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Random bits on intellectual property – I am … unhindered by talent

Random bits on intellectual property


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A few interesting bits on the intersection of tech and intellectual property have popped up on my radar in the last day or two:

  • Courtesy of Alex Jarvis, this article on the MPAA being caught pirating a DVD. Their defense is apparently because it was important for their employees to be aware of the contents of the film in question. Somehow it doubt that would cut much ice in court if I argued that it was “important for my students” to have illegal copies of a book, CD, or DVD. Hmmmm…
  • Courtesy of Pharyngula, Cory Doctorow visited the Nature offices to talk about the lots of stuff, with a focus on the use of the web in writing and promoting his books.
  • The Doctorow piece has a pointer to an interesting Tim O’Reilly article entitled “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution” which, among other things, has the great line “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy”. Not quite the same tune that the MPAA and RIAA typically sing.

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3 thoughts on “Random bits on intellectual property”


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    Thanks a ton! That’s an excellent piece, and I immediately del.icio.us’ed it and passed it on to Arne and my network economics/open source/intellectual property course students.


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    I saw that you have a page that discusses patent-related resources at http://unhinderedbytalent.com/Phi/archives/2006/01/27/random-bits-on-intellectual-property/. I wanted to suggest adding http://www.freepatentsonline.com to the page. This web site has free PDF downloading (instead of having to page through TIFFs like at the US PTO). It is by far the best free patent searching site.

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