And right now everyone’s fighting to control distribution channels, which is why I can’t watch Star Wars on Netflix or iTunes. It’s fine if you want to have that fight, but don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. A lot of us have figured out how to do this.



An excellent post by Jonathan Coulton from the perspective of an artiste who, according to the industry and the government, supposedly is going to be bankrupted by online piracy.

"It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big."

Indeed big news. Go forth and jailbreak your phone or rip that DVD. Of course, you have to 'criticize' it if you do.

Like a billion other people, I download things illegally. I'm also an actor, writer and director whose income depends on revenue from DVDs, movies and books. This leads to many conflicts in my head, in my heart, and in bars.

If you downloaded the movie using BitTorrent, then expect a letter. "The makers of the Oscar-winning movie Hurt Locker have joined a very lucrative ‘pay up or else’ scheme that will target tens of thousands of U.S. BitTorrent users. The massive lawsuit is expected to be filed in the coming days and if ISPs cooperate, suspected downloaders will receive a settlement letter in the weeks to come."

"I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too."

Interactive timeline of secret copyright treaty

This looks really, really bad. An avid Facebook user named Harman Bajwa says that his Facebook vanity Url – Facebook.com/Harman – was unceremoniously revoked yesterday for violating Facebook’s policies.

how copyright extension has banished millions of books to the scrapheap of history

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has announced that they're going to stop suing people for pirating music on P2P networks. For people under 30 years old, this has been the cause of much rejoicing.

Gandhiji’s work is now open to any publisher to republish without seeking permission or paying royalty to Navajivan Trust, the sole custodian of Gandhi’s writings and speeches.

JSTOR is taxing public knowledge in order to sustain its ability to block access to public knowledge.

Lawrence Lessig made a stunning announcement: he is going to retire from copyfighting and take up a new career, fighting for a new issue.