04.13.14
Copyright News: DRM, Censorship, Megaupload, Hypocrisy, and Impact on the Internet
DRM
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How do you DRM a thing like a coffee pod?
Keurig’s next generation of coffee machines will have a way to prevent any coffee not licensed by Keurig from brewing in the machine as early as this fall. Locking down a thing like coffee seems both trifling and difficult to accomplish—no one has yet described how Keurig can differentiate its own pods enough so that its machines would honor those pods and only those pods.
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The Cost Of Permission Culture: Or Why Netflix Streaming Library Sucks Compared To Its DVD Library
Censorship and Links
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Wonga censors Twitter critics – where’s our right to parody?
Payday lender Wonga has forced Twitter to take down a user’s parody advert by making a copyright claim.
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Should Copyright Law Also Cover Hyperlinks?
Megaupload
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MPAA’s Lawsuit Against Megaupload Is Yet Another Broadside Attack On The Internet
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RIAA sues Megaupload over copyright infringement
Just three days after the Motion Picture Association of America brought a civil lawsuit against Megaupload, the Recording Industry Association of America has jumped in with its own case.
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After movie studios, record labels sue Kim Dotcom and Megaupload
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Kim Dotcom Goes Head to Head With The MPAA’s Top Lawyer
Hypocrisy
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39% of Film Industry Professionals are Movie & TV Show Pirates
Every month, reports condemn the general public for downloading movies and TV shows without permission, but perhaps those industries need to look a little closer to home. A new survey among film industry professionals suggests that almost 40% have downloaded movies and TV shows illegally.
Internet
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The Next Five Years Could Determine Our Liberties
There’s a European Election coming up. Voting starts in about one month, with the main election days on May 22-25. We’ve had many victories as activists and concerned citizens in the past five years to defend the net and its liberty, but the main showdown looks like it’ll come down in the next five years. Your vote is going to matter.
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On The 20th Anniversary – An Oral History of Netscape’s Founding
On April 4th, 1994, Mosaic Communications Corporation was officially incorporated as a going concern. If you don’t recognize the name, that’s because the company would eventually change its name to Netscape Communications Corporation when the University of Illinois (which owned the trademark on the name Mosaic) threatened legal action.
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My thoughts on NETmundial and the Future of Internet Governance
As the European Commission clearly stated in its Communication on Internet Policy and Governance of 12 February 2014, conflicting visions on the future of the Internet and on how to strengthen its multistakeholder governance in a sustainable manner have intensified recently. The next two years will be critical in redrawing the global map of Internet governance. Europe must contribute to finding a credible way forward for global internet governance; it must play a strong role in defining how the internet is run and ensuring it remains a single, un-fragmented network.