Posted on April 17, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Something grated throughout the debate that resulted in the Digital Economy Act here in the UK. I couldn’t quite articulate it until I was pointed by a blog posting towards an excellent article by Lawrence Lessig, “Getting out values around copyright right” (PDF), based on a keynote in 2009 at a conference for educators in the US. It’s a fine article.
The observations at the beginning of the article provide an excellent overview of what are, for me, Lessig’s most important observations about copyright – that the current, digital, meshed society presents many cases for which the antique copyright regime we have now is inadequate. He then goes on to consider how we should respond to this challenge if we are educators, and provides a final explanation of the Google book-scanning issue. Continue reading →
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Filed under: Copyright | Tagged: Debill, Education | 1 Comment »
Posted on March 31, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Excellent news that Britain’s Liberal Democrats have finally got the point that the Digital Economy Bill is a Curate’s Egg and any support for it entering wash-up will create an injustice. It’s almost enough to have me voting for them in the election.
Geeks vote too.
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An interesting posting from JP. He digs into Anglo-Indian history and suggests that the Digital Economy Bill is comparable with a tax used to create artificial scarcity to prop up the unjust revenues of a fading regime.
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If, like me, you’d decided these antitrust complaints were just part of Microsoft’s well-known orchestrated campaign against Google, this article will make for very interesting reading. I now regard this particular anti-trust complaint with much more sympathy and look forward to Google proving they don’t in fact use their advertising muscle to kill off competition.
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“In short, according to the Court, favoring Free Software does not infringe freedom of competition, since software freedom is a general legal feature, and not a technological aspect connected to a specific product or brand.”
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: Debill | Comments Off on ☞ Digging Deeper, Finding Salt
Posted on March 15, 2010 by Simon Phipps
§ There was an article on Boing Boing over the weekend that includes a leaked copy of an e-mail sent by Richard Mollett, head of BPI (that’s the UK’s version of RIAA). He provides his key constituents with a round-up on news on the Digital Economy Bill, the legislative omnibus for all that’s bad in ACTA and the UK’s equivalent of the DMCA. Apparently, Mollet believes there is no groundswell of opposition for the Digital Economy Bill and that MPs will just wave it through for lack of popular concern. Continue reading →
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Filed under: Digital Economy Bill | Tagged: Activism, Debill, Digital Economy Bill, Politics, UK | 3 Comments »
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