In the News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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Apple Gets French Support in Music Compatibility Case. By Thomas
Crampton; New York Times, 7/29/2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/technology/29music.html?ref=business

The French constitutional council, the country's highest judicial body,
has declared major aspects of the so-called iPod law unconstitutional,
undermining some controversial aspects of the legislation.

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French copyright law puts squeeze on open source: File sharing, reverse
engineering now criminal offenses. By Peter Sayer; Computerworld (IDG
News Service), 7/28/2006.
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxo
nomyName=standards_legal_issues&articleId=9002086&taxonomyId=146

France's Constitutional Council has made a stringent new copyright law
even harsher, modifying three articles of the law and striking out a
fourth in a review of its constitutionality.

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Whose video is it, anyway? YouTube's success has opened Pandora's box of
copyright issues. By Heather Green; BusinessWeek Online, 07/28/2006.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14079318/

When YouTube was sued on July 14 for copyright infringement, the shock
wasn't that the video-sharing service was being yanked into court.

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New GPL Draft Takes Second Crack at DRM. By Stephen Shankland, CNET
News.com; 07/27/2006.
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6099236.html

The Free Software Foundation has revised provisions concerning the
thorny area of digital rights management in a new draft of the General
Public License released yesterday.
The approach in the second draft of GPL version 3 only directly
restricts DRM in the special case in which it is used to prevent people
from sharing or modifying GPLv3-covered software.

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Skype founders pay out for Kazaa settlement. By Adam Pasick, Reuters;
07/27/2006.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-27-skype-kazaa-settlement_x.ht
m

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the billionaire Internet entrepreneurs
who created Kazaa and Skype, have reached into their own pockets to help
settle a lawsuit brought by the music and movie industries.

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Posthumous copyright of 70 years to be urged. The Daily Yomiuri Online;
07/23/2006.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20060723TDY01004.htm

In Japan, fourteen arts and cultural organizations have agreed that the
protection period for copyrighted works of literature, music, arts and
photographs should be extended to 70 years from the current 50 years
after the creators' deaths.