First U.S. GPL lawsuit filed: The makers of GPL licensed software BusyBox are suing Monsoon media for using the software without redistributing the underlying source code. This could be a case to watch–especially since “BusyBox” already makes a potentially neat case name. 9 ways for a Web 2.0 company to commit legal suicide, in preview …
Two high-impact changes in the e-mail world today: Mozilla confirmed that they will spin Thunderbird off into a subsidiary, and Yahoo purchased Zimbra. While both are (at least in part) open source products, it will be interesting to watch how these moves affect their evolution. Neither will bring changes soon, but my guess is that …
Autodesk Sued By eBay Seller For Pretending Right Of First Sale Doesn’t Exist | Techdirt: Here’s an interesting mix of a number of issues… first sale, the DMCA, and shrinkwrap licensing. Call for global privacy standards | Google: Google is pushing for international privacy standards. This could potentially have a substantial impact on how the …
The Patry Copyright Blog: Non-profit, non-partisan education in copyright Inspired by a response by the director of the Copyright Alliance to a previous post, Patry takes on an issue I’m hoping to take on in my own research: how do we educate the public about copyright. Patry argues that the Alliance practices “‘education’ of a …
John is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He studies the social impact of media technology law and policy, with a special emphasis on copyright. He also is an instructional technology consultant for DoIT-Academic Technology.
John doesn't update his blog often, and many of the thoughts are probably half-baked. While the web has sort of an eternal memory, the current and future reader is urged not to take all of this too seriously.
Think of this blog as "John thinking out loud."
(For more on this idea and why I blog, please see this category.)