Danish Court Orders Spanish Site Blocked Because It Uses Trademarked English Word 'Home' As Part Of Its Name

Daft trademarking stories are common enough, but it's always fun to come across new variations on the theme. Netzpolitik points us to this story from Denmark, where a Spanish-owned property site called HomelifeSpain.com ran into trouble because the word "home" was trademarked in Denmark by the Danish property site home.dk. This resulted in the rather incredible remedy of the website itself being banned entirely. As Netzpolitik notes, this is classic function creep: such web blocks were introduced to fight -- you guessed it -- child pornography, and yet here they are being applied in the rather less serious matter of trademark infringement. 

On Techdirt.

New Market Research: Music Streaming Services Halve Illegal Downloads

For a long time, the copyright industries have taken the position that they won't launch new digital music services until piracy is "solved" – or at least punished. The inevitable consequence of that position is obvious to everyone outside the copyright industries – people turn to other, unauthorized sources to satisfy their musical needs. Fortunately, a few startups have launched pioneering digital music offerings and some, like Spotify, look like they might succeed. 

On Techdirt.

Open Source Spaceships?

Apparently:

This is a privately funded suborbital space endeavor.
Our mission is to launch a human being into space.

We are currently developing a series of suborbital space vehicles - designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft.

...

We intend to share all our techninal information as much as possible, within the laws of EU-export control.

(Via BoingBoing.)

Irony in the Blood

Well spotted:

To recap:

1. In all likelihood, fossil fuel emissions are one of the primary causes of global warming;

2. global warming has melted the Arctic ice cap faster than any time on record; so

3. Russia, Denmark, Canada, and the United States are racing to make a no-more-land grab in the Arctic; in order to

4. claim fossil fuel drilling rights for the Arctic seabed.

The Birth of Blognation

I was a big fan of the Vecosys blog - I even got used to its horrible name. And then it went away, only to emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes, as something bigger and bolder: Blognation.

Blognation is certainly an ambitious”“Go Big or Go Home”” project, the aim being to report on the Web 2.0 startup ecosystem around the globe including, United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Denmark Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan, China / Taiwan / Hong Kong, Australia, Brazil, South America, all with the help of 16+ blognation editors who are getting ready to start writing.

Today sees the launch of blognation UK and over the coming weeks and months all of the other aforementioned blogs will be launched. And proving that I certainly don’t lack ambition, I am currently speaking with a further 10 more prospective editors to cover Canada, Russia, India, South Africa, South Korea, South-East Asia, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey and Greece.

Makes sense, but it depends critically on the quality of the blogger team that Sam Sethi has assembled. We shall see. At least the name is better than the previous one.

Someting is Open in the State of Denmark

Good news from Denmark:

On Friday, the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, made a press announcement (Danish) about his plan for following up on the Parliament Resolution 8 months ago.

The implementation plan is presented in a report which suggests that “open standards should be implemented gradually by making it mandatory for the public sector to use a number of open standards when this becomes technically feasible”.

The report identifies an initial sets of open standards as candidates for mandatory use from 1 January 2008 “if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve additional costs to the public sector”.

Openness: To Be, or Not To Be?

If for nothing else, Denmark is notable for two things: Hamlet, and being the seat of the Microsoft's largest European development division. This makes the question of openness a real political hot potato. If you've ever wondered how the drama is unfolding in said country - and admit it, you have often wondered - here's a handy history from John Gøtze.