twitchgamer.net

These are my links for 13th July 2007 through 18th July 2007:

• Legal Issues in Posting Private Email to Mailing Lists and Blogs at a r b o r l a w - Good coverage of a common legal issue on the internet.
• Confessions of a former spammer | InfoWorld | News | 2007-07-18 | - “He spent 10 hours a day, seven days a week studying how to send spam and avoid filtering technologies in security software designed to weed out garbage e-mail.”
• SSRN-Method and Madness in Copyright Law by Dan Burk - unpacking the idea / expression dichotomy
• London gets free Wi-Fi | CNET News.com - “The free service operates with modest download speeds of 256Kbps. The paid-for services operate at a faster 500Kbps.”
• The Patry Copyright Blog: State courts deciding fair use - The answer to federal preemption - libel and the defense of truth!
• –cameramail cameras– - Getting randoms to take pictures with your mail.

I’m posting again over at Cinema Minima.  My first post on Ownit, a London IP advice service, is now out.

Cinema Minima  is a news service for movie makers. Every day thousands of movie makers all over the world read its news digest, which covers movie making, digital tools, editing, intellectual property rights, story, sound, acting, and distribution, including film festivals. Its network of correspondents is world-wide. Its readership is international. It is based in Los Angeles. It has been online since 1999, daily since 2002.

I covered the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2005 for Cinema Minima, and will be covering it again this year.

Becky Hogge, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, will now be taking over Ruthie’s spot and blogging at Geeklawyer.

Listen to an interview / podcast here (mp3).

The Lord Chief Justice has announced that in civil cases the wig is no longer required. What astounds me is the cost of wigs (and wing collars and bands) for annually for England and Wales:

Whilst the one-off cost of supplying the new civil gown is estimated at about £200,000, annual savings in the region of £300,000 will thereafter be made.

That’s quite a lot of money just on formal dress. I wonder what the savings would be if they dropped the wig for the criminal side as well.

The reasons given for the change is partly due to FIVE different outfits required under the current system.

“At present High Court judges have no less than five different sets of working dress, depending on the jurisdiction in which they are sitting and the season of the year. After widespread consultation it has been decided to simplify this and to cease wearing wigs, wing collars and bands in the civil and family jurisdictions. While there will never be unanimity of view about court dress, the desirability of these changes has a broad measure of agreement.”

These are my links for 2nd July 2007 through 11th July 2007:

• SSRN-Open Access, Law, Knowledge, Copyrights, Dominance and Subordination by Ann Bartow - After a brief scan, Looks like the main argument is that without access to secondary material about the practice of law, that access to legal scholarship won’t really have that much of a public benefit.
• China gamers rattled over ‘WoW’ skeletons | CNET News.com - Despite the obtuse title, it appears that WoW may have been altered for the Chinese market as a result of pressure from the government over web content.
• Governing Intellectual Property Claims - Project looking at governance in IP issues at Hamburg. Specifically focusing on Software patents and IPRED disputes, and the governance mechanisms behind them.
• Cory Doctorow?s craphound.com >> Blog Archive » The Hacker Crackdown, Part 001 - Cory’s reading The Hacker Crackdown.
• The £300k uni that gives tutorials on a virtual beach | the Daily Mail - The University of Edinburgh has its own island in SL
• Get Grandpa’s FBI Files - A how to guide to requesting FBI files.

The Scotsman has reported some moves towards providing an official registry of tartans (’plaid’ to my American readers), that would share many features of traditional IP rights. It looks like the system could involve:

• A system of registration, much like for trademarks or for registered designs.
• Registrations would be reviewed for uniqueness and authenticity.

No word on what, if any, legal rights for registered tartan owners would be associated with registration. I assume that there would be some sort of mark from the registry that would be attached to registered and ‘authentic’ goods. That way the registry would be a way to brand quality and develop a better reputation for producers.

My guess is that the authenticity review would only be a part, as the article notes that new tartans are created every year:

There are thought to be more than 4,500 unique tartans and about 150 new designs come forward each year. Football teams, the mobile phone firm 02, the Hilton Hotel in Hong Kong and a number of whiskies all have their own tartan.

LL Bean, based in Maine, US, was caught out earlier this year using a tartan whose creators claimed copyright over the design.

In part of my research for the Eduserv study on the use of open content licences, such as Creative Commons, by cultural heritage organisations, I ran into Spoken Word Services.  This site is an audio archive of BBC material held for access by educational institutions.

It has an extremely informal End User Licence Agreement (EULA). I particularly like the  indemnification clause and the choice of law and jurisdiction clause:

You will pay us any costs and damages we suffer if you do something you’re not allowed to. This would include the costs of our legal types. As we are proud to be a Scottish based project, this agreement will be under Scots law and enforced in the Scottish courts.

I also like this description of the educational restriction:

You can only use the material for educational purposes, so don’t go selling it on e-Bay. Beyond the fact that it is illegal, it is also not very nice.

I hope to find out in the project if they considered a Creative Commons like licence for their content. The EULA and their separate copyright policy restricts the use of the content outside of the educational setting and specifically prohibits placing any of the files on a page accessible to the internet.