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Yule Heibel's Library tagged law   View Popular

12 Feb 08

The Lawyers Weekly: From A to Z: new developments in Canadian technology law

A fascinating A-Z compendium of new developments in Canadian technology law, by Michael Geist. Examples: "J is for the Jewish New Year cards Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent to thousands of Canadians. The cards raised uncomfortable privacy questions about the collection and use of personal information by Canada’s political parties." Or: "Q is for QuebecTorrent, the Quebec-based “torrent tracker” that was sued by a group of cultural groups on the grounds that the site facilitates copyright infringement." And: "S is for shaping, the controversial ISP practice that limits the bandwidth allocated to certain applications. The growing use of traffic shaping by Canadian ISPs led to mounting calls for net neutrality legislation."

www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php - Preview

canada copyfight law michael_geist net_neutrality technology

29 Jan 08

It's time to overhaul copyright law | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Excellent points by Cory Doctorow on how "folk" copyright usage get eroded (sodded, more like) by corporate copyright law, and why that doesn't make sense: it's "a genuinely radical idea: [that] individuals should hire lawyers to negotiate their personal use of cultural material, or at least refrain from sharing their cultural activities with others (except it's not's really culture if you're not sharing it, is it?). It's also a dumb idea. People aren't going to hire lawyers to bless the singalong or Timmy's comic book. They're also not going to stop doing culture."

www.guardian.co.uk/...copyright.law - Preview

copyfight copyright cory_doctorow law socialjustice

  • In theory, there's just one set of copyright rules and they apply to everyone, from Sony Pictures to your neighbour's eight-year-old who wants to photocopy his Spider-Man comics and sell them to the other kids.
    • - key phrase: "in theory" (how true) - on 2008-01-29
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  • Now you have billionaire media empires behaving as though parents should get a licence for a Prince song before they upload a YouTube video of their adorable toddler dancing to it.

    They are also acting as though fan fiction writers should be applying for a licence too - along with karaoke singers, would-be painters and, yes, the OAP picnickers who've uploaded the shakycam video of last weekend's knees-up in the church basement.

    This is a genuinely radical idea: individuals should hire lawyers to negotiate their personal use of cultural material, or at least refrain from sharing their cultural activities with others (except it's not's really culture if you're not sharing it, is it?).

    It's also a dumb idea. People aren't going to hire lawyers to bless the singalong or Timmy's comic book. They're also not going to stop doing culture.

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