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Two short stories that illustrate two of my pet theories about the net: MMORPG economies and RSS. The first, in the New York Times reports on Chinese ‘gold farmers’ — people who sit and play MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) all day, to build up virtual gold which they then sell for real money to time-poor players. (more…)

I previously posted about how Harvey Danger released their new album for free on P2P. Well, I have finally had time to listen to it, and I really like it. Enough, in fact, that I’m going to go and purchase the CD to support them in their decision, in the hope they (and others) will do it in future. (more…)

The Australian is reporting that lawyers for MIPI will seek an order from the Federal Court to shut down the Kazaa network, because Sharman has failed to implement keyword filtering that it was required to introduce. (more…)

The New York Times has has two interesting stories I haven’t been able to post due to pressure of work.

The first is Roche Tells Indonesia That It Can Produce Tamiflu Without a License. Apparently, Roche does not have a patent in Indonesia for the drug; I wonder why? This forecloses the possibility Kim previously noted, of the country compulsorily licensing the patent in the event of a bird flu outbreak, as is its right under international IP law.

The second is a little pure geekiness,
Writing the Fastest Code, by Hand, for Fun: A Human Computer Keeps Speeding Up Chips. If ever a person was aptly named for his occupation, it might be Mr Goto [if you don’t get the nerd joke, perhaps see here]. Mr Goto handwrites optimisation code that speeds up supercomputers, and is currently used by 4 of the world’s fastest 11 supercomputers. Not only that, but his code beats the machine-generated code of his main competitor. Kind of neat, for something started as a hobby about a decade ago. His website is here.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Kazaa has blocked access to its network from Australia, in response to its loss in the Federal Court in September. (more…)

The Sony/BMG rootkit fiasco has advanced to the next stage: Amazon has been flooded with reviews of CDs that contain the rootkit (and possibly some that don’t, but just contain other DRM). These reviews have uniformly been stingingly negative, and award one star (the lowest that Amazon lets you award) out of its one to five star rating system. (more…)

Various media are reporting how a British teenager escaped conviction after “mailbombing” his former employer. Mailbombing is a form of denial of service attack – in this case, the teen sent 5 million emails, which overwhelmed the target’s mail server. (more…)

RIM ruling risks US Blackberry shutdown; 419 scams; and How ATM fraud nearly brought down British banking – see full post for details (more…)

LawGeek has a post about Fox’s Lawyers sending cease & desist letters to shut down a Buffy Fan Musical.

A San Fran non-profit theatre group called CounterPULSE was sponsoring a fan re-enactment of that most excellent Buffy episode, “Once More With Feeling”. (more…)

The First Amendment Center has a nice analysis piece on international libel laws and publishing on the internet.

There are a couple of quibbles: the piece notes a number of cases brought against US publishers in a number of jurisdictions, including Australia, and says “In all of these cases, the foreign courts ignored the protections of U.S. libel law and instead applied local law to determine the publishers’ liability.” (more…)

I’m probably behind the times on this, but I just found at Groklaw a nice short history of the net, Unix, Linux and all things related — The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, by Peter H. Salus. I haven’t had time to read it all yet (and it still appears to be a work in progress), but so far it’s an informative read.

The Wall Street Journal has a perceptive piece on how ABC affiliates view TV Downloads. It reports that the president of the association representing ABC’s affiliates “expressed misgivings” about Apple having the right to sell episodes of “Lost” to viewers the day after they are broadcast on ABC. (more…)

The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently decided a rather fascinating case, HGI Associates v. Wetmore Printing Co.. It begins:

In this case, the Microsoft Corporation (“Microsoft”), through its subsidiary, Microsoft Licensing, Inc. (“MSLI”), and business partner, Wetmore, attempted to set an ill-conceived trap to ensnare a suspected software pirate, HGI. The trap, however, only managed to ensnare Wetmore.

(more…)

Patently-O has an interesting post on eBay’s cert petition in its litigation against MercExchange.

The case raises an interesting issue of just how far traditional principles of equity are modified by statute. Leaving aside the question of the availability of interlocutory relief while the litigation is still pending, the key as regards permanent injunctions looks to be 35 USC 283. (more…)

Whenever someone comes along and suggests re-ordering a well-accepted way of arranging things, it’s always good to scrutinize what they say carefully. Sometimes they may turn out to be a Darwin or a Copernicus. But other times, of course, they may not.

Richard Stallman tries just such a thing in respect of the term ‘intellectual property’.

It has always kind of bugged me, especially after seeing him push the theme (or meme) in one of his public lectures with vigour and eloquence. Because, basically, while he has germs of the right idea in there, he is mostly wrong. And his errors detract from a good cause, instead of assisting it. (more…)