As the WSJ Lawblog so dutifully notes, change is in the wind for US patent policy.
“It’s a victory against patent trolls,” Goldin told the Times. “This has changed the landscape. The days of coming up with an obvious idea and patenting it and using legal extortion are over.”
One can only hope he’s right.
Archive for August, 2007
Obvious
Posted in economics, ethics, patents on August 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
RIAA v. The People: Maybe They Should Try Something Else
Posted in copyright, dissent, economics, ethics, fair use, internet, media, property, technology on August 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Cory has a post up at boingboing summarizing the RIAA’s crusade against their most loyal customers.
[T]he paper moves into a section on empirical studies of P2P activity during the four year campaign — and shows that the “educational campaign” has been a total failure, with more Americans sharing files than ever, and downloading from P2P [...]
This Is Not A Post About Larry Craig
Posted in criminal law, ethics, free speech, media, politics on August 29, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Because, really, I don’t care about his problems, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I just assume that any vocally anti-gay politician of either party must be in the closet and consumed with self-loathing, and isn’t that punishment enough?
Seriously. This is a distraction from any number of much more important topics. And [...]
I’m looking for a new RSS reader
Posted in free (or not) software, internet, media, technology on August 29, 2007 | 7 Comments »
I’ve tried five or six for Windows and two for linux, and I still haven’t found one that I like. I want it to:
(a) display all feed updates from all subscribed feeds chronologically by time of update in one single window,
(b) allow me to mark stories to be saved even after I’ve read them, so [...]
Altria to Spin Off Philip Morris
Posted in M&A, contracts, economics, ethics on August 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
From AFP via Raw Story comes the release that Altria will be moving Philip Morris offshore.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier the new company to be spun off would be based in Switzerland, and thus free from legal and public relations problem in the United States over tobacco marketing.
Heh. I’m not sure whether this says [...]
Bye Gonzo
Posted in constitution, dissent, ethics, impeachment, politics on August 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Don’t think this will make us forget about the perjury, or the torture, or the 4th amendment violations.
The Wrong Side Of The Line
Posted in constitution, criminal law, dissent, ethics, free speech, media, politics, prejudice, privacy on August 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This post at RawStory caught my eye:
The alert issued by FBI agents in Seattle on Monday called for the public’s help in identifying photographs of two Middle Eastern-looking men who had been reported travelling on ferries exhibiting “unusual behavior.”
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer refused to run the photos, explaining:
“We have no confirmation that these men’s behavior was [...]
