Sonia Arrison » IP

U.S. group says Canada should be blacklisted over piracy

Sonia — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:32:33 +0000

The International Intellectual Property Alliance told US government officials that 14 countries, including Canada, should be placed on a watch-list with other countries like China and Russia that don’t respect intellectual property.

Canadians are probably gushing over this news as most of them relish the idea of rebelling against their larger neighbor to the south.

Microsoft & Larry Lessig launch copyright tool

Sonia — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:03:19 +0000

This is from a UK publication:

http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5869

The coupling of Microsoft and Lawrence Lessig, an outspoken proponent of loosening restrictions on copyrights for digital content, may seem an unlikely one. But the software company and Lessig’s Creative Commons organization will announce Wednesday that they’ve teamed up to develop a tool that lets Microsoft Office users create Creative Commons licenses from within Microsoft Office documents.

Creative Commons licenses allow an author of published material to decide how he or she wants to allow others to republish or reuse that work. The new copyright licensing tool will enable people creating documents in Office, PowerPoint or Excel to immediately attach a Creative Commons license to the document through an option in the applications’ “File” command, said Tom Rubin, a Microsoft associate general counsel for intellectual property.

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Making P2P a Capitalist Tool

Sonia — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:45:52 +0000

This month the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide MGM vs. Grokster, the case that could determine whether or not a peer-to-peer (P2P) company can be held liable for illegal activity on its network. The decision is key, but the future is also being shaped by the marketplace. See my column on this here.