By , May 09, 2014.

The Story “Transcendence” Didn’t Tell — Another great piece from David Newhoff. “I defend copyrights for the same reason I’m uncomfortable with drone warfare and don’t want to see autonomous weapons, even if they might make my own kid’s future job in the Navy less hazardous. Copyrights, I believe, are merely one way in which we affirm that humans maintain dominion over their technology. When we reduce our intimate thoughts, ideas, and creative expressions to the banality of data, we take a step closer toward abdicating that authority.”

Comparative Study Of National Approaches To Internet Intermediary Liability — IP Watch discusses findings of a recent paper, presented at an April 30 side event to the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights which examined how 30 different jurisdictions handle the liability of internet intermediaries for infringement occurring on their systems.

Making Amends: China Music Copyright Law Primer — Professor Eric Priest provides an excellent intro to copyright law and policy in China.

Fearing Google — Bruce Schneier points to Mathias Döpfner’s open letter to Google and collects several reactions about concerns over the internet giant’s growing dominance.

Ti West On Why Piracy Hurts Indie Film (and It’s Not All About The Money) — “The independent film world is a fragile ecosystem. It allows for unique experiences and challenging stories to be told by bold filmmakers in adventurous and often unproven ways. Studio films do not take the same risks. But this adventurousness, this ability to surprise us, is why we love indie movies. By supporting this ecosystem, we are supporting the possibility of original, rewarding experiences that would otherwise go unnoticed.”

More Ad Dollars Flow to Pirated Video — The Wall Street Journal reports, “Sites brimming with pirated movies and television shows are being supported, inadvertently, by major marketers that buy ad space on them. Thanks to the rise of automated ad-buying technologies, more ad dollars are flowing to sites with stolen copyrighted content than ever before, ad executives say. Who should do the policing is a matter of debate in the industry.”

Dropbox disables old shared links after tax returns end up on Google — There are many reasons why one needs to be careful about what one is making available online as more and more of our dealings shift toward the cloud, as this story demonstrates. “IntraLinks said that ‘During a routine analysis of Google AdWords and Google Analytics data mentioning competitors’ names (Dropbox and Box), we inadvertently discovered the fully clickable URLs necessary to access these documents that led us to live folder contents, some with sensitive data. Through these links, we gained access to confidential files including tax returns, bank records, mortgage applications, blueprints and business plans—all highly sensitive information, some perhaps sufficient for identity theft and other crimes.'”

2 Comments

  1. Yes! Finally someone writes about music.

  2. I read the WSJ article and contacted the journalist if he would like to show all of the specific terminology and criminal activity Google/YouTube commits, including the perjury in the no settled Viacom case. Even offered to write the article in Japanese (which I can do).

    No response. I guess the WSJ journalist is waiting for a Twitter post (i.e.: a Tweet) for a source.

    Thanks.