LawFont.com

The EFF has a press release on Field v. Google, in which the United States District Court for the District of Nevada rejected Field’s claims for copyright infringement arising from Google’s storing of his copyright works in its cache. (more…)

Mark Russinovich, the security researcher who found the Sony Rootkit, posted the results of his analysis of the Windows metadata flaw on his “Sysinternals” blog.

As expected, he concludes that the flaw was an intentional piece of design that turned out to be very poor and insecure–not an intentional, malicious backdoor as has recently been claimed. (more…)

The Canadian Globe and Mail has a story on how a UK court ordered parts of an unauthorised biography of singer Loreena McKennitt to be deleted. (more…)

The Age has reprinted a copy of a letter written by Groucho Marx in response to a letter of demand from Warner Brothers studio. Old, but good.

Speaking of Groucho, Andrew Denton last year had a great interview with Alice Cooper, who knew Groucho well and had some amusing anecdotes.

Slate Magazine has a fascinating article on the economics of Starbucks, which focuses on “the elusive ‘short’ cappuccino”; or why Starbucks will serve you “a better, stronger cappuccino if you want one, and they will charge you less for it.” (more…)

The Register has a short story based on a survey conducted by XTN data, which found that while 25% of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only 7% of iPod owners admit doing so.

If true, this, again, seems to prove Steve Jobs correct: give people a reasonably-priced legal means of downloading music, and they will not violate copyright.

Matt Rimmer has a nice round-up of the year’s IT and IP stories at CCH (registration may be required). It has the usual suspects (Grokster, Sony v Stevens, the Sony rootkit) and also a nice summary of a French decision (Stéphane P and Association UFC v Universal Pictures Video France — Court d’Appeal de Paris) about DRM that prevents DVDs being copied to VHS tapes for private use.

The New York Times is reporting that Elliott Spizer’s office has served subpoenas on Universal Music, Sony, EMI and Warner Music as part of an investigation into whether the “four record companies that dominate the industry have violated antitrust laws in the pricing of songs that are sold by Internet music services”. (more…)

The Los Angeles Times has a short editorial on patent proliferation [registration probably required], which notes that government researchers in New Delhi are accumulating a database of items “that are common knowledge in that country, including yoga positions and traditional Indian medical practices”. (more…)

Pretty cool: the inventor of the web finally has his own blog. The first post contains this fascinating snippet:

“The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.”

In other words, that web was a wiki. (You can see a screenshot of it.)

There are a few stories about the record industry’s recent moves against sites hosting song lyrics. Just on a week ago, CIO Today magazine has an article entitled Online Music Wars Take New Turn, which cites MPA president Lauren Keiser as saying in a BBC interview that his goal is not just to shut down the sites and levy fines, but also to get authorities to “throw in some jail time,” which he believes will make the group’s campaign “a little more effective.” (more…)

A number of news wires are reporting that two men face criminal charges for Xbox tampering (see also news.com). The real kicker appears to be that they sold pirated games illegally preloaded onto the systems; according to the Yahoo story:

They charged from $225 to more than $500 for the modifications, depending on the extent of the modifications and the number of games preloaded onto the hard drive.

(more…)

A number of the more influential media have recent articles on the NTP vs RIM BlackBerry saga. The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker have more or less pro-RIM stories, while The Economist has a somewhat pro-NTP story.

There’s a fair bit more to this story than is usually reported. Leaving aside the two perennials (the appropriateness of allowing patent claims for independent invention that did not actually copy the patentee’s method, but independently recreated it; and the appropriateness of ‘patent troll’ tactics — which may really be an argument about the standard for laches or estoppel against a patentee) there are two meatier issues. (more…)

I found this while seeing if I could find stats about the results of Harvey Danger’s experiment in allowing their latest album to be downloaded for free (apologies for those who find it monotonous, as I’ve posted about it twice already in the last couple of months, but I find it a great way to try to find hard data behind all the press spin about music and the net). (more…)

Following a previous posting on downloadable TV episodes, the New York Times is reporting that NBC is getting in on the act of selling TV Shows for viewing on iPods. (more…)