In The News

["Jack Boeve" <JBoeve@xxxxxxxx>]

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Blog: A new copyright law is coming. By Jack Kapica, Globe and Mail. November
27, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/ytunms

Ottawa copyright circles are buzzing with hints that the government is
preparing its new revised copyright bill, and will be tabling it soon, perhaps
as early as next week. And the buzz is that the new law will basically be a
copy of the controversial U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

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Blog: Canada copyright law: stronger, better than US's. P2PNet.net. November
27, 2007.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14132

Howard Knopf recently brilliantly disassembled claims by Hollywood -- sorry,
US -- ambassador to Canada David Wilkins that, "Canada is known for having the
weakest copyright protection in the G8."

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Google's new data storage service defies copyright protection. By Triston
McIntyre, TechBlorge.com, November 27, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/23yxyu

Google is looking to both revolutionize and standardize online data storage
with a new service that will allow users to store documents and media, and
access it remotely from other machines anywhere in the world. However, Google
could be directly in the sights of large media corporations for allowing users
to share their media through speedy remote data storage access.

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Blog: Copyright Alliance Surveys Pres Candidates' Commitment to Copyright Laws
and Artists' Rights. ZeroPaid.com. November 27, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/ywpsfw

The Copyright Alliance is a 44-member-coalition that includes, among others,
the RIAA, MPAA, Business Software Alliance, CBS, NBC, News Corp., NFL, MLB,
NBA, Microsoft, Sony, Viacom, and Walt Disney, has submitted a questionnaire
to all 17 of the candidates vying for the 2008 Presidential nomination of
their respective parties.

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Balance needed in copyright reform bill. By David Canton, London Free Press
(Ontario). November 27, 2007.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/Business/Columnists/2007/11/26/4685798-sun.html

In a move that will comfort many online users, the RCMP have announced they
will not target people who download copyrighted material for their personal
use.

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Kenya: Copyright Board Takes Piracy War to Cyber Cafes. By Okuttah Mark,
Business Daily (Nairobi), AllAfrica.com. November 26,  2007.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711262040.html

Cyber cafi operators within Nairobi are torn between legalising their
Microsoft software operating system, shifting to Open Source Code or closing
shop all together following the crack down on illegal software.

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Blog: Law Review Article on the Problems with Copyright. By Bruce Schneier.
November 26, 2007
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/law_review_arti.html

By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails,
three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an
animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and
drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of
infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say
nothing of potential criminal charges).

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Best Practices for Handling Issues of Bandwidth and Copyright. Chronicle of
Higher Education. November 26, 2007.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2566

A network administrator at Brandeis University is surveying colleagues on
other campuses to better understand how colleges manage bandwidth and handle
complaints of online copyright infringement. Brandeis itself plans to update
its policies and procedures on those issues.

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Ficci for digital rights management system. Sify.com. November 24, 2007.
http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14565788

Panaji, India: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
(Ficci) is pushing for the adoption of an "efficient" digital rights
management (DRM) system, saying that this would give "a fillip to the
fast-growing Indian digital entertainment and media industry".

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Blog: MPAA University 'Toolkit' Raises Privacy Concerns. By Brian Krebs,
Washington Post. November 23, 2007.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/mpaa_university_toolkit_op
ens_1.html

The Motion Picture of Association of America is urging some of the nation's
largest universities to deploy custom software designed to pinpoint students
who may be using the schools' networks to illegally download pirated movies. A
closer look at the MPAA's software, however, raises some serious privacy and
security concerns for both the entertainment industry and the schools that
choose to deploy the technology.

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Blog: In Face Of Copyright Controversy, Yahoo! and Sony Agree To Share Ad
Revenue. By Paul Glazowski, Profy.com. November 22, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2bkmqk

The Associated Press reported this week that Sony BMG "inked a licensing deal
with Yahoo! Inc. that clears the way for people to upload files with music or
video content by the record company's artists" to Yahoo!-owned sites.

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Free software group files copyright lawsuits. By Grant Gross, IDG News
Service. November 20, 2007.
http://tinyurl.com/2a5r2n

The Software Freedom Law Center, an organization focused on protecting
open-source and free software, has filed copyright lawsuits against two U.S.
companies, alleging that they are redistributing software in violation of the
GNU GPL (General Public License).

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Blog: RIAA, MPAA urge pro-copyright vows from presidential candidates. By Anne
Broache, CNET News. November 20, 2007.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9821141-7.html?tag=nefd.top

A coalition of entertainment and publishing industry heavyweights would like
to see the 2008 presidential candidates champion "meaningful copyright
protection" in their policy platforms.

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Blog: Just An Online Minute...Coming: Brave New World Of Copyright Chasing? By
Wendy Davis, MediaPost. November 20, 2007.
http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_minute/?p=1611

Many observers have said that copyright laws are out of touch with everyday
experience. Now, University of Utah professor John Tehranian has laid out the
case for that proposition in his law review article, "Infringement Nation:
Copyright Reform and the Norm/Law Gap."

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Access Copyright farce reaches America. P2PNet.net. November 19, 2007.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14043

News of Access Copyright's latest balls-up has reached the US where it's
sparked observations by Kevin Smith in the Scholarly Communications @ Duke
blog.

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Blog: Revoking open source. Posted by Gordon Haff, CNET. November 14, 2007.
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13556_1-9816749-61.html

Those of us who have actually read through many of the Open Source licenses
and have spent a fair bit of time mulling and discussing their consequences
take a lot of things for granted. One of those things is that once a program,
or anything else, is released under an Open Source license you can't just take
it back. Maybe this seems obvious to you, or maybe not, but it isn't to
everyone.

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(C)ollectanea Blog. Collected perspectives on copyright.
http://chaucer.umuc.edu/blogcip/collectanea/
Center for Intellectual Property, UMUC