Copyright issues are so technical and complex that it makes talking about copyright in a public forum very hard. Who wants to listen to me talk about “changes to traditional contours of copyright protection”? Nobody! Not even me, and I *love* listening to myself talk!

Well, here are four posts about copyright that hopefully won’t bore you to death.

1. Rick Falkvinge and the Pirate Party of Sweden

I got to hear Rick speak when he came to visit the Internet Archive, and he blew me away. Due to lobbying by the (mostly US-based) entertainment industry, broader copyright protection laws are enacted around the world every year. These expanding copyright laws threaten privacy and other civil liberties. In response to this, Rick founded the Piratpartiet in Sweden. They are now the 10th largest political party in Sweden, and are starting to influence real policy change. Rick does a great job about explaining problems with complex copyright laws to the general public. Check out his Google tech talk:

2. Antigua, Online Gambling, the WTO, and Hollywood
The WTO has ruled that the US ban on offshore internet gambling is illegal. The US disagrees, and refuses to lift the ban. Antigua argues that the ban has cost the country $3.4 billion in damages, and has asked the WTO for permission to violate copyright law and distribute US movies and music as a form of compensation.

3. SQLite, the public domain, Germany, and submarine patents
sqlite is an awesome, free, open-source filesystem-based database engine that is in the public domain, which means anyone can use it for any purpose they want. Almost every large technology company embeds sqlite into one of their products.

In Germany, the public domain doesn’t exist as it does in the US. In Germany, authors can’t dedicate a work into the public domain, and thus can’t contribute to sqlite!

Also, due to patent concerns, sqlite uses 17-year old technology, exclusively.. Crazy stuff!

4. A big victory: Golan v. Gonzales

Remember when Kahle vs Gonzales was heard in the 9th Circuit? Well, that went poorly. However, in the case of Golan v. Gonzales, the 10th Circuit has voted unanimously that First Amendment review clause in Eldred has been triggered, and the case has been remanded to the district court. This bodes well for a Supreme Court review of Kahle vs. Gonzales as well.

Filed under: all talk, lists, no code, PirateParty · 0 Comments

Captial One is a crazy-ass bank. They send me a new credit card offer every few days. Mail from Capital One is more than half of all the junk mail I receive! I am always scared of identity theft, and the sheer volume means that every once in a while I have to set aside a few *hours* to deal with the pre-approved credit card offers they send me!

5 steps for dealing with Capital One Junk Mail

• Open the envelopes and separate the contents.
• Shred the credit card application, helpfully pre-filled with my name and address.
• Compost the shredded applications.
• Recycle the assorted paper and cellophane-window envelopes.
• Trash the plastic fake credit cards and *magnets* that are glued to the applications. Why the fuck is Capital One sending me so many magents? This must be costing them a fortune!
  

Here is a picture of the three piles of bullshit that Capital One sent me. All this in just a few weeks! Next month I will have to spend another Saturday afternoon dealing with this crap…

Filed under: lists, sucky companies · 4 Comments