Sorry about that long break without warning.  Christmas time was a bit busy and when it came time to write a post I was either otherwise engaged or worn out.  I should be picking it back up on a regular basis now, though I am playing with the idea of switching to once a week, probably Sundays, so that I can research my posts a bit more and give you something that is a little more original that what I’m putting out there for you now.  We’ll see how that goes, and I’ll make a post about that if it is what I choose to do.

Judge Michael Davis made the important distinction months ago that making files available to be shared through file sharing software such as Kazaa or Grokster is not the same as actually sharing music illegally over the internet.  Because of this distinction he declared a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, who was being sued for $222,000 for illegally sharing music.  The judge is now holding to that decision by refusing to hear an appeal from the RIAA to allow the case to go to trial.

This gets Thomas out of a huge fine, and sets an important precedent for future cases where the RIAA is trying to sue consumers under the making-available idea.  Now the RIAA is forced to present actual evidence that a consumer has broken the law before suing the for breaking the law!

Posted by Wes Mueller on 12/29 at 12:48 PM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

Recently there has been some great news for the file-sharing community:  Three of the major music labels are looking to set up a collective licensing system with universities so that students can share music without being sued and expelled from their schools.  The project, named Choruss, could have a huge effect on file-sharing, hopefully paving the way for collective licensing with ISPs for the regular home user.  The idea behind collective licensing is that everyone pays in a small fee, probably less than $5 per person.  This money is split between labels and artists based on relative popularity.  People can then share content however they want, with whatever program or provider they want, without the fear of being sued by one of the big labels.  Of course, Choruss only applies to three of the four big labels (Warner, Sony-BMG, and EMI, but not Universal), but if these labels start a collective licensing system how long is it until movie and software producers catch on? 

In other news, yet another Governor of Illinois is set up to be indicted and likely convicted of corruption charges.  Gov. Blagojevich has been conspiring to sell President-Elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder.  The idea was that Gov. Blagojevich would take bids such as high paying jobs for him or his wife, and if nothing acceptable was offered he would appoint himself.  This is a man who ran on the platform of reform in Illinois, something we have still not seen to this day, as this arrest clearly shows.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 12/10 at 01:09 PM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

A couple of interesting articles I’d like to talk about.  The first of the two is regarding a recent add-on that was created for the Firefox browser.  This plug-in adds a option when you are browsing Amazon to download the content you are looking at for free.  When clicked, it takes you to The Pirate Bay, my favorite torrent tracker.  Outrage and threats of litigation quickly got the add-on removed, but you can still find it all over the web to download. 

The second interesting piece of news is the litigation that Tiffany and Co. is bringing against eBay to try to force them to find and stop counterfeiters.  If Tiffany get’s their wish, it would force eBay to handle all goods that are sold through them to verify whether or not the goods are counterfeit.  Currently eBay does not handle any merchandise, and this extra step in the selling process would likely bring new fees and increase handling time, causing a serious lack of profitability.  This would be a serious detriment to social retail all over the internet.  The EFF is defending eBay, who is also being backed by Google, Yahoo!, and others.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 12/05 at 03:36 PM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

It’s an amazing thing to me when the person who is soon to be the highest level elected official in the nations is taking a progressive approach to copyright.  Change.gov, the President-Elect’s transition website has been published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.  This means that anything published on the site is sharable and remixable under the condition that you give credit to the website for the original works.

This is an example of the progressive views I’m looking forward to seeing when the new administration takes its place in the White House.  Hopefully amid the wars and financial turmoil we will have time for reforming all of these things that Obama mentioned while on the campaign trail.  While copyright law certainly isn’t going to be one of the first reforms it’d be nice to see it happen down the road.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 12/01 at 02:01 PM  •  (1) Comments •  permalink

This is why I don’t leave the house on Black Friday.

Save a life.  Observe Buy Nothing Day.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 11/28 at 10:52 PM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink