Pour les curieux, voici la Loi modifiant la Loi sur les contraventions et la Loi réglementant certaines drogues et autres substances, projet de loi C-38, (1ère lecture), 2e session, 37e législature (Can.).
C’est pas exactement la tolérance ce truc là…
In the Financial Times.
Donna Wentworth points to this excellent article by Arnold Kling on the balanced copyright approach, the « middle ground between the technology-hostile position of the recording industry and Hollywood on the one hand and communist nihilism on the other« .
Patent for Pop Up Ads Law Meme
Dr. Dre has lost a sampling case, as reported by Billboard and Slashdot.
It reminds me I I forgot to mention that I read Siva Vaidhyanathan Copyrights and Copywrongs, which has an interesting take on the impact of sampling in modern copyright law. This book also has an historical overview of the evolution of copyright law in the UK and the US that is the most thorough I’ve seen. Great book, rich in facts and perspective and a very easy read on the legal theory side of things.
(yes Sniters, I’ll have to give you back the book now…)
[via Furdlog]
Wired reports that someone created a blacklist of 4 millions IP addresses that are suspected of being used to monitor p2p users. The list in integrated into a simple firewall product aimed at preventing connections, and downloads, directly from thoses addresses.
This is interesting in the light of the cases involving the apparently copyrighted block lists of N2H2.
Lawmeme has a blurb.
[thanks Cla (she’s back!)]
Patent on virus; is it a good or a bad thing ?
What if the patent is used in order to provided access to the virus genetic information ?
From this article in MyTelus « A firm in Hong Kong is seeking the patent to the entire SARS virus »
Legally speaking I still beleive that no one can have the exclusive right to a strand of DNA that exist in nature. Discovering the undelying structure of a virus or of a human, should not grant a exclusivity in research.
In Canada, the patent system is not as loose as in the United States. Our courts decided that a patent could not be granted on a superior life form. I’m not certain if the jugment would extend to virus, and since the court was split (5-4)in the Harvard Mouse case, this could easely go one way or the other, since I suppose there is less sympathy for a virus than a mouse. I suppose this is why this patent application was sent to the USPTO, since they seem to be allowing patent far easely than in Canada.
I see it’s also on /.
Hey, it’s more serious than Fleecy’s last post !
Computer book publisher O’Reilly & Associates has decided to limit some of their books’ copyrights, adopting the Founders’ Copyright program of the Creative Commons! This makes a lot of sense, especially for technical books in a field where the commercial lifespan of the technology is so short. Congrats! We are winning… slowly but surely 🙂
In a rather surprising decision, considering the previous history of such cases, Morpheus/Grokster and Streamcast won against the RIAA in the district court. Basically, the « substantial non-infringing uses » of the Betamax case were let out for the first time in many years. The control criterias used against Napster were not applicable to decentralized systems, hence no contributory infringement.
The DMCA already bypasses the Betamax decision, but this case did not involve circunvention devices. Note that the judge did not seem particulary sympathetic to the defendants in the decision:
The Court is not blind to the possibility that Defendants may have intentionally structured their businesses to avoid secondary
liability for copyright infringement, while benefitting financially from the illicit draw of their wares. […], additional legislative guidance may be well-counseled.
I’d except the decision to stand but not the law…
Coverage at LawMeme, Copyfight, Cnet, Slashdot and the excellent Furdlog. Decision at EFF.
C’est le bébé (au figuré) de Dodolicieuse qui est mentionné par la Grande rousse aujourd’hui!
Comme elle le dit:
Le ministère de la Justice du Canada et celui du Québec se sont donné la main (si, si, ça arrive…) pour mettre en ligne un site voué à la vulgarisation du droit et de la législation ; un format grand public. Cette mine de ressources abrite un lexique particulier, vulgarisé de telle façon qu’il en devient parfois charmant.
Quotes from What to Do When Uncle Sam Wants Your Data. Nice story about what is being done with the Patriot Act.
In addition to the usual beach bums, water bugs and vacationers renting equipment and booking trips, there were FBI agents demanding the names and addresses of everyone the shops had taught to dive since 1999.
They wouldn’t say why.
PADI’s vice president of industry and government relations. In order to spare the dive shops further harassment on their first busy day of the year, Nadler made a critical decision: PADI would give the FBI a copy of its own database.
But this eagerness to comply is a recipe for litigation, since volunteering data is quite different from being ordered to divulge information by a court
The cost of not complying is even higher; the government fined Western Union $8 million in December when it failed to spot multiple transfers made by the same people.
[thanks Fizzz]
Doc Searls and Larry Lessig had a nice exchange regarding the difference between Digital Rights Management and Digital Rights Expression.
If I try to follow the ping pong it goes Doc (Creative Commons rules! It’s in fact DRM), Lessig (No, DRM must include code and implies enforcement, Dave Winer (Don’t forget me), Doc (My bad).
I’m noting this because I think standardized rights expression (DRE) is the holy grail of many IT law endeavours yet is has often failed. e.g. P3P.
CC licences are a step in that direction, and embedding them in RSS feeds, in watermarks in pictures or anywhere, brings us closer to something I have no name for, but that will bring us at least a better understanding by the consumer/public of the rights/conditions/costs attached to a work.
Now, as it is, CC licences are somewhat limited in scope, and they don’t always offer an easy way to get in touch with a rights owner. I know I heard about projetcs aiming to standardized licensing terms on a more general basis. Any pointers anyone?
Oh, and really, DRE is only one step away from DRM. All you need is an architecture to enforce it. The legal system being of course the traditional control architecture. It’s ironic to see that a problem with the law is that it’s not usually meant to be perfectly enforced…
Bon, plus une seule histoire juridique sur la page d’accueil, je remédie à la situation. En fait, il y a deux événements qui ont attiré mon attention dernièrement et voici le premier.
Comme vous avez sûrement (hein?) noté, ma RIAA favorite s’est jeté à l’eau et a décidé de poursuivre des pirates individuels. Joie! Enfin un peu de cohérence pourrait-on croire! Eh ben il s’avère que cette fois aussi la situation n’est pas d’une limpidité parfaite.
Dans au moins un cas, celui de Daniel Peng, il semble que l’engin de recherche offert par ce dernier indexait de façon assez neutre les « shares » publics des ordinateurs du campus. Dixit ce papier à tout le moins. Et les documents laissent clairement entendre qu’on veut « leverager » le jugement Napster, ainsi que le champ lexical terroriste (hijacked?!), apparament le buzzword du moment. Dans tous les cas, on vise donc encore des intermédiaires.
C’est intéressant, parce que Sniters se rappellera sûrement d’un chapitre mémorable où je mentionnais la possibilité d’un logiciel peer-to-peer fonctionnant en indexant les « shares » rendu publics (de façon volontaire ou par ignorance) et qui aurait laissé le Windows file sharing faire les basses oeuvres. Dommage que Microsoft ne soit pas co-défendeur. On aurait peut-être eu un combat à armes égales. Enfin, pour évaluer les impacts d’une décision dans de telles circonstances, faites cette recherche sur Google.
J’ai bien hâte de voir si des défenses vont se dessiner pour les autres étudiants. Chose certaine, on doit se sentir important quand on nous réclame 97,8 milliards US$ de dommages.
Facts don’t violate trademarks:
In its revised ruling, the court embraced EFF’s arguments, holding that using a competitor’s name in the course of conveying truthful information does not violate trademark law. The ruling pointed out that: « While the evidence submitted to the Court demonstrates that Defendants’ web site does contain frequent references to J.K. Harris, these references are not gratuitous; rather, Defendants’ web site refers to J.K. Harris by name in order to make statements about it. »
The Taxes.com decision has been reversed.
[via Boing Boing]
The Daily Whirl looks to be a good one-stop shop for legal blog headlines….