TorrentFreak

Just as you think you’ve seen it all, the U.S. mass-BitTorrent lawsuits take yet another absurd twist. Two companies are currently battling for the right to sue alleged downloaders of Nude Nuns with Big Guns. In March, Camelot Distribution Group first sued a group of hundreds of downloaders of the film, and last week they [...]

When the copyright monopoly and its future development is discussed, parties called “stakeholders” are frequently invited to discuss its wording and principles. Yet, current lawmakers have forgotten the reason the monopoly exists in the first place.

After years of reading intellectual property law blogs from some of the greatest legal minds, I’m finally ready to admit that I was wrong. The fight against illegal copying is one that cannot be won. I can no longer deny the simple truth that it is ultimately futile to try to create artificial scarcities in what would otherwise be non-scarce goods.

The term ‘path dependence’ is generally used to describe the development of technological standards and how they ‘lock in’ a given technical solution. The QWERTY keyboard is often given as an example of path dependence – the fact that the costs of changing the keyboard to a better, more efficient solution, hinders change. The same can be said about much of the copyright legislation today, but then at the expense of privacy and other rights.

A problem with monopoly laws, such as the copyright monopoly and patent monopoly, is that their text is usually written by the lawyers that maintain them. This creates a vicious circle with circular proof that the laws work as intended.

In a beautiful twist of irony, New Zealand parliament member Melissa Lee has been caught in a copyright quagmire. It turns out that just hours before she spoke out in support of the controversial new copyright law being rushed through parliament, she tweeted how pleased she was with a compilation of K-Pop songs a friend copied for her.

The Belgian music royalty collecting agency SABAM has once again stepped up to enforce their strict copyright regime. After collecting money for fake artists and forgetting to pay out to real ones, they are now targeting truck drivers who listen to music in their cabs without an appropriate license.