All EFF’d Up: Silicon Valley’s Astroturf Privacy Shakedown — Author and journalist Yasha Levine offers a blistering account of EFF’s role in facilitating the large internet platforms’ policies. “On a fundamental level, these companies were like tapeworms—digital parasites that sunk their hooks into our networks of culture distribution and siphoned value as quickly as possible for themselves, without giving anything back to the people who produce culture. And just as these new platforms would asphyxiate without other people’s creative output, they wouldn’t stand a chance of turning a profit without a massive surveillance campaign on their own users. Naturally, as these companies grew and matured, two threats to their business loomed large: copyright and privacy. To make sure these never became a problem, Silicon Valley built up a powerful lobbying and public relations machine.”
What a Google Email to News Publications Means for the Music Business — Rob Levine writes, “The battle over the proposed European Union Copyright Directive is heating up — and technology companies have returned to their usual playbook. That means mobilizing nonprofit groups and academics they support, warning that policies will ‘break the internet,’ and trying to get some creators and media companies on their side. The latest example: An email from Google to news publications in its Digital News Initiative, a program the company established to help journalism online, asking them to lobby against parts of the Copyright Directive that are intended to help them.” This week, after publication of this article, the European Parliament declined to adopt the amendments and sent them to a plenary vote this September.
All the Forgotten IP Cases, Where Do they All Come From… — Zvi Rosen looks at Perris v Hexamer, an 1878 Supreme Court decision on copyrightability that has largely been forgotten.
Kim Dotcom loses appeal against extradition, will take case to Supreme Court — The New Zealand court held that Dotcom could be extradited to face criminal copyright infringement charges in the US, dismissing Dotcom’s argument that New Zealand lacks criminal copyright infringement provisions.
Kitty Pryde Owns the Trademark on the X-Men — It’s canon.