Back in November 2008, I wrote about the challenges that Google faced in their Google Books Library Project and their proposed settlement in response. To refresh, the Google Books Library Project is a hugely ambitious initiative to catalogue the millions of books in the collections of several major libraries and include them into Google Book […]
According to blogs such as Citmedia and mainstream news outlets like CNN and the New York Times, Wikipedia will soon begin requiring that all changes to articles on living people be approved by an aristocracy of established editors before going live. The move has been criticized in almost all these stories. I was working on […]
There was once an era where the music record industry existed in a symbiotic relationship with radio stations and broadcasters. Radio DJs could play what they wanted without paying royalties for every song played and radio play was free advertising for the record industry, enticing customers to purchase records from retailers. With the advent of the […]
On July 30, 2009, Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey introduced a bill entitled Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 ("Bill"). The Bill marks Markey's third attempt to legislate on network neutrality, this time attempting to put the onus on Internet service providers to upgrade their infrastructure rather than allowing them to degrade or block traffic. This […]
There is an interesting debate going on right now between William Patry and Ben Sheffner at the Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars blog. It centres on the verdicts in two recent high-profile p2p trafficking cases launched by RIAA against regular people (Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum). In Thomas-Rasset's case, a jury awarded damages against […]
The recent announcement of Yahoo and Microsoft's partnership may mean more choice and transparency for consumers, advertisers and publishers. It certainly means more competition in the world of online search and advertisements. Carol Bartz of Yahoo and Steven A. Ballmer of Microsoft finally put pen to paper on Wednesday, July 29, 2009, to announce this […]
Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired, which has won a National Magazine Award under his tenure. He wrote an article in the magazine entitled "The Long Tail", which he later turned into a book called "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More" (2006). In this blog post, I will […]
Does free speech overrule a trademark owner's interest in a domain name? According to Sutherland Institute v. Continuative LLC, a recent case by a WIPO domain dispute arbitration panel, the answer could be yes. Maybe. The case is interesting for two reasons: its discussion of free speech protection and domain names, and the deference of […]
European Union Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding is planning to overhaul Internet downloading policies in order to facilitate simple, consumer friendly, and legal access to music and films online. Her response to a recent survey, showing 60% of people between ages 16-24 as downloaders of illegal audiovisual content, is that "internet piracy appears to become more […]
For months newspaper publishers have been complaining about Google, creators of the ubiquitous search engine and the largest online ad-space sellers. Publishers have argued that online news aggregators like Google News unfairly generate tons of ad revenue for Google without compensating the papers who provide its content. In a move likely to anger European publishers, […]