Science and Technology

Media and Entertainment Law Online News: Interesting monthly publication for those concerned with legal aspects of media and entertainment (duh) – this month’s issue has features on Assembling an Entertainment Industry Team, the legal status of the RIAA vs. P2P, and the question of Who Controls the Right to Make …

Roxio is close to buying Pressplay: Roxio Inc., a maker of CD-burning software, is close to a deal to buy music subscription service Pressplay for about $30 million in cash and stock, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. Pressplay, a joint venture between Sony Corp.’s …

Apparently on break from writing new IP laws for Iraq (actually, no confirmation on that one yet), RIAA chairman Hilary Rosen tosses out a nice little propaganda pie to the readers of Business 2.0: As head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), I’ve been the public face for …

Seoul District Court dismisses case against Soribada, a P2P service: “The prosecution’s case did not state why the defendants’ acts qualify as an offence, thus the case is in violation of procedural regulations,” the court said in its ruling. “The prosecution stated that the defendants (brothers only known by their …

321 Studios in court challenging the Hollywood studios over its DVD-copying technology. As we have said here ad nauseum, all citizens have a right to make a back up copy of their own DVDs and music CDs. The DMCA denies citizens this right; ergo, the DMCA is crap. Lisa Bowman …

The Chronicle of Higher Education will host an online chat next Thursday, May 22, at 1 p.m. Eastern with Graham B. Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University: Colleges are under increasing political and legal pressure to block file sharing by their students, who use campus networks to obtain free music …

In Wired, our own legendary David Weinberger digs into the violations against our humanity that underlie digital rights management (apparently, the subject of the day): Digital rights management sounds unobjectionable on paper: Consumers purchase certain rights to use creative works and are prevented from violating those rights. Who could balk …

A puppy? Wearing a condom? The war in Iraq? NO! TurboTax’s anti-piracy feature: Intuit announced Wednesday that its top-selling TurboTax software will dump an unpopular anti-piracy feature that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. The Mountain View company disclosed its change of heart with the release …

Lawrence Lessig and Rep. Zoe Lofgren are looking for digital bounty hunters to track down spammers: Perhaps it was only coincidence that Stanford law professor Larry Lessig chose last week, the opening week of hunting season on wild turkeys, to propose legislation that would pay a bounty to private citizens …

More stupid copyright butt-clenching inanity: millions of people around the world have wasted thousands of man-hours pondering over the exact wording of songs, probably ever since the invention of the record player. The good news is that the internet has come to the rescue: over the last few years dozens …