Category: Mass Communication Law

ACTA (now public) overview

ACTA arrives still bad, but a tiny bit better.

Ars Technica presents a great overview of the, now public, ACTA treaty text and history.  Perhaps most concerning are the 3 strikes and “imminent infringement” rules.  Both seem to run afoul of one’s First Amendment right to receive information (another example, your landlord can’t completely prohibit satellite dishes) and the great deference courts give prior restraint (there has to be imminent danger for the government to stop your speech).

Come on Apple, get it together

I’ve been riding Apple quite a bit lately over their hard/software openness policies. In some ways it’s like nagging a sibling who you like, but want to see do their best.

It seems I’m not completely alone in this. John Battelle posted along with Tim O’Reily an invite to participate their Web 2.0 conference. What’s interesting about this post is that Battelle criticizes Apple for their corporate –not technological– openness.

I hope Apple (and Jobs) legitimately considers all of this criticism.