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Posts with tag intellectual property

Filed under: Business, Internet

Craiglist demands fan blog's domain - joins 21st century

Craigslist doing it's thingYesterday, we posted that Craigslist joined the 20th century with a 1990's-esque blog to let the world in on what's going on within the inner self of Craigslist. Today, Craigslist is already making fantastic progress through time. No, the blog still looks like it belongs in 1996, but it is demanding that the fan operated craigslistblog.org surrender it's domain.

Although Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster hasn't asked Tim White, the fan blogger, to stop blogging - he does claim that the domain name infringes on intellectual property and is confusing to the media and the public. That, and some of the content Tim White was using was exclusive to Craigslist and shouldn't be posted. In an effort to meet halfway, the blog now prominently displays that it is indeed an "unofficial" blog and has removed the content in question, but apparently that is not enough. Probably now that Buckmaster has his own blog he feels the need to defend it with a lawsuit.

If you are interested in what the exact correspondence was, Valleywag has it available for your viewing pleasure. It is however, sad to see a company like Craigslist resort to 21st century intellectual property chest-beating strongarm tactics instead of engaging the blogger in a civilized manner and at least attempting to come to a mutually agreeable resolution before issuing threats. This is neither going to make Craigslist look good nor will it make them any friends.

Filed under: Business, News, Windows, Linux, Commercial, Open Source

Xandros joins Novell in licensing Microsoft IP FUD


Functionally irrelevant but newsworthy nonetheless, Xandros -- the Debian based Linux distribution formerly known as Corel Linux -- has joined Novell in alienating the FOSS community by licensing Microsoft intellectual property and creating an illusion of indemnification against potential MS vs. Linux user lawsuits.

Few details are available about the deal. Microsoft's SVP of Server and Business tools announced the deal at MS' TechEd2007 conference in Orlando, remarking that "[Xandros has] taken the position of helping customers to ensure that when they use open-source software, the IP the industry has created is a part of that."

Microsoft's quiet backroom deals over Linux IP are making some Linux users nervous, while still others have mused that Microsoft's entire strategy may be nothing more than a Fear and Loathing public relations campaign to scare deep-pocketed corporations away from choosing popular Linux flavours in their datacenters

Filed under: Internet, Video

Japan: go ahead and post TV shows online, just pay royalties

Japanese game showHow do you get people to stop posting television clips and full episodes to the internet? You probably don't. But a government panel in Japan has an interesting take on that idea: don't try to stop internet pirates, just regulate them.

The Intellectual Property Rights Policy Work Group is expected to issue its recommendation this week. If adopted, anyone would be allowed to post television programs online without permission of the content owner. But anyone who uploads such video would be required by law to pay a royalty to the content owner.

Under Japanese law, television rights belong not just to a network or studio, but also to the actors, making it very difficult to get permission from every stakeholder to redistribute programming. The move isn't likely to be popular with content producers, since it limits their control over how their material is distributed, and takes away their ability to negotiate royalty fees.

But it makes a certain amount of sense. As the RIAA and MPAA in the U.S. are well aware, going after pirates is an expensive and time consuming process. Sure, it might be almost as difficult to get everyone who is uploading video to pay royalties as it is to sue them into oblivion. But such a law could be a start. It would allow YouTube, for example, to begin charging fees to users who upload copyrighted content, both reducing the amount of pirated material online and increasing revenues for content holders.

[via Ars Technica]

Filed under: Text, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Podcasting, Open Source, Unix

Creative Commons version 3.0 has arrived

Creative Commons 3.0Last week the folks over at Creative Commons released version 3.0 of their licensing suite for user-generated content. The bulk of the changes center around clarifying the existing licenses, and addressing the growing internationalization of Creative Commons content. With 3.0 also comes a compatibility structure that will allow them to identify and certify other licenses as CC BY-SA (Attribution Share Alike) compatible. They have also attempted to address concerns voiced by Debian and MIT.

Since the beginning of the Creative Commons in 2002, the language of the licenses had always been based around US copyright law and "generic" in nature because it was not specific to any particular country's laws. So when it came to applying CC licenses to works from other countries, the licenses had to be "ported" to conform to the law of those countries. In fact, the core license has been ported to 30 other countries, or "jurisdictions", to date. To this end, CC have spun the old "generic" core license into two parts: "Unported" (which is based around the language of international intellectual property treaties.) and a separate United States specific license.

If you are already licensing your content under a CC license, you may want to take a look at the updated licenses. But if you haven't taken a detailed look into the Creative Commons yet, there's no time like the present.

Filed under: Business, Developer, Video, News, Web services

RealNetworks awarded patent victory

In a hard-fought battle, RealNetworks appears to have won a major patent victory to protect their technology. This is a patent that already faced a struggle with the Patent Office itself, just to get filed in 1999 (and it took 5 years to do that). But it now looks like the "streaming through a congested network" magic is owned by RealNetworks... Despite a previous patent by Apple for the same thing used in QuickTime. Personally, I always thought Real had better streaming, QuickTime had better downloadable quality. The billion-dollar question: who cares? Will this really affect Real's bottom line? Rob Glaser (CEO of Real) has essentially said he's not going to go after the "big hair porcupines" in the industry using the technology. Hm, that would probably be Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe. Who does that leave, YouTube? Developers aren't rolling their own codecs, for the most part, these days. During the go-go 90's I saw all sorts of wacky streaming implementations, but you don't hear a lot about this now that broadband keeps growing. You do hear about different protocols (like Bittorrent) for moving data, but streaming tech this old doesn't get headlines. Yet that appears to be what Glaser is hoping for, as in the New York Times he's quoted as saying, "We're hoping that people will say, 'Oh, I get it,' and that this will boost the identity of Helix." Well Rob, one can dream, eh? This sounds a little like those patent-to-profitability games dying tech companies play. They're bleeding money after innovating, so they sue everyone on old patents to make some cash. Sounds like Real doesn't want to play that game, but will they have to?

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

View more Time Wasters

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