Showing posts with label licensing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label licensing. Show all posts
24 July 2014

Royalty Collection Agency SABAM Sued By Belgian Government Over 'Piracy License' Plans

›
Back in May, we wrote about how the Belgian music royalty collection agency SABAM was taking ISPs there to court over its demand for 3....

German Director Proposes 'One-Stop Shop' For Free, Instant, But Non-Exclusive Licenses To Offer Films Online

›
It's always heartening to come across new ideas for ways to make creations more widely available to the public while allowing artist...
24 November 2013

Universities Struggle To License Their Patents, In Desperation Team Up With Patent Trolls

›
A few months back, we wrote about the University of California's plan to lock up even more knowledge in the form of patents, in the...
19 September 2013

Google Proposes Clever Video Codec License -- But The Real Problem With Patent Pools Remains

›
A couple of years back, Techdirt wrote about Google's laudable attempt to open source its VP8 video codec , based around technologies ...

Innovators, Public Interest Groups & Open Access Supporters Pull Out Of Talks On EU Copyright In Protest

›
Back in February we reported on a worrying attempt by the European Commission to reframe the discussion about modernizing copyright in...
31 March 2013

EU Copyright Dialogue: The Great Sham(e)

›
In an implicit acknowledgement that the Europe-wide protests against ACTA indicated that there was a problem with copyright in the digital...

Could Open Source Software Be Put Into The Public Domain Instead?

›
There are dozens of free software and open source licences -- many would argue rather too many. Different licenses impose different condi...
17 March 2013

French Politicians Worry That Free Creative Commons Works Devalue 'Legal' Offers

›
As Techdirt noted last year, France has a regrettable habit of dreaming up really bad ideas when it comes to the Internet, most famously...
10 February 2013

Bayer Fights India's Compulsory Licensing Of Cancer Drug By Claiming It Spent $2.5 Billion Developing It

›
Back in March last year, the Indian government announced that it was granting its first compulsory license , for the anti-cancer drug mar...

VLC Multimedia Player Shows Changing Open Source License Is Hard, But Possible

›
Licenses lie at the heart of open source -- and many other kinds of "open" too. That's because they are used to define the...

Another Reason to Use Open Source: Sane Licensing

›
A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out how a decision in Norway involving cash registers emphasised one of the advantages of open source ...
10 August 2012

Outdated Compulsory Licensing Means Australian Schools Must Pay Millions To Use Free Internet Materials

›
Recently we wrote about how copyright rules designed for an analog age were causing problems when transposed without modification to the ...
15 July 2012

Is The EU's Proposed Reform Of Music Licensing Doomed From The Start?

›
Music collection societies often figure in Techdirt thanks to their attempts to wring licensing payments from people on absurd grounds, li...
01 April 2012

Open Standards Licensing: Apple's Key Evidence

›
As regular readers know, there is a struggle going on between the free software community that needs open standards to be RF (strictly sp...
28 February 2012

WURFL: a cautionary tale

›
A few months ago, I wrote about the library management program Koha, and how the irruption of money into the previously tranquil world o...
17 February 2012

UK Publishers Pretend To Embrace Copyright Reform... In Order To Kill Copyright Reform

›
One of the bolder ideas in the UK's Hargreaves report was the suggestion that a Digital Copyright Exchange should be set up. The id...

The World Of Open Textbooks Just Became A Little More Crowded -- And A Little More Open

›
Open e-textbooks are hardly new: Techdirt has been reporting on the pioneer in this market, Flat World Knowledge , for several years now. ...
21 December 2011

Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated

›
Trey Ratcliff is an extremely successful photographer, who specializes in HDR photography. His blog Stuck in Customs is the top travel p...
24 October 2011

Please Respond to the PDC Consultation (and PDQ)

›
Last month I wrote about the UK government's "Making Open Data Real" consultation. That's actually just the first par...
17 October 2011

Fighting Back Against Public Domain Erosion By Growing The Commons

›
There have been a number of stories on Techdirt recently about governments diminishing the public domain - not just by extending copyrigh...