Tech-heavy coalition supports fair-use legislation

via InfoWorld, June 22, 2004:
WASHINGTON - A group of technology vendors, consumer rights groups and Internet service providers (ISPs) have banded together to support 18-month-old U.S. House legislation that would allow consumers to make personal copies of copyrighted digital products, including movies and music.

New Compulsory License Rules

via Copyright Office. Starting July 22, 2004, the U.S. Copyright Office is amending its regulations governing the content and service of certain notices that are served or filed by persons who intend to use a musical work to make and distribute phonorecords under the compulsory license provisions of 17 USC 115.

Lone Star Justice - Alberto Gonzales' strange views of international law.

via Slate, Alan Berlow, June 15, 2004: "On June 16, 1997, Gonzales first showcased his proclivity for torturing international law when he sent a letter to the U.S. State Department in which he argued that, 'Since the State of Texas is not a signatory to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, we believe it is inappropriate to ask Texas to determine whether a breach � occurred in connection with the arrest and conviction' of a Mexican national. Or, put another way, he asserted that an international treaty just didn't apply to Texas."

DOJ Memorandum re Interrogation

via Washington Post. Prepared for Alberto Gonzalez, August 1, 2002.

Novell Avoids Remand in SCO Lawsuit

via GROKLAW: "The big news is that SCO lost its fight to get the case sent back to state court. SCO's entire theory of the case as a contract issue only went out the window, and they are now squarely in a pure copyright fight, which is the last thing they wanted. They will now have to prove that they own the copyright they are using to threaten end users like AutoZone."

Bush's Other War

via MSNBC, Patti Davis, May 14, 2004: "There is a possible cure waiting in the wings for people with juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's, heart disease, cancer, as well as spinal-cord injuries. It's called stem-cell research. At the moment things are stalled at research, just short of moving forward to applying the technology and changing millions of lives. Why? The White House has said it will not release federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research."

Open Source and Biotech Research

via Economist.com: "Medicine: The open-source model is a good way to produce software, as the example of Linux shows. Could the same collaborative approach now revitalise medical research too?"

Legalizing Torture

via Editorial, Washington Post, June 8, 2004.

There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on grounds of "national security." For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments -- from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan -- that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism. The news that serving U.S. officials have officially endorsed principles once advanced by Augusto Pinochet brings shame on American democracy -- even if it is true, as the administration maintains, that its theories have not been put into practice. Even on paper, the administration's reasoning will provide a ready excuse for dictators, especially those allied with the Bush administration, to go on torturing and killing detainees.

Perhaps the president's lawyers have no interest in the global impact of their policies -- but they should be concerned about the treatment of American servicemen and civilians in foreign countries. Before the Bush administration took office, the Army's interrogation procedures -- which were unclassified -- established this simple and sensible test: No technique should be used that, if used by an enemy on an American, would be regarded as a violation of U.S. or international law. Now, imagine that a hostile government were to force an American to take drugs or endure severe mental stress that fell just short of producing irreversible damage; or pain a little milder than that of "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." What if the foreign interrogator of an American "knows that severe pain will result from his actions" but proceeds because causing such pain is not his main objective? What if a foreign leader were to decide that the torture of an American was needed to protect his country's security? Would Americans regard that as legal, or morally acceptable? According to the Bush administration, they should.

Justifying Torture

Cooking Up Excuses With The Pentagon, Phillip Carter, June 10, 2004, via Slate.

However, no amount of caveating can save the latest Defense Department memorandum on the legality of torture (first reported by the Wall Street Journal) from being construed as what it is: a cookbook on how to conduct illegal torture and get away with it.

Apologia Por Tormento, David Froomkin, via discourse.net

If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes. And, as we learned at Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is NOT (and should not be) a defense.

Who wrote Linux?

Who wrote Linux? I did! No, Harry did! Or was it the monkey?: "Now that there's money to be made from Linux, creators of the Linux kernel's code are showing up faster than long-lost relatives at a billionaire's funeral. First, SCO said that a bunch of Linux code belongs to them. Now, some folks are saying that Linus Torvalds stole Minix code to create Linux, and Linux really belongs to the Prentice Hall publishing house which now owns Minix. "

OAMI-ONLINE - Madrid Protocol

OAMI-ONLINE - Madrid Protocol: "The Madrid Protocol is an essential instrument in trade mark protection around the world. It is an international registration system administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO - http://www.wipo.org/)"

Wired 12.06: The Free & The Unfree

Wired offers an atlas of the intellectual property world.

A Time to Weep

Ted Sorenson, New School Commencement.

This is not a speech. Two weeks ago I set aside the speech I prepared. This is a cry from the heart, a lamentation for the loss of this country's goodness and therefore its greatness.
Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn -- toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon.
For me the final blow was American guards laughing over the naked, helpless bodies of abused prisoners in Iraq. 'There is a time to laugh,' the Bible tells us, 'and a time to weep.' Today I weep for the country I love, the country I proudly served, the country to which my four grandparents sailed over a century ago with hopes for a new land of peace and freedom. I cannot remain silent when that country is in the deepest trouble of my lifetime.

via Salon

The Pope, Scalia and Evangelium Vitae: National Catholic Register Death Penalty Symposium

An Editorial (Feb. 2002)

Scalia spoke twice recently about his support for the death penalty - once at the University of Chicago Divinity School and once at Georgetown University.
Unfortunately, his remarks will do more harm than good. He said that, since the Pope's teaching on capital punishment in Evangelium Vitae did not come ex cathedra, i.e., with formal infallibility, he is not obligated as a Catholic to accept it, only to give it 'serious consideration.'

Prof. Charles Rice, Notre Dame Law School.

A Catholic can no longer argue for the use of the death penalty on grounds of retribution, deterrence of others from committing crimes or for any other reason unless the execution is 'the only possible way' of protecting others from this criminal. The decision as to whether it is 'the only possible way' depends, of course, on a prudential judgment. John Paul was correct in saying that, 'Today� the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically non-existent' (Evangelium Vitae No. 56).

Bitterman: Scalia's Rejoinder.

I protest your portrayal of me as 'supporting the death penalty.' I do no such thing. I support the proposition that it is not sinful for a Catholic to support it, and indeed to participate in its imposition.

Cardinal Dulles.

Following the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2109), I interpret the defense of society as including not only physical defense against the criminal but also the vindication of the moral order. This interpretation agrees with the principle that the primary purpose of the punishment that society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offense" (Evangelium Vitae, No. 56).

Information Cannot Be Owned

Jean Nicolas Druey has published a study of why information can not be owned. The information age has, according to Druey, "badly served its idol". Legal rights on information can not take the form of ownership, while communication by its very nature is free.
via GrepLaw

Open Source Call to Arms

Copyright and trade secret laws present risks that we must manage--but software patents are easily the largest future risk to open source.

Bruce Parens via CNET

Productivity Tips

Legal Coach Ed Poll has five productivity tips on his Coach to Lawyers Weblog from a presentation he attended by Nido Qubein.
via the [non]billable hour

Intro to Patent Law Video Online

A few years ago, the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) created a video providing an introduction to patent law for judges and juries. The video is available here (Windows Media, Quick Time), and provides a very good (although general) introduction to patents and the patent office. I would recommend that anyone coming to work in a patent firm should watch this video as part of new employee orientation.
via Patently Obvious

Insurance for Linux

Interview with Daniel Egger of Open Source Risk Management

When a start-up firm called OSRM (Open Source Risk Management) announced two months ago that it planned to offer standard product liability insurance to Linux users and developers, many in the Linux community wondered why. For some, such coverage appeared to be an unwarranted admission that there was something wrong with Linux. Sure, vendor specific indemnification of users was appearing, but IBM itself, the first target for SCO's absurd legal claims, denied the need. As recently as the last LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, IBM's Jim Stallings, general manager for Linux at Big Blue, was quoted as saying, "The claims that have been alleged [by SCO] against IBM [have] no basis, so indemnification is not needed." NewsForge recently interviewed OSRM's founder and CEO, Daniel Egger, to gain his perspective on the issue.

via NewsForge

Free Software and the Innovator's Dilemma

If you wanted to assemble a 'must read' list for any business person looking at the Linux/Free Software industry, what would you include? Certainly 'Open Sources' from O'Reilly, is the most obvious answer, probably followed by Bob Young's 'Under the Radar,' which details the story of Red Hat's rise.
But I would argue that a third book belong in the top tier of that list as well: 'The Innovator's Dilemma,' written by Clayton Christensen and published by Harvard Business School Press.

via OS Opinion