For more than 15 years, Pamela Samuelson, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has been fighting what she sees as overzealous and innovation-stifling expansion of copyright laws in the high-tech arena. She has written influential scholarly articles for academic publications, filed friend-of-the-court briefs in landmark cases and organised academic conferences where ideas can be refined and disseminated
Both Bob Kolody’s Coca-Karma case and Uzi Nissan‘s fight with Nissan Motors have recent updates to report
A possible challenge to the ban on Baise-Moi is being planned by the manager of Melbourne’s Lumiere cinema, which is now the only cinema showing the controversial French film in Australia
Lawrence Wollersheim, a former Scientologist, who received US$8.7 million from the church this week 22 years after first suing it for mental abuse hailed the settlement on Saturday as a victory that could unleash a flurry of similar lawsuits
Rick Boucher, said last July that he wanted to amend the DMCA to permit certain fair uses
of digital content, such as backing up an audio CD by bypassing copy protection technology. In an interview on Thursday, Boucher said he now has sufficient support — from the tech industry, librarians, and Internet activists — to feel comfortable introducing his bill in the next month
Paul M Herbert Law Centre at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge is giving Douglas Dorhauer, one of its students, an unusually comprehensive legal education. In addition to offering him the standard classes and exams, it is suing him
It’s claimed hundreds of Taliban prisoners could be buried in a mass grave in northern Afghanistan and that the US is reluctant to investigate it. A US human rights group says the mass grave they believe is near Mazar-e-Sharif could contain men killed by the Northern Alliance
Entrepreneur Ken Belanger lost his small claims court battle with Microsoft over the rights to the term ‘Pocket PC‘. But he said he might prevail by using another legal trick, suing Microsoft under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
A group of artists have created a field of Wombles to show their support for May Day protestors. The anonymous group have used hundreds of soft toys originally given out with McDonald’s Happy Meals. The piece called Auto-Destructive Art will be dismantled on 1 May and the toys given to anti-globalisation campaigners
The community of fan made Star Wars films received a boon in December when Lucasfilm loaned their sponsorship to the event, and George Lucas himself would be a judge. Unfortunately, they’ve limited the contest to parodies and documentaries, thereby shutting out hundreds of entries — via Slashdot
Frustrated by a hard stand against marijuana use in the United States, some Americans are migrating to a handful of small communities along the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, where smoking marijuana is tolerated
The Ohio Department of Education wants to get to know its public school children in extraordinary detail, asking school districts under a little-known law to provide personal information on students such as their mother’s maiden name for a new database
Joseph Byrd, who recorded a pair of experimental psychedelic albums in the 60s, says he can’t get Sony to pay royalties, so his psychedelic pop might as well be free
Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has been taken to task over Australia’s refugee policy by the assembled crowd at the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association function in London
Nokia Australia has moved to appease angry customers and the NSW Department of Fair Trading after the mobile phone maker admitted to selling defective handsets to consumers
Law enforcement agencies are developing interception agreements with large ISPs, as the Federal Government prepares to introduce new laws on data spying
British Telecom’s lawsuit against the US internet service provider Prodigy Communications for infringement of its hyperlink technology patent is the kind of litigation the W3C is battling to avoid with its royalty-free patent policy
An attempt to have former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrested in Britain for war crimes has failed. Human Rights campaigner Peter Tatchell applied at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court for a warrant for the arrest of Dr Kissinger under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957. The charges alleged that the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize winner commissioned, aided and abetted and procured war crimes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
A Georgia Tech student who almost flunked his intro to comp sci course for just discussing his homework with someone else. Note that no one, including the faculty, accused him of actually copying any code from anyone. However, the honour code
at Georgia Tech forbids its introductory computer science students from seeking any help from other students on their homework
. The faculty recorded part of his violation on the forms as He was trying to learn it
In an apparent response to criticism of its handling of a threatening letter from a Church of Scientology lawyer, the popular search engine Google has begun to make so-called takedown
letters public. DMCA-censored pages are now two clicks and a cut-and-paste away from the regular search results
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