open...

One of the many worrying aspects of the Snowden saga is an attempt in the US to reframe whistleblowing as treason, and to make it harder...

The Spratly Islands are some 750 reefs, atolls and islands in the South China Sea that are claimed variously by Brunei, the People'...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement began as a cosy treaty between just three nations: Chile, New Zealand and Singapore . But o...

Last month we wrote about a new copyright law in Japan whose punishments seemed so disproportionate it was hard to take it seriously. Fo...

There's a fairly constant pattern in the world of copyright enforcement. The media companies claim that piracy is "destroying...

Somehow you rather expect the head of the WIPO to come out with a statement on the potential benefits of patenting the World Wide Web. Bu...

So, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) rejected international trade restrictions on northern bluefin tuna,...

I'd not paid much attention to the Japanese "fashion" robot, until I came across this : Japan's National Institute of Adva...

Here's an interesting little tale : I was fortunate enough to spend last Thursday with a group of LAMP engineers who have some experienc...

One thing that is evident is the continuing emergence of the mobile platform as a real alternative to the traditional PC. The iPhone and An...

The free software organisation Asianux continues to grow in importance: Viet Nam has officially become a member of Asianux, an organisation...

So, ye Japanese whale-eaters, eat this : Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be conside...

Why does Japan do brilliant things like this : Japan is to carry carbon footprint labels on food packaging and other products in an ambitiou...

Japan today said it would take legal action against three members of the Sea Shepherd conservation group, including one Briton, whom it accu...

Godwin's Law states : "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches o...

One of the surprising - and heartening - recent developments in the environmental world has been the transformation of Australia into a real...

Had enough of the blind, egoistical obstructionism at Bali? Do something about it. (Via Green Monk .)

I write about commons a lot here - digital commons, analogue commons - and about how we can nurture them. Whales form a commons, and one th...

One of the key features of digital commons - like free software or science - is that there is no tragedy in the classical sense: it is impos...

...like we need a hole in the head : the European Commission wants the EU to bypass WIPO and the WTO and move forward on a new anticounterfe...