Patento.absurdium

After trials, tribulations, false starts, wearing of sack cloth and much gnashing of teeth (and the blood of one dead chicken) I have successfully moved my weblog. For the past week I have been posting only at the new location. It works as expected. All is well.

New Home page.
New primary RSS.

Most of the archives will remain here in order to preserve as many links as possible, but I ran out of disk space and had to delete some of the early ones to keep the site under 40MB. All the archives are at the new site. Eventually I will come back here and put in re-direct meta-tags for both web browsers and RSS aggregators to automagically load the new location. In the meantime, if you have subscribed to a particular Category -- i.e. Patento.absurdium -- you can re-link to it via the Category links on the left.

Many thanks to:

Mark Pilgrim for design guidance and CSS creation
Erin Clerico at Weblogger.com for site hosting and comments configuration
Brent Ashley and Matt Mower for technical assistance
the entire Userland discussion group for moral support.

(drum roll please)

Now, on with the show.......................

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

'Fair Use' Irrelvant and Improper

4:59:34 PM

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So says Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Frewing in preparations for the ElcomSoft trial. Frewing is one of the multitude of unelected public servants defending society against evil-doers who would thwart our God-given right to buy copy-protected digital media.

Major test of copyright law set to start. CNET Nov 25 2002 5:39PM ET
The first big courtroom test of a U.S. law that makes it criminal to offer software for cracking digital copyright protections should finally begin next week, after visa delays for two of the case's main players. [Moreover - IP and patents news]

Peter Chernin's Skewed Vision

8:54:55 AM

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Peter Chernin, the Fox exec who proclaimed the Internet a 'moral-free zone', prettied-up his plea for the tech crowd and made a keynote at Comdex. Chernin and his cohorts in the media industry have a seriously skewed view of the world and the people who live in it. Chernin rewrites a little history, to boot. Read Jonathan Peterson's extensive notes for more...

A solution to big media.
What happens when you blog a Fox executive? Blox

Jonathan Peterson deconstructs the comments of Fox CEO Peter Chernin in a Comdex keynote. Great stuff. Thanks for the link to David Weinberger, who adds his own astute comments.

It all comes down to the notion that programming is scarce or, at least, needs to retain the appearance of scarcity to sustain its value. In fact, if you make connections and let value flow, the investment in programming made today can be much more profitable than it is in the broadcast model.

[RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

» Folks the solution is simple:

Stop watching TV.

Stop going to the Movies.

Don't buy Music, Videos, Games, Books or Magazines.

Don't by a Tivo, DVD player, stereo, WEGA tv, PlayStation

In a couple of years all the media-related companies (and their dependents) will be bankrupt. It might teach these guys that they need to treat us with a little respect if they want to survive.

We won't do it of course...
[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Asian Patent Unity

2:52:07 PM

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Asian powers seek to unify their patent offices and cooperate on patent protections. This note on Asian Piracy from back in July picks up on a Salon article on the rampant piracy in the Asia-Pacific region. We'll have to see if this patent move is symbolic or literal, and if it ammounts to more than lip service for intellectual property protection.

Korea, China, Japan to link patent networks. Korea Herald Nov 24 2002 12:48PM ET
Korea, China and Japan are to agree today to set up a computer network linking the three countries' patent offices in a bid to conduct joint screening of patents and share results of their patent screenings, the Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) said yesterday. [...] [Moreover - IP and patents news]

Copyright for Beginners

12:36:03 PM

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A very basic, but useful, primer on copyright issues for those just getting into web publishing, or learning the basics of citing and quoting for weblogging.

Beginner Tip: Understand Copyright Basics. Net Mechanic Nov 23 2002 11:13PM ET [Moreover - IP and patents news]

Thursday, November 21, 2002

Posner on Copyright

11:31:04 PM

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Conservative right begins to see the light on copyright issues.

Judge Posner criticizes the "enormous expansion" of intellectual property law. Howard Bashman reports "Richard A. Posner speaks out against the "enormous expansion" of intellectual property law: Seventh Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner delivered remarks on Tuesday of this week at an event entitled "Intellectual Property Law: A New Perspective." [via How Appealing].
Haven't I been saying what a great judge Posner is? [Ernie the Attorney]

Thursday, November 14, 2002

Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act

3:34:07 PM

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Rep Rick Boucher is a good guy.

Slashdot | EFF Urges Support for Rep. Boucher's DMCRA.
DarkSparks writes "The EFF is urging everyone to contact their Representatives and ask them to co-sponsor Representative Rick Boucher and John Doolittle's recently introduced Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, H.R. 5544), which would introduce labelling requirements for usage-impaired "copy-protected" compact discs, as well as make several key amendments to the DMCA, including affirming the right of scientific research into technology protection measures and affirming the right of citizens to circumvent technology measures to gain access to copyrighted works they've purchased."
[Privacy Digest]