resolution. First, a copyright owner must notify a site operator of allegedly infringing content. The site operator must then take down the content and notify the subscriber who posted it. The subscriber must then decide whether to send a counter-notice to the site operator. If the subscriber sends a counter-notice, then the operator must restore access to the disputed content unless or until the copyright owner files a lawsuit and secures a court order requiring it to be taken down.

This takedown process can benefit all three parties--copyright owner, site operator, and even the allegedly infringing user. The copyright owner gains a means to halt infringing conduct that is faster and cheaper than a lawsuit. The site operator gains unprecedented protections against most infringement liability. The allegedly infringing user receives a warning about any potential conflict, and gets to chose whether to avoid or confront it. This takedown process has resolved countless potential disputes and prevented many lawsuits.

But make no mistake: The DMCA notice-and-takedown regime is not ideal--not for copyright owners, UGC-site operators, or UGC-site users. Copyright owners find themselves playing takedown-notice whack-a-mole in which the same infringing content is repeatedly taken down and re-posted. UGC site operators incur enforcement and response costs, and operators receiving too many notices may fail to qualify for the safe harbor. For users, the notice-and-takedown process may alert them to potential conflicts and let them decide whether to avoid them, but it may not always show them how to correct problems so the content can be safely re-posted.

Fortunately, Congress expected that even the imperfect incentives to cooperate imposed by the takedown process would encourage interested parties to devise innovative solutions superior to any contemplated back in 1998. See 17 U.S.C. § 512(i)(1)(B). Congress appears to have been right. Many copyright owners and UGC-site operators have entered into licensing agreements. Both YouTube and the parties to the Copyright Principles for UGC Sites are preparing to deploy advanced filtering technologies. The parties to the Principles are also devising more interactive dispute-resolution procedures. Consequently, not even important, backward-looking disputes like the Viacom-Google litigation should obscure the progress being made by copyright owners, UGC-site operators, and UGC-site users.

To be sure, the DMCA did not anticipate the rise of file-sharing piracy that cannot be reasonably redressed at the application level. Nor could the balance that the DMCA struck as to UGC sites just be "cut and pasted" into the context of access providers. Nevertheless, the case of UGC sites show that when the law has encouraged cooperative approaches--even imperfect ones--cooperation has occurred, improvements have been made, and enforcement lawsuits against consumers have been almost entirely avoided.

Finally, some will argue that the U.K. proposal is unfair to internet-access providers. That argument has weaknesses and strengths. To be sure, many claim that piracy has helped access-providers by driving demand for broadband access. For example, in Free Culture, Professor Lawrence Lessig argues, "The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Internet's growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any other single application. It was the Internet's killer app.... It no doubt was the application that drove demand for bandwidth."

But while piracy may have been indirectly benefited some access providers, it has also imposed significant costs and inefficiencies. For example, from the perspective of efficient network management, most ISPs should cache popular downloads. But doing so is extremely risky. The DMCA's caching safe-harbor, (§512(b)), like its other provisions, envisioned a web-based Internet: Consequently, it does not seem to "harbor" the caching systems needed by file-sharing networks. Nevertheless, vague reports alleging the use of caching have surfaced ever since the 2004 study, Is P2P Dying or Just Hiding?

But in any case, a simple fact remains: Broadband Internet-access providers were not the ones who worked hard to ensure that file-sharing piracy would become a problem that could not be redressed at the application level. If those who did try to make that problem difficult to remediate now expect others to clean up their mess, then that is unjust.

Nothing makes this point more effectively than the written testimony provided recently to a congressional committee by Mr. Mark Gorton, "the founder and Chairman of LimeWire, LLC, the makers of the LimeWire file sharing program":

The regulatory framework that surrounds the Internet has not kept pace with technical advancements, and currently, no effective enforcement mechanisms exist to address illegal behavior on P2P networks.
Internet Service Providers, ISP's, are a unique point of control for every computer on the Internet. Universities frequently function as their own ISP's, and a handful of universities have implemented notice based warning systems that result in the disconnection of users engaged in illegal behavior who ignore multiple warnings. These universities have sharply reduced child pornography and copyright infringement on their campus networks.
Similar policies could be mandated for all ISP's in the United States. However, these policies are unpopular with the telecom and cable companies who would prefer not have an enforcement relationship with their paying customers. The telecom industry has objected vigorously to previous attempts to involve ISP's in the enforcement process and it continues to oppose policies that would allow for the establishment of moderate, yet effective enforcement mechanisms to combat illegal behavior on the Internet.
The only institution in the United States with the power to mandate the creation of an effective enforcement mechanism to police the Internet is the United States Congress.

I believe that careful thought would reveal viable solutions to the challenges of file-sharing piracy more creative and less prescriptive than those proposed by LimeWire. And if distributors of piracy-and-pornography-prone file-sharing programs now admit that they have knowingly created problems that can only be resolved by imposing significant costs on many third parties, including copyright owners, internet users, and internet-access providers, I would respectfully suggest that federal law-enforcement agencies should take such admissions into account. And send a message....

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 10:22 PM | DMCA , Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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07.22.2008
Some Concerns about DCIA's New Voluntary Best Practices for P2P File-Sharing Software Developers to Implement to Protect Users Against Inadvertently Sharing Personal or Sensitive Data

Over the past week, I have been asked repeatedly about the Voluntary Best Practices for P2P File-Sharing Software Developers to Implement to Protect Users Against Inadvertently Sharing Personal or Sensitive Data(the "VBPs") just released by the Distributed Computing Industry Association ("DCIA"). As most probably know, these VBPs appear to have been hastily released after LimeWire's latest fiasco, which involved inadvertent sharing of the financial data of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

I am still reviewing these new VBPs and comparing their provisions against the behavior of then-current versions of the file-sharing programs distributed by entities that purport to have developed these VBPs. Nevertheless, I can now summarize some key conclusions: I have serious concerns about the scope, substance, and credibility of these new VBPs.

CONCERNS ABOUT THE SCOPE OF THE VBPs:

The VBPs Unfairly Stigmatize All "P2P File-Sharing Software Developers": The VBPs seem to proceed from a absurd premise: They seem to presume that roses and skunks are equally likely to smell bad. The VBPs purport to apply to all "P2P File-Sharing Software Developers." I am aware of no data showing that risks of potentially harmful inadvertent sharing, (much less inadvertent sharing of "personal" or "sensitive" files), arise consistently from all "P2P File-Sharing Software."

To the contrary, the available data indicate that the worst of these risks seem to arise only from a narrow subset of programs whose similarities appear to arise more from the business models of their developers than from any actual reliance upon peer-to-peer networking or file transfers. For example, both the Gnutella-based LimeWire program and the BitTorrent-based program Joost are "P2P File-Sharing Software." But Joost and LimeWire do not even arguably pose similar risks to their users. Nevertheless, the VBPs treat both programs as if either could be equally likely to cause harm.

That is just plain wrong. It makes no sense to state or imply that all "P2P File-Sharing Software" should be painted with the same bad-actor brush.

CONCERNS ABOUT THE SUBSTANCE OF THE VBPs:

Compliance with the VBPs Is Unlikely To Significantly Reduce Potentially Dangerous Inadvertent Sharing: Regrettably, I expect that the VBPs--even if scrupulously followed--may have little or no effect on the prevalence of inadvertent sharing of personal data. The VBPs seem to presume that inadvertent sharing of "sensitive" data is still a problem that program distributors can cause or remediate at will. I suspect that this presumption is now dreadfully wrong.

For example, when episodes occurring in 2005 and 2006 returned my attention to the problem of inadvertent sharing of personal data, I embarked on a then-fruitless snipe hunt. When trying to determine why users of file-sharing programs might be inadvertently sharing personal files in 2005 and 2006, I first thought that the programs themselves were unlikely to be causing inadvertent sharing: After all, problems with program design had been rather extensively investigated--and purportedly resolved--back in 2002 and 2003. I thus assumed that inadvertent sharing must be recurring for some other reason.

I thus investigated the possibility that malware might be causing inadvertent sharing of personal files. The same factors that make piracy-prone file-sharing networks well suited for the distribution of infringing files also make them well-suited for the distribution of files infected with malicious code. Consequently, I assumed that inadvertent sharing might be recurring because file-sharing networks were distributing malware that was reconfiguring the file-sharing programs themselves. At the time, nothing came of those efforts: Searches of the usual data repositories did not reveal malicious programs that reconfigured popular file-sharing programs. Only after this "malware hypothesis" led nowhere did I look again at the programs themselves--only to find some dumbfoundingly familiar problems.

The VBPs returned my attention to malware as a potential cause of inadvertent sharing after I discussed them with the data-security company Tiversa, Inc. Tiversa's perspectives on file-sharing tend to be uniquely valuable. Tiversa's technology lets it look comprehensively at all activities occurring on multiple networks, and the monitoring and remediation services that it provide to its clients ensure that Tiversa often has unique, first-hand knowledge about the causes of inadvertent sharing.

After reviewing the VBPs, Tiversa's President, Mr. Robert Boback, reported that he was not optimistic about their potential to reduce inadvertent sharing. In particular, he cited the problem of malware--he reported that Tiversa has now encountered multiple forms of malware that reconfigure the sharing-related settings of popular file-sharing programs.

If so, then the VBPs are too little, too late. By perpetuating the problem of inadvertent sharing until identity thieves had years to realize how advantageous it could be to them, distributors of file-sharing programs have ensured that inadvertent sharing is no longer a problem that they can cause or remediate by changing the default settings of their programs.

The VBPs Seem Hopelessly Vague: The VBPs also seem very waffly and fuzzy--they are so vague and flexible that it will often be very hard to say whether any given program complies with any particular provision. Worse yet, they are often so vague that they seem to fail to engage the available data on the causes of inadvertent sharing. Indeed, preliminary analysis suggests that the VBPs could permit use of search-wizards, partial-uninstall features, and certain coerced-sharing features, including LimeWire's confusing "individually-shared-files" feature. I don't see how anyone can be expected to believe that these VBPs will really deter inadvertent sharing unless they clearly address all the problems that have been repeatedly called to the attention of distributors.

For example, the VBPs center around the notion that developers can deter inadvertent sharing by requiring users to take "Affirmative Steps" before they share "User-Originated Files." That sounds good--until one recalls that the more dangerous version of the KaZaA program condemned in the 2002 study Usability and Privacy: A Study of KaZaA Peer-to-Peer File Sharing also required its users to take "Affirmative Steps" before they would share "User-Originated Files." Indeed, partial-uninstall features excepted, so did the "features" condemned in the USPTO report, Filesharing Programs and "Technological Features to Induce Users to Share."

The VBPs Proceed from the Sometimes-False Premise That It Is "Safe" for Users of File-Sharing Programs to "Share" Downloaded Files by Default: The VBPs also look like a cynical half-effort to redress inadvertent sharing. To me, the difference between conscientious program distributors and cynical distributors is simple: The former are concerned about the safety of users of their program; they want to ensure that users do not inadvertently share any files that would tend to be dangerous to share. The latter are concerned only about themselves; they only want to ensure that users of their program do not inadvertently share the sorts of files that would be likely to attract adverse attention to program distributors from the media, Congress, or Supreme Court Justices.

Sadly, the VBPs seem to reflect the latter approach to inadvertent sharing: They divide all files stored on users' computers into two classes: files downloaded from the file-sharing network and all others, (the VBPs call this latter class "User-Originated Files"). The VBPs then proceed from the following premise: Sharing of downloaded files is presumptively "non-sensitive," safe and permissible by default, while sharing of User-Originated Files is not. In other words, the VBPs presume that users sharing downloaded files are not sharing "sensitive" files.

As applied to programs like LimeWire, that premise is demonstrably and deliberately false. As LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton testified, other than downloading of music, the only other "major use" of his program is downloading movies. Sharing files containing downloaded music or movies can cost from $750 to $150,000 per file. As a result, for persons of moderate means, the financial consequences of sharing those files are probably as bad or worse than the financial consequences of identity theft.

Worse yet, this very real threat of enforcement lawsuits is a risk imposed upon users deliberately by distributors of certain file-sharing programs: For example, in MGM v. Grokster, LimeWire went out of its way to blame copyright owners for failing to sue infringing users of its program. Subsequently, LimeWire then altered its program in ways that can make it more difficult for users to stop sharing downloaded files--thus ensuring that the risks of sharing downloaded files would tend to fall disproportionately upon those users who happen to be very young or otherwise particularly unsophisticated.

An article published recently by the Torrentfreak website illustrates the real-world consequences of these choices. The article reports on an interview with "Hannah," the pseudonym of a 9-year-old girl who uses LimeWire. The interview begins, "Everyone knows that a significant number of file-sharers are teenagers and young adults.... But what about the true kids--the under 10's?"

In the interview, "Hannah" says that she uses LimeWire, "Because you can put anything in and it will come up and you don't actually pay for it" and because "you can get good albums off there. Duh!!" When asked whether downloading music for free might be illegal, she replied, "Why would they put it [music] on the Internet ... if it was against the law?" She was then asked what would happen if one of her favorite artists, Sean Kingstone, sued her family or sought a settlement because she had shared his albums using LimeWire. She replied, "I'd say 'tooooo strict' and anyway he can't make me do anything. He's not the boss of me, he's the boss of Sean Kingstone." When asked what would happen if her family did not settle, she said, "Nothing. I'm too young to be charged by the government so he can't charge me."

"Hannah" has her facts dangerously wrong, but I can still sympathize with Hannah (and her family): She's just a little girl who has made the usually rational assumption that most adults don't distribute dangerous toys to children. Unfortunately, some adults who distribute certain file-sharing programs persist in distributing potentially dangerous toys to children--even after painting enforcement targets on their little foreheads. As a result, programs like LimeWire now jeopardize the privacy, reputations, and finances of the families of many thousands of "Hannahs."

Nor do the distributors of such programs simply lack any means to prevent their misuse or otherwise avoid the need for enforcement against consumers who share infringing files--deliberately or otherwise. They do have the means, but they have chosen not to deploy them.

Distributors of other file-sharing programs have now made this clear: Joost only distributes files authorized for distribution; Veoh uses forms of filtering; Pando uses something akin to a notice-and-takedown process. That doesn't mean that any of these programs are perfect, but it does mean that people using them are unlikely to face the financial and other consequences of an infringement lawsuit.

In short, a useful set of VBPs would have to address a very deliberately constructed reality: Inadvertently sharing files downloaded from some networks can be as presumptively dangerous and as "sensitive" as inadvertently sharing personal files. VBPs that refuse to confront this deliberately constructed reality are not worth the pixels they are printed upon.

Unless the VBPs Redress Inadvertent Sharing of Downloaded Files, Pedophiles Will Use Inadvertent Sharing to Avoid Conviction for Knowingly Distributing Child Pornography: Because the VBPs do not really address inadvertent sharing of downloaded files, they also fail to defuse a ticking time-bomb: Piracy-adapted file-sharing networks have attracted not only 9-year-old girls who share music, but also pedophiles who share child pornography. As a result, a slew of prosecutions are now underway--I counted scores of pending cases during my last sweep of LEXIS, and a public defender in New York told me that her office is now inundated with P2P child-porn cases. Unfortunately, the defendants in these cases have realized that inadvertent sharing can help them avoid conviction on the "knowing distribution" count that can result in serious jail time. Soon enough, inadvertent sharing--even of downloaded files--is going to deliver get-out-of-jail-free cards to pedophiles.

The VBPs would have to reflect a serious effort to prevent inadvertent sharing of downloaded files before they could stop this from happening. Indeed, even their half-efforts are already too late. For example, in United States v. Park, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19688, *2 (D. Neb. March 13, 2008), the defendant used LimeWire to share, inter alia, a three-hour video that "depicted 'a female minor bound with a rope and being choked with a belt by what appeared to be an adult male.'" Nevertheless, the defendant secured a reduced sentence by claiming that he "lacked an understanding of the software and thus ... the knowledge to distribute the illegal wares that he possessed." Id. at 4.

To be clear: Distributors of piracy-adapted file-sharing programs rightly resent any claim that might imply that they intend to aid pedophiles. But that is not my point: Frankly, I cannot imagine why any distributor of even the most piracy-prone file-sharing program would intend to facilitate the distribution of child pornography, or, for that matter, malware-infected files, or classified government data.

Nevertheless, some brute facts remain: Actions often have consequences that--while not intended--are wholly predictable. The same attributes that make certain file-sharing programs attractive to persons who want to distribute infringing files predictably make those programs attractive to persons who want to engage in other illegal activities. It was thus utterly foreseeable--and foreseen--that malefactors other than infringers would flock to the accommodating venues thus provided.

For example, in 2003, the distributors of the KaZaA program admitted this when discussing the prevalence of malware-infected files on the FastTrack network: "As you would expect, when files often come from anonymous and uncertified sources, the risk of that file containing a virus greatly increases." They may not have intended to attract malware distributors, but they fully expected that the design of their network would do so nonetheless. Those choices created a network used largely for illegal purposes in which it becomes very important to be able to say whether any given user intended to "share" any given file because so many are unlawful to share. Reasonable VBPs would acknowledge that in such venues, the "sharing" of downloaded files is generally unsafe--it can result in the "sharing" of files that are "sensitive," within any reasonable meaning of that term.

CONCERNS ABOUT THE CREDIBILITY OF THE VBPs:

The VBPs Are "Déjà Vu All Over Again" for Concerned Officials or Citizens: Sadly, these new VBPs proceed from a false premise: They presume that distributors of piracy-adapted file-sharing programs can be reasonably expected to adhere to a completely optional set of inadvertent-sharing-related "best practices" that would require them to redesign their programs in order to prevent users from inadvertently sharing files. All-too-recent experience has eviscerated that premise.

For example, after the second-to-last round of congressional hearings on inadvertent sharing, (back in 2003), the trade association P2P United purported to redress inadvertent sharing by promulgating a mandatory Code of Conduct designed by distributors of file-sharing programs including the distributors of LimeWire. But the distributors who devised that "mandatory" Code tended to ignored it in practice while signing pious hymns to its virtues to congressional committees and federal agencies. Now, another trade association has released another set of now-completely-optional LimeWire-designed VBPs. With all due respect--and none is--these new VBPs accomplish precisely one result: They force everyone concerned about inadvertent sharing to stare straight down both barrels of an old saying:

Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice...."

Seriously: If distributors of piracy-adapted file-sharing programs treated their own mandatory Code of Conduct--and the well-being of users of their programs--like an irrelevant joke back in 2004, how can anyone believe that, in 2008, they will treat new optional VBPs with anything other than similar contempt?

And least the above seem unduly harsh, I can report that I have begun to compare the requirements of the VBPs to the behavior of the version of LimeWire that was available when the VBPs were released. This version of LimeWire does not appear to comply with the VBPs. Once again, the VBPs thus seem to be just a cheery promise that things may improve in the future.

I agree that voluntary self-regulation will be an indispensable tool that can let us redress many of the security and privacy challenges that will inevitably arise from fast-changing internet technologies without saddling those technologies with prescriptive, market-distorting regulations that quickly prove to be partially underbroad, partially overbroad, and quickly dated. But for that reason, there will be times when the only reasonable response to miserably failed efforts at voluntary self-regulation will be law enforcement--not the repetition of airy promises of even less-obligatory self-regulation.

For all these reasons--scope, substance, and credibility--I can take no comfort in DCIA's new Voluntary Best Practices for P2P File-Sharing Software Developers to Implement to Protect Users Against Inadvertently Sharing Personal or Sensitive Data.


posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 9:54 AM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Legislation and Legislators , Privacy and Security

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07.10.2008
Grokster and Inadvertent File-Sharing: LimeWire Backstabs Justice Breyer

In its 2005 decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., the Supreme Court unanimously found "overwhelming" and "unmistakable" evidence that the distributors of two piracy-prone file-sharing programs intended to induce users of their programs to infringe copyrights. But Grokster did not do something that the Court had been widely expected to do: It did not clarify the meaning of the notoriously vague capacity-for-substantial/commercially-significant-use test adopted by Court's 5-4 decision in Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc.. Indeed, in Grokster, the meaning of the Sony test was discussed only in clashing concurring opinions authored by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. Justice Ginsburg's concurrence interpreted Sony's safe harbor rather narrowly; Justice Breyer's concurrence interpreted it very broadly.

In the aftermath of Grokster, I have been researching and writing about a problem that can be called "inadvertent file-sharing." It occurs whenever users of piracy-prone file-sharing programs end up "sharing" files that they did not intend to make available to thousands of strangers. Inadvertent sharing tends to make the news when reporters find users sharing highly sensitive personal or work-related documents.

But inadvertent sharing also routinely causes users to unwittingly share infringing files. Anyone inadvertently sharing personal files is also usually sharing their entire music collection, and users often inadvertently share only infringing files--one user might mistakenly think that "My Music" is a good folder for storing downloaded files, another just might not realize that downloaded files are "shared" by default, etc. Examples of my work on inadvertent sharing can be found in this USPTO report, in this congressional hearing, and in this follow-up report about a file-sharing program called LimeWire.

It has been suggested to me that documenting the problem of inadvertent file-sharing may not be that material to copyright law and policy generally. But an article in yesterday's Washington Post illustrates why I think that it may be useful.

This article reports that the latest person to have his sensitive personal data inadvertently shared by a LimeWire user was Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer--author of the Grokster concurrence that would have interpreted Sony so broadly that it could "harbor" even the distributors of piracy-prone file-sharing programs like Grokster, Morpheus, and, well, LimeWire.

I regret to note that some commenters on this article treated this incident as if it were an somewhat-funny inconvenience. It isn't: For reasons that I explain below, inadvertent sharing can have financially devastating or deadly consequences, particularly if it affects a major U.S. official. For that reason, it is particularly important to understand whether the many incidents like this one many have been predictable side effects of a technology used mostly for illegal purposes.

In Grokster, Justice Breyer found that absent evidence of inducement, even the most piracy-ridden file-sharing programs would pass his interpretation of the Sony test. See 545 U.S. at 952 ("Grokster passes Sony's test"). For example, evidence in Grokster showed that 97% of the files that Grokster and Morpheus users actually selected for downloading were, or were highly likely to be, infringing. See 454 F. Supp. 2d at 985. Nevertheless, Justice Breyer found that these programs should pass the Sony test because, someday, their users might download infringing files only 90% of the time. 545 U.S. at 953-54.

And it is important to note that Justice Breyer did not find that, someday, 10% of the users of these programs would use them exclusively for non-infringing purposes. Rather, he found that Sony would harbor the distributors of file-sharing programs even if all users of their programs almost always uses them to infringe, so long as some users also make some incidental lawful uses, (currently perhaps has high as 3%), that could eventually rise to 10%. It is difficult to imagine that any real-world technology could actually fail to satisfy this standard, were it fairly applied.

In Sony, the Court said that its new test would have to "strike a balance between a copyright holder's legitimate demand for effective--not merely symbolic--protection... and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce." In Grokster, Justice Breyer concluded that this balance would be stuck by an interpretation of Sony that would deny copyright holders the ability to control areas of commerce 97% related to copyright infringement. To do so, Justice Breyer conducted a three-part analysis that culminated with a cost-benefit analysis in which he proposed that when assessing a technology like LimeWire, we should balance its costs--to copyright owners--against its benefits. 545 U.S. at 960.

Unfortunately, LimeWire's repeated failure to redress the long-known problem of inadvertent sharing has now exposed Justice Breyer, his family and many, many others to the real-world consequences of some omissions in Justice Breyer's cost-benefit analysis.

Justice Breyer's analysis recognized that technologies that are used almost exclusively for infringing purposes can impose profound costs upon copyright owners. But it failed to recognize that copyright owners will not suffer alone. Technologies that are used primarily for illegal purposes will tend to impose many social costs upon both their users and even innocent third parties, like Justice Breyer and his family.

For example, Justice Breyer may be wondering why it would even be possible for a file-sharing program like LimeWire to "share" files containing his financial data. After all, no reasonable person would deliberately "share" such files over the Gnutella network, and the CEO of LimeWire testified last summer that the only two "major use[s]" of his program were the sharing of music and movies. So why would a default installation of LimeWire share any other types of files?

LimeWire itself can answer that claim, but one explanation suggests itself: LimeWire probably shares financial data by default because distributors of file-sharing programs were hoping that judges might broadly interpret Sony: Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation counseled distributors that their file-sharing programs should share all types of files by default in order to buttress their theoretical "capacity" for non-infringing use. Consequently, LimeWire probably shared Justice Breyer's financial data by default so that judges broadly interpreting Sony could find that LimeWire also had a theoretical capacity to distribute files from the Prelinger Archive, even though it is almost never actually used to do that. See 545 U.S. at 954. Unfortunately, the resulting disconnect between what the program can do and what users expect it to do makes it much easier for users to make mistakes that impose severe costs upon themselves and others.

Justice Breyer may also be wondering why businesses do not adopt the very simple network-management techniques, like port-blocking, that would ordinarily let them prevent any use of of a file-sharing program on their corporate networks. Unfortunately, they cannot: Because programs like LimeWire are actually used for unlawful purposes almost all of the time, every reasonable business would block their use were it easy to do so. Perhaps not coincidentally, distributors of programs like LimeWire thus adopted techniques like port-hopping and tunneling that make it difficult and expensive to exclude their programs from a given network. In short, these programs are designed to go where they are not wanted. This imposes even more costs--not upon users of the program--but upon third parties who definitely DO NOT want to use the program. And like all the other costs discussed here, these costs appear to be mere side-effects of the high levels of illegal use prevailing today among actual users of programs like LimeWire.

Some research on inadvertent sharing might also lead Justice Breyer to ask another question: Why should inadvertent sharing still be a problem in 2008? Weren't the major causes of this problem identified long ago? They were, and that illustrates another cost that has just been inflicted upon upon Justice Breyer and many others--one that may have been best explained by the FBI back in 2003: When almost every consumer using a product uses it for illegal purposes most of the time, all our normal mechanisms for protecting consumers break down.

For example, consider what happened when a program briefly included on some lawfully-purchased audio CDs--the so-called "rootkit" DRM--was found to create a computer-security vulnerability. The vulnerability was quickly discovered, publicized, and within months, distribution of the problematic program was halted in a blizzard of consumer outrage, recalls, remediation efforts, and class-action lawsuits. In short, our systems for protecting consumers from risks worked quickly and very effectively--when consumers were lawfully acquiring an arguably problematic product.

Now consider inadvertent filesharing. Published research first identified some of its most important causes in 2002, and two congressional hearings revealed its dire effects in 2003. That consumer-safety information had only one effect: More distributors of more piracy-prone file-sharing programs deployed the very "features" that had been shown to cause inadvertent sharing--while inventing some new ones. For the next five years, such distributors testified that inadvertent sharing was a myth, told consumer-protection agencies that it had been remediated, and--when not actively exacerbating or perpetuating inadvertent sharing--repeatedly announced new "safeguards" that somehow managed to perpetuate this long-understood problem until it was still alive and well and able to harm Justice Breyer in 2008. In short, there was a complete system failure--when consumers were making mostly illegal uses of a very problematic product.

Justice Breyer and the other victims of this latest data-breech will also be confronting another cost that piracy-prone file-sharing networks impose upon third parties: Once data gets onto these networks, it becomes nearly impossible--or at least very expensive--to track or remove it. And it is critical to note that the nature of file-sharing networks does not require these expenses to be imposed upon those who do not their proprietary files on these networks. To the contrary, distributors of file-sharing programs could make it easy and inexpensive to remove unauthorized content from their networks. But if they did so, then it would also be easy and inexpensive to remove unauthorized copyrighted files. Perhaps not coincidentally, distributors have thus chosen to make it very difficult and very expensive to remove any unauthorized content from the networks that their programs create. Needless to say, those choices impose more costs upon anyone affected by inadvertent sharing.

Finally, the last set of costs that inadvertent sharing can impose upon its victims can be incalculable. Inadvertent sharing caused by programs like LimeWire can have horrific consequences because of another cost of some piracy-adapted technologies: The same factors that will tend to make a technology useful to persons who want to violate copyright laws will also tend to make it useful to persons who want to violate other laws. Consequently, piracy-prone file-sharing networks are also popular with identity thieves, malware distributors, pedophiles, and reportedly, potential would-be assassins of major U.S. government officials or their families (pp. 64-65).

But the catastrophic risks thus imposed can affect anyone--not just important government officials. In my testimony to Congress on inadvertent sharing, I used the following example to show why the difficulty of remediation and presence of multiple forms of criminal activity can greatly exacerbate the true social costs of inadvertent sharing:

To illustrate what [inadvertent sharing] can do, consider what would happen to my family if a visiting relative installed one of these programs on my home computer and tried to store downloaded files in its "My Documents" folder, so they would be easy to find.
I would end up sharing bank statements, tax returns, passwords for investment accounts, scans of legal, medical, and financial records, all my family photos, my children's names, addresses and social-security numbers, and a scan of the sign that designates the car authorized to pick my daughter up from preschool.
Oh, and I would also share over 3,000 copyrighted audio files ripped from purchased compact disks--I would share those too. With one mistake, I would be set up for identity theft, an infringement lawsuit or something far worse.

And what did I mean by "or something far worse?" I meant that inadvertent sharing could deliver data about my children to one of the vicious pedophiles that use piracy-prone file-sharing programs like LimeWire. See, e.g., United States v. Park, 4:06CR3097, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19688, (D. Neb. March 13, 2008) (a LimeWire user shared videos of an adult raping a little girl "bound with a rope and being choked with a belt"); United States v. O'Rourke, CR-05-1126-PHX-DGC, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1044 (D. Ariz. Jan. 12, 2006) (a LimeWire user was held to be a "danger to the community" because he shared many "extraordinarily abusive" images of "horrific child abuse" inflicted on "a very young girl, with hands bound and mouth gagged"); United States v. Postel, 524 F. Supp.2d 1120, 1123 (N.D. Iowa 2006) (a LimeWire user used shared child pornography to "groom" the girl that he molested for four years). Indeed, one researcher has already reported finding persons using piracy-adapted file-sharing programs to collect both sadistic child pornography and inadvertently shared data about particular children.

That is what I meant by "or something far worse." And that is one of the many reasons why I suspect that when they are fully informed, jurists will ultimately conclude that the true social costs of piracy-prone technologies will tend to vastly outweigh whatever benefits they might be imagined to provide.

I could go on listing more costs arising from Grokster-like file-sharing programs, but the above examples illustrate my point: In the past, debate about what Sony ought to mean has been largely abstract--we did not have real-world data about the results that different interpretations of the test might produce. Fortunately, Grokster has left lower courts with considerable flexibility to interpret the intended meaning and scope of the Sony test. Courts doing so can now be provided with some very practical, real-world examples of the full range of costs imposed by technologies used mostly for illegal purposes. I believe that many courts will find that information valuable and instructive.

In conclusion, I offer my sincere condolences to Justice Breyer, his family, the rest of the victims of this latest inadvertent-sharing-caused data breech, and to the victims of the needlessly numerous similar incidents that preceded it. At best, they will probably experience months of needless expenses and hassles--all as a result of a problem that could have been resolved six years ago.

Finally, I must reiterate two points that must always be stressed when discussing these issues. First, the fact that some miscreants used technologies that they called "peer-to-peer" to implement piracy-based business plans should not blacken the name of all technologies that actually do rely on real "peer-to-peer" networking. Personally, I doubt neither that real peer-to-peer networking technologies will play important roles in the distribution of legitimate Internet content nor that the technologies that will do so will not look like most existing piracy-prone implementations of allegedly "p2p" technologies.

Second, I suspect that what is now known about the ugly shenanigans of the Internet's would-be pirate kings may be just the tip of the iceberg. For example, one wonders how many of our vast supply of self-anointed technology savants could actually identify which popular piracy-prone file-sharing program was apparently designed to perpetuate the problem of inadvertent sharing while duping pesky journalists into believing that it had been resolved and while duping gullible Internet savants and jurists who broadly interpreted Sony into believing that the program's distributors had actually preserved the required façade of capacity-for-substantial-noninfringing-use.

I suspect that there is much still to be learned, though little to be admired....

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 10:38 AM | Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security , Supreme Court

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05.20.2008
U.S. Implementation of the Making-Available Right

CSDP just released a new paper addressing a question that has attracted much recent attention: Does posting a copyrighted work on a website or “sharing” it over a peer-to-peer file-sharing network like KaZaA infringe the exclusive rights that U.S. law grants to copyright owners? In other words, does the U.S. Copyright Act provide the “making available” right required by the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, and at least six bilateral or multilateral Free Trade Agreements?

This paper raised one of the more vexing legal issues that I have encountered in some time. The problem was not so much the difficulty of the underlying substantive issue. (Indeed, as the paper indicates, I think there is a very powerful case for recognizing a making-available right by adopting a plain-meaning interpretation of “to authorize” the phrase used to define the scope of all the exclusive rights granted by the Act.) Rather, the problem was that I have always thought it important that Congress and the President had both expressly and necessarily interpreted the Copyright Act to provide a making-available right when they enacted the implementing legislation for the WCT, the WPPT, and the six FTAs.

Many others with whom I have discussed this issue did not agree that these interpretations were particularly important. Our disagreements centered on a question that, does, at least in the context of international law and at the Supreme-Court level, seem to be open. Since the 1804 case Charming Betsy, the Supreme Court has held that courts should adopt any possible interpretation of a U.S. statute that would avoid a conflict with the international agreements and obligations of the United States. Nevertheless, to date, almost all cases invoking the Charming-Betsy interpretive principle seem to involve efforts to construe statutes that were enacted after a given treaty or international agreement had imposed some sort of obligation upon the United States.

The case of the making-available right reverses the temporal relationship between the relevant domestic statute and international agreements: The WCT, WPPT and the FTAs all postdate the Copyright Act of 1976 by at least thirty years. Many people found it odd that the terms of international obligations should influence the interpretation of a statute enacted about 30 years earlier. I could neither deny that such arguments had some force nor that I still found them unpersuasive, though for reasons that I could never quite articulate.

I hope that this paper can explain the source of these disagreements. I happen to have a longstanding interest in administrative law. Consequently, when I look at the Copyright Act of 1976, the implementing legislation for the WCT, WPPT, and the FTAs, and cases like Barker, I think that the resulting situation raises a question about the need for judicial deference analogous to that raised and resolved in cases like Chevron v. NRDC.

In the typical Chevron case, a governmental entity (usually a federal agency) must interpret an existing statute in order to determine how best to exercise lawfully acquired law-making powers. In such cases, courts accord so-called Chevron deference to statutory interpretation adopted by the agency: Regardless of whether the reviewing court might think some other interpretation more persuasive, it will defer to any reasonable interpretation that the agency adopted during the exercise of its law-making powers.

To be clear, I do not contend that Chevron is literally binding precedent in cases like Barker, but neither do I see why it is distinguishable as a matter of law and logic. The same factors that justify Chevron deference in the administrative-law context seem to recur here: To implement international agreements, Congress and the President must exercise their constitutionally delegated law-making powers, and to do so, they must interpret the meaning of existing statutes. Indeed, the interests in predictability and comity that justify Chevron deference seem to be both present and heightened in international-agreement implementation context. It is not clear why a case-or-controversy-bound judge should conclude that the President and Congress seven times executed the international obligations of the United States incompetently or duplicitously if a permissible interpretation of the Copyright Act would avoid the need to draw such conclusions.

Questions about the existence or scope of a U.S. making-available right will clearly be occupying many minds as the summer progresses. For the reasons set forth in the paper, I suspect that as courts begin looking closely at these questions, they will realize that their answers are less difficult to discern than they might seem at first glance.

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 3:40 PM | DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , General , International , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Legislation and Legislators

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04.30.2008
The "Loud Minority" in the FOSS Movement

A ZDNet report on the "loud minority" in the FOSS Movement.

Efforts to increase the adoption of open-source software are being derailed by the efforts of a "loud minority" within the community who have made personal attacks on individuals who have expressed doubts about the software, according to one of the open-source movement's main advocates.

Jeff Waugh of open-source advocacy group Waugh Partners was disheartened after a series of personal attacks directed at the heads of Australian government agencies. These included comments directed at Australian Taxation Office chief information officer Bill Gibson...

Some of the public responses to the article labelled Gibson a "bureaucratic parasite" and his concerns "short-sighted".

While Waugh believes the open-source model holds better security outcomes than its proprietary equivalent, he describes the vitriolic reaction to Gibson's comments as being "disgraceful" and says they achieve nothing for the industry.
...
"This kind of language makes it extremely hard for the open-source industry to get the appropriate level of consideration in government departments," Waugh continued.
...
Waugh was also disheartened when personal attacks were levelled at Standards Australia's Alistair Tegart over Microsoft's push to have its OOXML format accepted as an ISO standard. "I suspect that as a result, [Teggart] is becoming deeply cynical about open source," Waugh said.

Is this the same "loud minority" that prattles on about the moral value of free code, FOSS licenses as social contracts and the freedom-to-tinker that consumers have shown little enthusiasm about?

posted by Noel Le @ 7:36 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.23.2008
Linux Goes Corporate

posted by Noel Le @ 11:03 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.17.2008
Reality Settles in on FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 11:30 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Red Hat Gets Realistic

posted by Noel Le @ 11:05 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.16.2008
FOSS Adoption and Consumer Welfare

posted by Noel Le @ 10:19 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 2.2008
Commercial Open Source Firms Get VC Money

posted by Noel Le @ 11:30 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 1.2008
Groklaw and Commercial Influence

posted by Noel Le @ 12:43 PM | Free Culture Movement

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The SFLC and Microsoft

posted by Noel Le @ 10:18 AM | Free Culture Movement

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03.31.2008
Bazaars and Cathedrals

posted by Noel Le @ 8:38 AM | Free Culture Movement

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03.30.2008
FOSS Developers

posted by Noel Le @ 9:01 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.25.2008
Notions of Free

posted by Noel Le @ 8:15 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Lessig's (Government) FOSS Market

posted by Noel Le @ 8:00 AM | Academia , Free Culture Movement

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03.18.2008
File-Sharing, LimeWire, Identity Thieves, and 9-Year-Old Girls: Solutions Are Needed

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 9:45 AM | Academia , DMCA , Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security , Supreme Court

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03.14.2008
Public Nonsense about File-Sharing, Identity Theft and Inadvertent Sharing

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 2:08 PM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security

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03. 7.2008
File Sharing, CNET and Slashdot: Getting the Story Wrong—Again (Part 2)

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 11:54 AM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security

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03. 5.2008
File-Sharing, CNET and Slashdot: Getting the Story Wrong—Again (Part 1)

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 10:00 AM | Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Legislation and Legislators , Privacy and Security

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02. 4.2008
Commercial Benchmarks in Open Source

posted by Noel Le @ 1:44 PM | Free Culture Movement

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02. 3.2008
The Reality of FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 12:31 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Defining Developments in the FOSS Movement

posted by Noel Le @ 11:05 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.28.2008
Sun Microsystems Gobbles up MySQL

posted by Noel Le @ 10:31 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Commercialization is Good for FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 10:07 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.24.2008
FOSS Is Nothing New

posted by Noel Le @ 12:17 PM | Academia , Free Culture Movement

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01.22.2008
IBM Keeps Lid on OS/2

posted by Noel Le @ 2:48 PM | Free Culture Movement

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11.13.2007
TechCrunch: Piracy Is Cool (Until It Hurts Us)

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 10:29 AM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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11. 9.2007
Sun Micro FOSS Strategies

posted by Noel Le @ 9:32 AM | Free Culture Movement

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10.17.2007
The House Oversight Committee Calls for an FTC Investigation of Inadvertent Filesharing

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 2:26 PM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Privacy and Security

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The Link-Site Cases

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 11:50 AM | DMCA , Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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10.16.2007
OSI Approves Microsoft Licenses

posted by Noel Le @ 3:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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10.15.2007
The Thomas Verdict: Deterrence and Hypocrisy

posted by Thomas Sydnor @ 9:56 AM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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10. 4.2007
The FOSS Movement Offensive

posted by Noel Le @ 1:35 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Red Hat Gets Hot

posted by Noel Le @ 1:25 PM | Free Culture Movement

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09.27.2007
Apparently, GPLv3 Needs a Popularity Boost

posted by Noel Le @ 8:48 AM | Free Culture Movement

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09.22.2007
Which Law Are You Talking About?

posted by Noel Le @ 12:42 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Its Not Stifled Competition When the Competition Can't Help Itself

posted by Noel Le @ 12:06 PM | Free Culture Movement

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09. 7.2007
The OSI Board Can't Do the FOSS Movement a Favor

posted by Noel Le @ 3:20 PM | Free Culture Movement

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08.30.2007
The Madness of Crowds

posted by Noel Le @ 10:21 AM | Free Culture Movement

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The Gphone

posted by Noel Le @ 10:14 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.24.2007
Pardon Me, Is that Libertarian Software You're Using

posted by Noel Le @ 9:23 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.23.2007
Intellectual Property Baselines

posted by Noel Le @ 3:21 PM | Academia , DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Patents

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08.21.2007
Harper- FOSS is a Revolution, It Just Is

posted by Noel Le @ 11:13 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Adobe Gets Real with FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 10:55 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.20.2007
FOSS FUD

posted by Noel Le @ 10:26 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.17.2007
O'Reilly vs. Asay

posted by Noel Le @ 11:03 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.13.2007
FOSS Gets Nice with Microsoft

posted by Noel Le @ 10:37 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.10.2007
FOSS Project

posted by Noel Le @ 7:13 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.25.2007
Prager and IP

posted by Noel Le @ 6:15 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.20.2007
Zune, An Exceptional Product

posted by Noel Le @ 6:17 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.19.2007
The FOSS Market, a "Forking Mess"

posted by Noel Le @ 6:23 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.18.2007
FOSS v FOSS, a Showcase in Limited Potential

posted by Noel Le @ 7:48 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.16.2007
Is FOSS Shooting itself in the Foot?

posted by Noel Le @ 7:15 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.13.2007
A Forking FOSS Movement

posted by Noel Le @ 5:21 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.12.2007
Asay on GPLv3

posted by Noel Le @ 6:31 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.11.2007
The GPL, a Legal Liaison?

posted by Noel Le @ 6:16 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.10.2007
ACT and the FSF on GPLv3

posted by Noel Le @ 8:33 PM | Free Culture Movement

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You're a Good Man, Linus Torvalds

posted by Noel Le @ 8:16 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07. 3.2007
GPLv3 Hurts FOSS More Than it Helps

posted by Noel Le @ 7:39 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06.26.2007
MySQL Grows Up

posted by Noel Le @ 7:44 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06.23.2007
The Proof is Easy

posted by Noel Le @ 1:47 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06.22.2007
FOSS Under a Microscope

posted by Noel Le @ 7:14 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06.16.2007
FOSS In Corporate Pinstripes

posted by Noel Le @ 10:26 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06.13.2007
A Guest That Won't Leave

posted by Noel Le @ 12:22 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06.11.2007
Windows "Tax" vs the Revolution You Could Not Even Give Away For Free

posted by Noel Le @ 9:29 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06.10.2007
The Free Software Foundation and the Developer Community

posted by Noel Le @ 2:56 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06. 7.2007
Dualing Licenses and Open Source

posted by Noel Le @ 6:00 AM | Academia , Free Culture Movement

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Professional-Copyright Envy

posted by Noel Le @ 12:36 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06. 5.2007
OECD on International Trade in Counterfeit/Pirated Goods

posted by Noel Le @ 8:02 PM | Enforcement & Remedies , Free Culture Movement , International

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Reflections of the IFPI

posted by Noel Le @ 6:53 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06. 4.2007
What About Open Source Nano-Tech"

posted by Noel Le @ 7:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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05.31.2007
Pirates of the Charles River

posted by James DeLong @ 8:30 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05.28.2007
The Community and the Free Software Foundation

posted by Noel Le @ 11:10 PM | Free Culture Movement

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05.26.2007
Reasonable Apportionment

posted by Noel Le @ 5:12 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Peer-Production, Its Free, But Is it Worth the Trouble?

posted by Noel Le @ 4:29 PM | Free Culture Movement

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05.23.2007
Getting Real With FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 6:42 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05.21.2007
Who Scares You More, Microsoft or the Free Software Foundation?

posted by Noel Le @ 7:02 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05.20.2007
Free Culture

posted by James DeLong @ 7:57 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05.17.2007
The FOSS Community and the Tragedy of Commons Transaction Costs

posted by Noel Le @ 8:18 PM | Free Culture Movement , Patents

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05. 8.2007
The Arguments of IP Critics

posted by Noel Le @ 9:16 PM | Free Culture Movement

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05. 7.2007
Sun Microsystems To Pay Developers?

posted by Noel Le @ 7:46 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Stepping on the Toes of Giants... My Paper Out

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:00 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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Microsoft Sees the Silverlight

posted by Noel Le @ 8:10 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05. 6.2007
You Say Freedoms, I Say Restrictions

posted by Noel Le @ 1:46 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Come On, Web 2.0 is a Revolution, Please, It Really Is

posted by Noel Le @ 1:11 PM | Free Culture Movement

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05. 5.2007
Class Structure

posted by James DeLong @ 7:56 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.29.2007
Numbers Speak Louder than Words

posted by Noel Le @ 5:45 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Sure, FOSS Has Potential

posted by Noel Le @ 3:45 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.27.2007
Phases in FOSS Markets

posted by Noel Le @ 12:59 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.26.2007
When Microsoft Embraces Open Source...

posted by Noel Le @ 6:42 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Signs of FOSS Maturity

posted by Noel Le @ 6:03 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.24.2007
FOSS, the Un-Revolution

posted by Noel Le @ 5:59 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.17.2007
The Marketing Tax of Ideological Battles

posted by Noel Le @ 8:49 PM | Free Culture Movement

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The RIAA and MPAA Should Pursue Actual Infringers

posted by Noel Le @ 7:20 AM | DMCA , Free Culture Movement

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04.16.2007
A Cold-Shower for FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 11:05 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Can Somebody Make a Decision on GPL3?

posted by Noel Le @ 3:32 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04.15.2007
Why Can't FOSS Help Itself?

posted by Noel Le @ 3:07 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.14.2007
FOSS and Zombification

posted by Noel Le @ 3:56 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.12.2007
Proof that Desktop Linux Exists (off the books)

posted by Noel Le @ 10:29 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Onion!

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:25 PM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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04.11.2007
An Outrage for our Times

posted by Noel Le @ 6:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 8.2007
The GPL Preserves Your Natural Rights

posted by Noel Le @ 4:51 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 3.2007
Is the Linux Revolution Full of Control Freaks?

posted by Noel Le @ 10:54 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 2.2007
Apple-EMI, Is Everybody a Winner?

posted by Noel Le @ 8:17 PM | DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement

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03.30.2007
A Cheer for FOSS!

posted by Noel Le @ 1:33 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.27.2007
GNOME Proves Software Patent Critics Wrong

posted by Noel Le @ 1:17 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.26.2007
Whats Really Holding Back FOSS Adoption?

posted by Noel Le @ 8:03 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.20.2007
FOSS and Peer Production

posted by Noel Le @ 11:39 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Why is IBM Being (somewhat) Nice About Microsoft?

posted by Noel Le @ 1:05 AM | Free Culture Movement , Patents

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03.17.2007
SXSW: Copyright vs. Compensating Artists

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:47 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.13.2007
Open Source: Innovation (not) Living up to the Marketing Campaign

posted by Noel Le @ 7:15 AM | Free Culture Movement , Patents

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03. 6.2007
Everyone's a Deconstructionist Now

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 12:27 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement

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02.28.2007
Wikipedia: Be All That You Can... Make Up

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:29 AM | Free Culture Movement

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02.27.2007
Boucher and Doolittle, What Do You Have Against Creators?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:21 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Legislation and Legislators , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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02.22.2007
DRM, the Content Industries, the FSF, & GPLv3

posted by James DeLong @ 10:19 AM | Free Culture Movement

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02.20.2007
Tidbits on the EC FLOSS Report

posted by Noel Le @ 1:09 PM | Free Culture Movement

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02.14.2007
The Smartpass & the Road to IP

posted by James DeLong @ 7:12 AM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Prices, Terms, and Licensing

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02.13.2007
Redefining 'Freedom'

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:06 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Liberty and IP , Media: Video, Music...

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02.12.2007
How Lucky We Are

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:19 AM | Free Culture Movement

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02. 9.2007
"Bad Reporting" Says Novell is Losing Linux

posted by Noel Le @ 3:38 PM | Free Culture Movement

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02. 8.2007
Europe -- EFF

posted by James DeLong @ 2:33 PM | Free Culture Movement

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02. 7.2007
Addendum to Solveig on Harper's

posted by James DeLong @ 10:15 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Warm Fuzzy Thinking

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 7:58 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.31.2007
The Case of the Captured Koala

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:09 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.25.2007
The Paradox of Plastic

posted by Patrick Ross @ 9:29 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.24.2007
Wikinomics

posted by James DeLong @ 9:46 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.17.2007
Whatever Floats Your Boat

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:01 PM | Free Culture Movement

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A Touch of Humor

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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01.15.2007
The Public Domain That Matters to IPR Policy

posted by Noel Le @ 9:00 AM | Academia , Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Patents

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01. 8.2007
Dispatch from CES: Copy Fight War or Peace?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:50 PM | Free Culture Movement

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01. 4.2007
Department of Huh?

posted by James DeLong @ 11:53 AM | Academia , Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Big Tent , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Physical Property

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01. 3.2007
True Intentions

posted by Noel Le @ 1:11 PM | Free Culture Movement

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01. 2.2007
FSF as an Activist Organization

posted by James DeLong @ 12:31 PM | Free Culture Movement

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FOSS, Look Closer to Home

posted by Noel Le @ 8:00 AM | Free Culture Movement

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12.29.2006
Human Rights

posted by James DeLong @ 12:34 PM | Big Tent , Free Culture Movement , International , Physical Property , Telecom

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Another Demotion For Social Production's Hype

posted by Noel Le @ 8:04 AM | Free Culture Movement

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12.28.2006
Social Production's Speed Limit- Itself

posted by Noel Le @ 3:50 PM | Free Culture Movement

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12.12.2006
Microsoft-Novell Study

posted by Noel Le @ 7:30 AM | Free Culture Movement , Patents

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12. 4.2006
MSFT-NOVL: Encore

posted by James DeLong @ 9:03 AM | Free Culture Movement , Patents , Software

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MSFT-NOVL

posted by James DeLong @ 8:40 AM | Free Culture Movement , Patents , Software

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12. 1.2006
Idiotarians, Communitarians, and Open Source

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 6:32 AM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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11.30.2006
The Wealth of Networks, Too Premature

posted by Noel Le @ 4:00 PM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Patents

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11.22.2006
License to Free Ride

posted by Noel Le @ 4:21 PM | Free Culture Movement , Patents

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11.21.2006
I Thought This is What You Wanted

posted by Noel Le @ 2:59 PM | Free Culture Movement

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11.16.2006
Open Source Shakespeare

posted by James DeLong @ 9:44 AM | Free Culture Movement

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11.15.2006
Don't Call Him Toby

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:35 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Computer Geeks Angered by Copying of Their Creations

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:21 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Counterfeit , DMCA , Free Culture Movement

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11.13.2006
Why FOSS Wants to be "Non-commercial"

posted by Noel Le @ 11:56 AM | Free Culture Movement

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11. 6.2006
Peculiar Gyrations

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:43 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement

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Thats What Competition Does to You

posted by Noel Le @ 7:25 AM | Free Culture Movement

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11. 3.2006
Categorical Imperatives and Orc-Defeating Wizards

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:05 PM | Free Culture Movement

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11. 1.2006
Is Redmond Caving In?

posted by Noel Le @ 2:29 PM | Free Culture Movement , Software

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Careful When You Say "Monopoly"

posted by Noel Le @ 8:28 AM | DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Patents

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10.30.2006
Long Tail vs. Making Money

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:57 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Why Not Financial Freedom?

posted by James DeLong @ 10:24 AM | Free Culture Movement

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10.26.2006
The Good Ol' Days Don't Do Much For Popularity

posted by Noel Le @ 2:48 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Now Do You Believe in Property Rights?

posted by James DeLong @ 9:32 AM | Free Culture Movement , Software

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10.25.2006
This Just In: Dogs Still Hate Cats

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:08 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Analog Holes , DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Legislation and Legislators , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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10.24.2006
Forbes on Richard Stallman

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:37 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Digital Freedom Campaign Kicks Off

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:07 PM | Free Culture Movement

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10.20.2006
The Perfectionism of IP Critics

posted by Noel Le @ 12:46 PM | DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Patents

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10. 2.2006
Take the Kiddy Gloves Off Open Source

posted by Noel Le @ 7:47 AM | Free Culture Movement

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09.28.2006
IBM and FOSS: When They First Got Together

posted by Noel Le @ 11:15 AM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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09.22.2006
Sweden not Eager to Return to Viking Roots

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 9:56 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement

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09.21.2006
What to Study About FOSS

posted by Noel Le @ 10:26 PM | Free Culture Movement

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09.20.2006
A Stirring Defense of IP Rights . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 12:01 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Wikipedia Fork

posted by James DeLong @ 9:37 AM | Free Culture Movement

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09.14.2006
Kevin Maney Nails It

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:43 PM | Free Culture Movement

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09.13.2006
Microsoft Plays Nicely

posted by Noel Le @ 4:23 PM | Free Culture Movement , Standards

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09.12.2006
Wikipedia & Originality

posted by James DeLong @ 10:30 AM | Free Culture Movement

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09.11.2006
Messiah Complex

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:23 AM | Academia , Free Culture Movement

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09. 5.2006
Open Source Risks

posted by Noel Le @ 2:02 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Daniel Lyons on GPL3

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:58 PM | Free Culture Movement , Software

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India and IP

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:35 PM | Free Culture Movement

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09. 4.2006
And You Had it In The Bag...

posted by Noel Le @ 11:21 PM | Free Culture Movement

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08.28.2006
"Children of the Lessig God"

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 3:36 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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08.25.2006
Shaping American Law for Open Source and Free Software?!?!

posted by Noel Le @ 5:23 PM | Free Culture Movement , Patents , Supreme Court

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08.22.2006
Giving Right to (Mis)Appropriation

posted by Noel Le @ 6:05 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Patents

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08.21.2006
But What Does That Do for Me?

posted by Noel Le @ 10:53 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.17.2006
Open Source: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

posted by Noel Le @ 4:23 PM | Free Culture Movement

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IBM to Sun, Kith Kith

posted by Noel Le @ 1:10 PM | Free Culture Movement

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08.14.2006
What Lemley Would Do with Patents and Open Source

posted by Noel Le @ 12:54 PM | Free Culture Movement , Patents , Standards

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James Joyce and Google

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 9:19 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Books , Free Culture Movement

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08.11.2006
Apple and IBM. The Good Ol' Days

posted by Noel Le @ 2:40 PM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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08. 8.2006
A Dose of Reality

posted by James DeLong @ 9:44 AM | Free Culture Movement , Software

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08. 7.2006
Chips on Big Blue

posted by Noel Le @ 8:46 PM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Patents

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The Marginal Cost Fallacy, Again

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:23 AM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement

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08. 4.2006
Bad Open Source Citizens? I'll Throw a Red Flag on That One

posted by Noel Le @ 1:47 PM | Free Culture Movement

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08. 3.2006
Open Innovation: IP and OSS

posted by Noel Le @ 1:19 PM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Patents

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Open Source's "Speed Limit"

posted by Noel Le @ 10:09 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08. 2.2006
Gotta Love Free Enterprise

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:36 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.31.2006
Switching to Open Source, Not Exactly Taking Candy from a Baby

posted by Noel Le @ 12:07 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.27.2006
Why Would All Software Go Open Source?

posted by Noel Le @ 9:11 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07.26.2006
Can We Move on to Web 3.0 Yet?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:44 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Orphan Works and Litigation

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:55 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement

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07.25.2006
HUAC 2.0

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:34 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.24.2006
The Creative Generation

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:19 PM | Free Culture Movement

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07.20.2006
Reviews of the DoD Open Technology Report

posted by Noel Le @ 12:40 PM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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07.19.2006
Commercial Software and Open Source: Where is the Real Innovation?

posted by Noel Le @ 4:07 PM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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XM, RIAA and WaPo

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:37 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement , Radio

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OSS Growth Fueled by Government, But Questions Remain

posted by Noel Le @ 11:23 AM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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07.18.2006
Opening and Closing the Xbox

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:45 PM | DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Games , Prices, Terms, and Licensing , Software

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Is the DoD Proposing an Open Source Industrial Policy?

posted by Noel Le @ 11:23 AM | Free Culture Movement , Tax-Funded IP

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07.11.2006
How Much is Open?

posted by Noel Le @ 4:31 PM | Free Culture Movement , Software

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07.10.2006
iCommons at Rio

posted by James DeLong @ 9:00 AM | Free Culture Movement

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07. 7.2006
Translate This! Word...

posted by Noel Le @ 12:34 PM | Free Culture Movement , General , Software

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07. 5.2006
The Software Industry Context for "What is Open Source"

posted by Noel Le @ 11:49 AM | Comments from Readers , Free Culture Movement

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Paid Amateurs? Sacre Bleu!

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:15 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement , Media: Video, Music...

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07. 3.2006
The Digital Dialectic

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:35 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06.27.2006
Intellectual Property without the Metaphors and Symbolism

posted by Noel Le @ 3:23 PM | Free Culture Movement

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How Long is Long Enough?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:08 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Baffling, What isn't Open Source?

posted by Noel Le @ 1:09 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06.21.2006
Reader's Response to "Truer" Open Source Businesses

posted by Noel Le @ 1:46 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Valuing Commons and Enclosures

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:15 AM | Free Culture Movement

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06.20.2006
Debate on the "Truer" Open Source Business

posted by Noel Le @ 12:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06.19.2006
Plagiarism and the Wikipedia Generation

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:10 AM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Universities

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06. 7.2006
NGO Influence on IP Policy

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:36 AM | Free Culture Movement , International

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06. 5.2006
From Smokestack to Digital Industries

posted by Noel Le @ 2:55 PM | Free Culture Movement

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05.30.2006
Bio-Piracy---Whose Property Claims are Overbroad Now?

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:44 AM | Free Culture Movement , International , Pharma

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05.25.2006
Orphan Works and the Rights of Individual Creators

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:07 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DMCA , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Legislation and Legislators

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05.19.2006
Free Culture

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:23 PM | Academia , Books , Free Culture Movement

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05. 8.2006
The Viral Video Business Model

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:22 PM | DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Media: Video, Music... , Prices, Terms, and Licensing

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05. 2.2006
The User Content Culture

posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:16 PM | Art , Free Culture Movement

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The Remix Culture and Novels

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:54 PM | Academia , Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Books , Free Culture Movement , Media: Video, Music...

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04.26.2006
Whither Cato?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:15 PM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , Liberty and IP

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04.21.2006
Wikipedia, Cylons and Sword-Wielding Skeletons

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:31 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.19.2006
Richard Epstein on IP for The Manufacturing Institute

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:28 AM | Academia , Big Tent , Free Culture Movement , Liberty and IP , Patents

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04.12.2006
An Industry in Chains

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:53 AM | Digital Americas , Free Culture Movement , Software

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04. 5.2006
Morality and Tech

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:35 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 4.2006
Mother Jones on IP

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:35 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement

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04. 3.2006
Dennis Hamilton Thoughts on FOSS & Content

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 12:00 PM | Comments from Readers , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , Software

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03.29.2006
Wikipedia Woes Cont'd.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:17 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.28.2006
Wikipedia Woes

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:10 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.23.2006
Defending Free Markets Part III

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:38 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Defending Free Markets Part II

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:33 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Defending Free Markets

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:27 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.17.2006
Soros' World

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:14 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03. 7.2006
French Artists and Compulsory Licensing

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:18 PM | Free Culture Movement , International , Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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02.28.2006
Artists and Culture

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:49 PM | Free Culture Movement

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02.23.2006
Emerging Artists

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:10 PM | Free Culture Movement

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02.14.2006
Google's Video Offering--Threat or Menace?

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 1:34 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement

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01.18.2006
John Carroll on Open Source and Property Rights

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:55 PM | Big Tent , Free Culture Movement , Patents , Physical Property , Software

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01.17.2006
A Czech Perspective on IP

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:05 AM | Digital Europe 2006 , Free Culture Movement , International

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01.11.2006
What Hath GPLv3 Wrought?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:17 PM | Free Culture Movement , Internet: P2P, Search Engines... , Patents , Software

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01. 4.2006
Blame Canada

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:50 PM | Academia , Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , DRM & Watermarks, etc. , Free Culture Movement , International

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01. 3.2006
On the Decline of CD Sales

posted by Patrick Ross @ 7:04 PM | Free Culture Movement , Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation , Prices, Terms, and Licensing

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12.21.2005
Whither Wikipedia?

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:14 AM | Free Culture Movement

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11.22.2005
Progressives on IP... A Response

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:49 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Free Culture Movement , General

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11. 2.2005
More on Web 2.0

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:48 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Google Looks to Public Domain

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:34 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Books , Free Culture Movement

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More on Awful International Herald Article

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:17 AM | Free Culture Movement , International , Tax-Funded IP

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10.18.2005
The Adelphi Charter

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:39 AM | Academia , Free Culture Movement , International

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09.13.2005
Free Culture

posted by James DeLong @ 9:46 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.16.2005
Hilary Rosen . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 9:23 AM | Free Culture Movement

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08.11.2005
More on a Nascent Market

posted by Patrick Ross @ 9:17 AM | Academia , Books , Free Culture Movement

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08.10.2005
A Nascent Market Comes to Campus

posted by Patrick Ross @ 9:28 AM | Academia , Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain , Books , Free Culture Movement

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07.25.2005
Dvorak and the Audacity to Criticize Creative Commons

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:59 PM | Free Culture Movement

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06. 1.2005
"Fixing" the GPL: Google's Use of Linux

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:18 AM | Free Culture Movement , Software

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05.24.2005
More on Scholarly Journals

posted by James DeLong @ 1:19 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Oh Dear

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:07 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05.23.2005
Scholarly Journals

posted by James DeLong @ 9:29 AM | Free Culture Movement

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05. 5.2005
Post-Capitalist IP

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:19 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.21.2005
Think Tanks

posted by James DeLong @ 4:11 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.13.2005
Anonymous blogging

posted by Patrick Ross @ 3:30 PM | Free Culture Movement

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04.12.2005
Aharonian on Lessig

posted by James DeLong @ 9:03 AM | Free Culture Movement

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04. 7.2005
EFF: "Radically Polarized"

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:29 PM | Free Culture Movement

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03.18.2005
Schumpeter, Heertje and The New Socialism of the Commons

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:29 AM | Free Culture Movement

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02.16.2005
Europe & the Free Culture Movement

posted by James DeLong @ 4:54 AM | Digital Europe , Free Culture Movement

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02. 1.2005
World Social Forum & IP

posted by James DeLong @ 11:31 AM | Free Culture Movement

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Encyclopedias (Again)

posted by James DeLong @ 10:03 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.28.2005
More on Consumer Reps

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:40 PM | Free Culture Movement

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01.27.2005
Speaking for Consumers

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:48 AM | Free Culture Movement

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01.10.2005
Cargo Cults

posted by James DeLong @ 6:37 PM | Free Culture Movement

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01. 6.2005
Wikipedia and Choice

posted by Patrick Ross @ 5:59 PM | Free Culture Movement

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01. 3.2005
When Did It Become Copyright "Regulation"?

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 10:22 AM | Academia ,