Talking about the rise of patent licensing firms:
“These technology licensing firms provide a mechanism by which owners of patents that never would have been able enforce their property right can now enforce it,” says patent attorney Kaufman. But this benefit doesn’t come without a cost. “This is like personal injury coming to patents,” says Singer. “One way or the other we all end up paying for it.”
Don’t know how I missed this before — Open Source Adobe. Adobe is opening up some of their libraries under an MIT license. First up are Adam & Eve — libraries for modeling the human interface and behavior in a software. Cool.
And I mean he really gets it! I started stopping by his blog periodically when I heard him talk to a live audience on a podcast about a month ago. He was talking about owning the Mavericks, www.hd.net, intellectual property rights, copyright etc… Recently he suggested that the FCC call Big Media’s bluff and kill the broadcast flag. As it stands there are only 125 days until this extremely offensive DRM technology goes into effect. In case you’re unaware, the broadcast flag — which can prevent time-shifting of shows among other things — is being foisted upon us by the likes of CBS and MPAA. They blackmailed the FCC into adopting it, refusing to fully support Digital Television (including HD) until it was adopted. A good read on an important subject!
Hat tip to Matt
Update: On Feb 22nd the D.C. circuit court of appeals said that the FCC overstepped it’s authority:
“You crossed the line,” Judge Harry Edwards told a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission during arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Unfortunately even with such a chastisement, the FCC may still win the case. The court also raised the question of whether the plaintiffs had standing — that is whether they would suffer more harm than the general public. If the Justices do find a lack of standing the entire case could be thrown out, and the FCC would be allowed to continue with the broadcast flag requirement. The only recourse at that point would be an appeal to the Supreme Court or getting legislation enacted that would nullify the broadcast flag. Even a victory agaist the FCC would likely require and act of Congress to clear up the FCC’s actual authority, as the FCC would most likely appeal to congress to grant them the authority to enact and enforce the broadcast flag. Unfortunately the Circuit Court of Appeals often takes months in cases such as this to render their decision. We have just three before the flag goes up.
BSWire - 02/30/2005 :
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) proudly announced another addition to their Open Source Approved License List, which details all the licenses they approve for use in Free and Open Source Software. “It has taken us years of hard work and careful coordination to ensure that almost every new Open Source Software project has it’s own custom tailored license. With todays addition of the Serious Tagging Utility Peer Identity Developer license we have finally reached an important milestone — our license list is longer than Doc Searls’ BlogRoll!”
A year ago I took a picture in a blizzard of Mystic’s wonderful tugboat. A number of people have asked if they could use it for Christmas Cards, holiday postcards or advertising. The image is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license. If you are unfamiliar with the CC licenses, this particular license means that for personal uses you are free to use it and modify it as long as you give me proper credit as the photographer.
Having said that, I would like to ask for one copy of whatever you produce. This is not required, but I would like to see how it is being used. Also I would not refuse any donations to fund my next lens purchase.
If you would like to use the image (or any of my other CC licensed images) for commercial purposes please contact me.
I have uploaded the full resolution jpg and tiff versions to the server. Please leave a comment with your email or email me if you want the tif format and I will send you the location. (I would publish it, but I am worried about the bandwidth a bit…this is an 18+ MB files after all, besides after doing 1.8 GB in traffic last month for this site alone….)
From the files of the EFF:
A hilarious lampooning of both President Bush and Senator Kerry.
It made it to the EFF because a music publisher claimed to have the rights to the song “This Land Is Your Land” and tried to block JibJab Studios from publishing the animation which features the song in a way that is clearly covered by “fair use”. Unfortunately for Ludlow the EFF and others proved that Arlo Guthrie’s first published the music in 1945 (when copyrights were a more reasonable 28 years) and never applied to renew the copyright. Ludlow renewed the copyright in 1984, 11 years after it had already entered the public domain.
Since my views on economic protectionism have been some of the most read entries here, readers may want to read Lawrence Lessig’s latest Wired article: “Protectionism Will Kill Recovery!” .
If you’re using the Adobe Creative Suite and like to license any of your work through Creative Commons, there is a new tool from Creative Commons that adds another panel to the Creative Suite applications File Info dialogue allowing you to easily embed all the CC license meta-data into XMP.
Wonderful ironies, just days after SCO sends off it’s letters warning doom and gloom for the US economy if Open Source is not outlawed, the USPTO announces that it is considering switching a substantial part of its infrastructure to Linux and Java solutions from IBM when the current contract expires this year.
“U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officials are looking toward Linux and Java technologies as they begin planning for a comprehensive new information technology and telecommunications services contract.”
Of course as I said this follows right on the heels of SCO sending letters to all members of Congress and various other government VIP’s demonizing OSS as the downfall of the US economy, way of life, and an undefendable security risk. Heck OSS even poisoned the apple pies…
SCO’s folks seem to read news backwards and upside down
“‘With dozens of countries considering regulating the use of open-source, SCO believes it’s ‘only a matter of time before others in our country would put legislation on the table around open-source software,’ said Stowell.”
When I first read it I thought, well yes, that’s pretty much true, except I don’t think it needs to be legislated, it will happen on it’s own. Then I remembered who was speaking. Stowell actually believes that there will be legislation against using OSS. All the legislation I know of is towards giving OSS a minimum of an equal opportunity to be considered in government systems. I am not aware of a single case where there is legislation against using OSS.
The good news is the more mainstream press is getting it — in describing Linux Computerworld had this to say:
“The most powerful software company in the world would love to kill it off. The most ridiculous software company in the world can’t stop suing over it.”
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