On March 18th, MIT announced that its faculty had unanimously voted to adopt a university wide open access policy. The policy mandates that faculty must make a copy of any scholarly articles they publish available to be included in MIT’s freely accessible online repository. This follows recent similar announcements from Harvard Law School, Harvard Faculty […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As Kate Lacey correctly notes in her post, the Google Books settlement creates what is essentially a single purpose private compulsory licensing regime benefiting only Google-assuming the settlement is approved at the upcoming fairness hearing for which the filing deadline […]
In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions and their detrimental effect on the environment. To respond to this concern, countries have agreed to abide by world-wide abatement targets by reducing CO2 emissions to a certain level. However, curbing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries has been […]
Faraaz Damji is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. In Yochai Benkler's article, “Coase's Penguin, or Linux and The Nature of the Firm” (Yale Law Journal, volume 112, online), Benkler attempts to address a major economic concern about open source software: What motivates contributors? […]
Akari Sano is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. Open Source Software, the next vendor lock in? A recent CBC article stated the federal government is seeking tenders on information about free software for the first time. It quoted Open Source software […]
Andrea Slane is the Executive Director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy (CILP) at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law and is an IP Osgoode Research Affiliate. The practice of "sexting" - teens sending sexual, nude or semi-nude photos of themselves through text messaging programs on cell phones - is currently garnering […]
Stephanie Anderson is a first year J.D. candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The United States has long been awaiting Congress to finally agree on proposed patent reform issues, and it seems the anticipation may soon end in the coming months for scientists and researchers. Preliminary hearings are scheduled for March and April of this […]
Earlier this month, Facebook experienced a backlash when it changed its privacy policy. The grassroots uprising can be seen on blogs such as The Consumerist, which dissected and criticized the new policies. Although Facebook had always reserved an “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license” to use any content from its users, the new […]
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission began hearings on February 17th in Gatineau to gain a better understanding of the “New Media” environment, to determine whether there should be some sort of regulation of online media. Though there are currently Canadian content requirements for broadcasters of traditional media, it is unlikely that the CRTC will […]
The rise of broadband internet for home-users within the last 10 years has caused important changes to the internet. Users of broadband services are able to consume and produce large amounts of internet content at very high bit-rates for a modest flat fee. At the same time, the number of ISPs serving broadband internet to […]