EFF has the scoop: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the only public interest group to have gained entrance into the secretive meetings of the Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB), a group that creates the television and video specifications used in Europe, Australia, and much of Asia and Africa. In a report released today, EFF [...]
Electronic Frontier Foundation has busted a patent, this time patent #6,614,729 (copy at Google Patent Search). From the EFF: The patent covered a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances. Clear Channel claimed the bogus patent created a monopoly on all-in-one technologies that produce post-concert digital recordings and threatened to sue those [...]
The University of Southern California Free Culture group held an event where students were invited to speak their mind. This event was called the “Free Speech Zone” like the caged areas in which people are allowed to speak freely outside major political party rallies and other corporate-sponsored events around the world. Students spoke about the [...]
C-SPAN has promised to relicense the Congressional and federal agency footage under a more amenable license: (emphasis theirs) C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency– about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks–which will allow [...]
BoingBoing.net has the scoop: (I’ve added some links to the relevant material) Canadian Industry Minister Maxime Bernier recently introduced Bill C-47, the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act, through which the Vancouver Olympics are guaranteed exclusive public use of the following words: winter, gold, silver, bronze, sponsor, Vancouver, Whistler, 2010, tenth, medals, and games. It’s amazing [...]
According to Kurt Hanson, webstreaming audio tracks whose copyright is held by clients of the Recording Industry Association of America (what I’ll call “RIAA tracks”) just became a lot more expensive. In a new fee schedule (effective retroactively to the start of 2006), online radio stations playing RIAA tracks now have to pay $0.0011 per [...]
On December 28, 2006, one week before Nancy Pelosi duties began as Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Ralph Nader addressed an audience at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission District on what’s wrong with the country, focusing chiefly on civic apathy and corporate power. He points out the position of power Pelosi [...]
Chris Hedges, author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” has written an essay on Ralph Nader, subject of the new documentary “An Unreasonable Man”. He addresses the 2000 election for which some still blame Nader for somehow “spoiling” and causing Bush to become president: There is a fascinating rage—and rage [...]
Two FSF sysadmins, Justin Baugh and Ward Vandewege, have written a straightforward list of points on “How hardware vendors can help the free software community” (text file, PDF, LaTeX). It’s short and very easy to read; each entry in the list has three sections: A description of the issue, how hardware vendors can help, and [...]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing Kyle Machulis who is being sued by Richard Silver. The EFF explains: EFF’s client, Kyle Machulis, shot [a] video at a concert last month. In one ten-second segment, a group of fans in the audience attempts to dance part of the Electric Slide. Machulis later uploaded the video to [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley Richard Stallman