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European Parliament adopts Declaration against Piracy in Europe. “The European Parliament (June 5) sent an important political signal that piracy will not be tolerated, when it adopted a Declaration on the Fight against Piracy and Counterfeiting in the Enlarged EU. A majority of Euro MPs signed the Declaration that calls for concerted action against the …
See this recent paper authored by 12 CalTech scientists, Fast TCP: From Theory to Experiments, which details their work, demonstrated through a number of controlled and public experiments, that allows users to download text, images and video from the Internet at “6,000 times the capacity of the ordinary broadband links.” definition of TCP
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that ISP Verizon Communications must provide the RIAA with the names of four customers accused of using the service to pirate copyrighted music using file sharing sofware. For a history of this case, please see this link. The RIAA press release is here.
The Radio and Internet Newsletter reports that non-commercial webcasters have reached a royalty agreeement with SoundExchange, an organization that represents hundreds of large and small recording labels by licensing, collecting and distributing copyright fees. Related documents: Small Webcasters Settlement Act of 2002 Rates and Terms Available to Certain Non Commercial Webcasters Collegiate Broadcasters, Inc. Webcasting …
From the Eldred Act Website: Today we launched a petition to urge Members of the US Congress to support our proposed legislation to reclaim the public domain.”
From the American Library Association Washington Office Newsline: “The U.S. Supreme Court on June 2 issued its opinion in Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. (case no. 02-428), in which ALA participated as a “friend of the court” in support of Dastar Corporation. The Court has ruled unanimously 8-0 (Justice Breyer did not …
Proposed rules changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), which constitute a Part 27 rewrite, were published in this May 28 Federal Register notice (pdf), and intend to “clarify, streamline, and update guidance and clauses on patent, data, and copyrights to provide a more logical presenation of this complex material.” Also see the government’s acquisition …
According to ALAWON, the ALA Washington Office Electronic Newsline, on May 29 Vermont Governor Jim Douglas signed HB 148, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA). “This bill included a UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act) bomb-shelter provision in its Choice of Law Section. Such bomb-shelter laws have been enacted in four states: Iowa, West Virginia, …
DVD-CCA v. Bunner, on appeal before the California Supreme Court, involves the posting of free software for the DeCSS code (to decrypt DVDs) by Andrew Bunner on his website. Prior to the beginning of this case in 2000, the DeCSS code had been published widely on sites around the world. According to SFGate.com, “California Attorney …
See the following updates on The Eric Eldred Act website: The Eric Eldred Act FAQ What precisely are we talking about? (a one-page discussion draft – “To allow unused copyrighted works to enter the public domain after 50 years, while allowing copyright owners the full protection of the established copyright term.”)
The Chronicle of Higher Education published the text of a dialogue, New Approaches to File Sharing, between Penn State President Graham Spanier and students from throughout the country and abroad. Issues addressed included the possible institution of fees for using P2P applications via campus networks, acceptable use policies, the implementation of legitimate file sharing applications …
The EFF reports that on May 21, Colorado Governor Bill Owens vetoed House Bill 1303, the so called Super DMCA legislation for which the Motion Picture Association provided the draft model language used in state legislatures throughout the country.
