The ruling rejecting the Google Books settlement suggests, plausibly enough, that any general solution to the problem of orphan works is more properly the task of Congress than any kind of private agreement. I’ll admit to being a bit puzzled about why this hasn’t already happened. I take it for granted that our current lunatic […]

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Tim Lee has a great analysis at Ars Technica of this week’s ruling invalidating the controversial Google Books settlement. Tim, like the court, focuses on aspects of the agreement that seem to give Google a unique advantage in the online book market—and hopes that instead Google will now simply defend its copying of books for […]

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Mike Masnick writes that a surprising number of online music vendors are choosing to settle rather than fight lawsuits from a company called Sharing Sound which managed to secure a ridiculous patent on, essentially, the very idea of selling music online. They are, one assumes, settling because Sharing Sound is asking less than what it […]

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I just noticed this in Cory Doctorow’s sig; sorely tempted to add it to mine: READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED  agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies […]

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The New York Times on China’s hacker underground: Three weeks ago, Google blamed hackers that it connected to China for a series of sophisticated attacks that led to the theft of the company’s valuable source code. Google also said hackers had infiltrated the private Gmail accounts of human rights activists, suggesting the effort might have […]

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It’s something of a cliche among privacy researchers that “anonymity loves company“: Anonymizing mix networks (e.g. Tor) are more secure and more anonymous the more people are using them. Glossing the geekalicious details, the basic idea is lots of different encrypted communications, going to and from lots of different people, get chopped, scrambled, and sent […]

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Via some outfit called VoIP News, I’m intrigued to learn that my insidious paymasters at Cato number among the 15 greatest enemies of net neutrality. Scary!  Turns out Cato is a “hired voice of reason” which, along with CEI “seems to draw its funding from a smattering of every major corporation ever to fund lobbyists.” […]

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Speaking of (1) old stuff I’d meant to comment on, and (2) journalistic objectivity… Saul Hansell is, on the whole, a solid tech reporter, but golly, what do you think his view on net neutrality regulation might be? F.C.C. Seeks to Protect Free Flow of Internet Data In a move to make good on one […]

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Richard Koman at ZDnet on proposed legislation to block FCC net neutrality rules: The amendment is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to assert Congressional control of an executive function. They try to get around this by controlling “expenditures,” and I certainly don’t know the Supreme Court holdings on such approaches, but it seems to me that […]

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