An aide to Representative Charles Bass (R-NH) was forced to resign after posting comments critical of Bass’s Democratic opponent to two liberal political blogs. Evidently the bloggers traced the IP address used to post the comments to a House of Representatives computer. (Why do politicos seem so far behind the times in terms of technical [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Internet & Society
Ars Technica has the story of a new “Intellectual Property Manifesto” issued yesterday by the British Library. The Library recommends a number of changes to UK intellectual property law, the general thrust of which would be to diminish the differences between the scope of IP rights that authors enjoy in the digital and analog domains. [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Digital Media, Internet & Society, Media
Teachers everywhere face the challenge of detecting plagiarism by students. Sadly, both Tim and I have dealt with this problem in the recent past. One tool is services such as Turnitin, which compare students’ (uploaded) work to a database of existing papers and sources. The Washington Post reports that students at McLean High in northern [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Education & Copyright, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Scholarship
A little more “Law” than “Info,” but because I’ve been teaching civil procedure, this New York Times expose of the state’s “justice courts” was especially gripping. It is also a four-alarm must-read for anyone who cares about fairness under the law. These are relatively informal local courts for small claims, landlord-tenant disputes, misdemeanors, etc. They [...]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Media
Public Knowledge reports that today’s scheduled Judiciary Committee markup of the copyright bill I discussed here was cancelled. That’s the second time the committee has postponed consideration of the legislation, although last week the reason was purportedly lack of time. Given the incredible list of pressing legislative business that is now stalled (including appropriations bills [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Digital Media, Network Neutrality, Patents, RIAA, Trademarks
One of my favorite television shows, Six Feet Under (HBO), has survived a copyright challenge by a woman who claimed the series infringed her murder mystery idea for “Funk Parlor.” She wrote a screenplay and sent it to HBO’s president for original programming. “Funk Parlor” (an early candidate for “worst title ever”) centered on the [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Court Decisions, Media
An independent company has launched a web site providing internet access to public information about the salaries paid to congressional staff. (Hat tip: Political Wire). This is another excellent example of what I see as a downside of the digitization of information and its availability on the internet. I have written before (6 U. Penn. [...]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Media, Privacy
I think that Second Life may have just “jumped the shark.” What band is claiming to be the first to establish an island in the virtual world and to design avatars who will live there and perform concerts “in world”? Not some 2006 buzz band like Tapes ‘n Tapes or Cansei De Ser Sexy. Not [...]
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Filed under: Digital Media, Internet & Society, Music, Software, Virtual Worlds
Lately my mind has been focused on the exciting endeavor of teaching my first classes more than on blogging — and since I am teaching civil procedure this semester, the overlap with Info/Law has been minimal. But I did want to post on the fact that the House Judiciary Committee, after months of inaction on [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Digital Media, Music
Berkman geek emeritus Luis Villa has joined the writing staff at First Movers, a new law student group blog. Here’s his introductory post. Luis brings a little geographic diversity to a cadre of writers that has, until now, been a little top-heavy with Minnesotans (which is not to say that Minnesotans themselves aren’t pretty clever). [...]
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Filed under: Berkman, Blogging, Law School, Minnesota