An incredible report with important data and comparative analysis of broadband policies across different countries. Remarkably, the report indicates that the U.S. might have prematurely given up on open access / functional separation. I need to read it carefully and digest, and should anyone interested in broadband policy.
“Next Generation Connectivity: [...]

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I’m glad to see all the Google focus here! (And I’m sorry to have been away for so long–a number of writing projects came home to roost, demanding edits, this fall. I’m now finishing number 4 of 5.)
As for GBS: I’m pretty defeatist on the Google Book Search settlement, especially if our enervated antitrust [...]

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Smackdown!  Pam Samuelson has a new op-ed up at the Huffington Post that disassembles Sergei Brin’s recent New York Times defense of Google Book Search as a 21st century “library.”
Here’s a link to the piece, which has the hallmarks of what WWE fans would call a “finishing move.”
It is remarkable that over the course of [...]

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As a way to get ready for the Brazil Olympics and as a little throw back for hipsters and neo-hipsters, enjoy:

The Girl From Ipanema – Stan Getz
I urge folks to discover or re-discover, Jobim, Getz, and Gilberto. Great stuff to get into another world of jazz and far away lands while staying right where you [...]

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Dead people can’t create new works, as the argument went during debates over the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
But we know that’s not true, and there are two recent examples of dead creativity.  One might even go so far as to argue that death inspired (incented?) the publication of new works.
Michael Jackson has a [...]

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D is for Digital is over now. I urge anyone interested in the Google Book Deal (aka the Google Book Search) to check out the schedule page and the webcast links (the stream links are at the top of the Friday and Saturday schedules respectively). James Grimmelmann put together a conference that aired out pro [...]

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Those of us with interests in common property regimes and new institutional economics are buzzing this morning over the news that Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson are being awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics.   Here is the text of the press release:
12 October 2009
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The [...]

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Some things never change.  Or do they?
Today’s NYT Magazine notes a “cult” of American consumers obsessed with “Mexican Coke” – Coke produced with cane sugar, rather than with corn syrup.
The Wall Street Journal had the same story more than three years ago, and the WSJ did it better.  Maybe there’s a relationship between paywalls and [...]

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The Sixth Circuit decided on Thursday that someone who paid nearly $80 to join a child pornography site can have that fact used against them as part of the facts justifying a finding of probable cause for a search warrant related to child pornography on his computer. This is probably not surprising when put this [...]

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Last month, I noted the sad state of affairs in the world of cartoons in terms of the apparent housing crisis – with popular cartoon characters shacked up in pineapples under the sea and the like.
However, the cartoon world appears to have sunk to new lows with Marge Simpson posing nude for Playboy.
Now that the [...]

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Needles, Haystacks and Stuff (from Indexed)

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One way to think about the Google Book Deal is that Google will end up as the super-gateway to books. It will in effect be the ICANN central authority of online books. So when Amazon and others have objected to Google’s claim that it will let everyone play in its sandbox, they are smart. No [...]

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I am at New York Law School for D is for Digital. Apparently around 140 people are here to learn about the Google Book Deal from a host of perspectives. The program schedule is here and that page has a link to the webcast where you can watch the conference live.
As we begin, congratulations and [...]

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I almost titled this post, “Wut?”, but decided against it. It was, however, my initial reaction to this ArsTechnica story, Feeling guilt over P2P use? Piracy Payback wants to help. From the article:
Feeling a sense of remorse, contrition, guilt, shame, and self-loathing over all that unauthorized peer-to-peer downloading you’ve been doing? Salve that stinging conscience [...]

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The Google Book Deal is suspended. Time to cheer, correct? No. As Pam Samuelson noted in the New York Times, that probably is too little time to resolve the issues at hand. In fact I think right now is when the GBD is at quite a dangerous stage.
First neither party represents the public. One [...]

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Or so he reportedly told Teen Vogue in an interview:
Seeing strangers in your designs must be an everyday occurrence for you now. Is it still exciting?
Yes! To me, it’s the greatest compliment. Even when I see a copy, something that’s inspired by something I’ve done, it’s a rewarding feeling. Because that’s why I do what [...]

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From today’s NYT op-ed on the closure of Gourmet magazine, I extract some comments that seem relevant to copyright law and policy:
The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content [...]

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The First Amendment has a friend in Pennsylvania.  Earlier this week, a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the state’s Trademark Counterfeiting Statute on federal free speech grounds.
The statute reads, in relevant part:
“Any person who knowingly manufactures, uses, displays, advertises, distributes, offers for sale, sells or possesses with intent to sell or distribute any items [...]

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We’ve read a few examples recently of lawyers getting in trouble for what they post online: a lawyer disciplined for posts about a judge and another charged with revealing client confidences (here are other examples from the ABA journal and the NY Times). But it’s not just lawyers getting in trouble.
In an unreported opinion out [...]

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From the MIT Labs Personas Web page:

“Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. [...]

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