Singer/songwriter/activist Billy Bragg's just launched a new effort to try to push for a reform of copyright laws: a Web site that acts as a forum for conversations between artists and fans. It's being dubbed the Net's first and only ...READ»
It's no secret that we at Fast Company love an underdog. A little guy taking on a big guy? Bring on the popcorn. And before this weekend's events, we were rooting for artist Shepard Fairey's fair use case against the Associated Press. ...READ»
Everyone loves Web memes--except, of course, the people they victimize. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has filed a complaint against the owner of a satirical website called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, which has ...READ»
We wrote about Eminem's dispute with Apple yesterday. Now we've learned that Eminem is seeking $16 million in damages from Apple for selling his tracks without proper authorization, according to court documents. But Eminem made money ...READ»
Earlier this week we reported that the founders of Skype were filing suit against eBay over a piece of programming code they allege the auction site is using without permission. They're asking $75 million in damages for every day that ...READ»
The ever-litigious founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, are suing former majority stakeholder eBay at a rate of over $75 million per day for what they say is theft of intellectual property. The companies that are ...READ»
Okay, the iTunes App Store approvals process needs to be canned and re-invented. First there was Google Voice, then Apple banned a dictionary for profanity, and now it's ditching e-readers. What the hell is going on?
This latest ...READ»
Google may be guilty of antitrust violations for its Book Search initiative, reported several newswire services on Monday. The Department of Justice has opened an investigation of the search giant's settlement with the Author's Guild ...READ»
Put an end to blindness, bullshit, copyright laws and Time Warner's dark hegemony? Sure: the top tech stories of the week are all about the death of things that Web nerds hate--and that includes Bing, whether you like the idyllic backgrounds or not.
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Europeans have been busy choosing new members of the European Parliament, and the Swedes have pulled off a surprising maneuver: They've elected a member of the Pirate Party. For the anti-copyright movement, it's a huge ...READ»
Every month, thousands of videos are pulled off YouTube for copyright infringement and other user-flagged violations. A student organization at MIT called Free Culture has compiled a kind of online eulogizer for videos lost to ...READ»
The music industry won a major victory against copyright infringement today with the conviction of the four men behind the Pirate Bay, a file-swapping service with over 20 million members. The men were sentenced in a Swedish court ...READ»
Someone on a forum I belonged to posted a really great article. The only problem was, it looked like the poster hadn't gotten permission.
As entrepreneurs, we need to be careful to respect the intellectual property rights of ...READ»
The Kindle is clearly a paradigm-shifting device, signaling as it does the start of the digital book revolution--so it's only natural to expect people to get shaken up by it. And earlier this year the Author's Guild got antsy about ...READ»
As we reported yesterday, the new Amazon [AMZN] Kindle can read to you. Apparently, this is a problem.
The Authors' Guild says that the Kindle's text-to-speech feature could infringe upon book copyrights. Its probably afraid that a ...READ»
One of the most interesting new features in Amazon's Kindle 2 e-reader is the text-to-speech function built into the device. It's a primitive bed-time story reader, and while it won't match, say, HAL 9000 for elegance in ...READ»
Google's Book Search has been a controversial background project for most of its four-year life, but its most recent move may see the scheme brought right into the limelight: Google Book Search is now available on the iPhone and ...READ»
There's an intriguing rumor ahead of today's Apple keynote at Macworld: The company has successfully negotiated with the major record labels to drop DRM copy protection from all tracks in iTunes. And, as a major bonus, it's likely to ...READ»
'Tis the season traditionally associated with goodwill, but I'm not sure I could've predicted this piece of good news: the Recording Industry Association of America is going to stop suing individuals for music piracy.
There are ...READ»
Psystar ventured to do the impossible: sell generic Macintosh clones preinstalled with Apple's [NASDAQ:AAPL] Mac OS X operating system, without Apple's blessing. It's not usually a good idea to cross Apple's team of attack-dog IP ...READ»
We've been talking about rigid rules and policies and when it's prudent to nuke 'em with a sprinkle of water and a paper towel.
A related example is what I call copyright overprotection : when protecting one's own ...READ»
