Caterpillars And Butterflies: Movements Debate Meaning Of ‘Free’ Culture 20/09/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch BERLIN – A debate is ongoing between “open source” (OS) software developers and devotees to Creative Commons licenses over the right way to promote free culture. Creative Commons licenses, under which some rights are reserved, are too restrictive for some in the OS community. “When I look at […]
US Government On Internet Control: ICANN Can Go, IANA Is Ours 28/07/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The United States government does not want to retain “all [its] historic roles” in the technical oversight of the Internet domain name system (DNS), a senior Bush administration official said this week. But while it might let go of the coordination role for names such as those ending […]
EU IP Enforcement Directive Questioned On Procedure 11/07/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch 6 Comments By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Procedural questions could kill a proposed European Union directive aimed at fighting theft of products, patents and copyrights, after the Dutch Parliament raised jurisdictional objections last week. At issue is the planned EU directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights [COM(2006) 168 […]
Governments and Intellectual Property Community Fight For Open Whois Access 06/07/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Should everybody who registers an Internet domain name be forced to publish his private address, email address and phone number on the Internet? A storm broke out over the question of the so-called Whois data at the meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) […]
Universities See “Disastrous Effects” For Education, Science In German Copyright Reform 30/03/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch A German scientist who would like to read an online book owned by another department of his university soon may have to travel to the department and read it on site instead if a proposed copyright law is passed. “I will not be able to just use our […]
After Grokster, Industry Seeks Legal P2P As Mobile Music Takes Over 29/01/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch CANNES – Napster went down, Grokster went down, yet as both digital music services drew millions of people to their sites, industry is eager to make them stay there as law-abiding music download-services. Now the question has become, what must a legal peer-to-peer (P2P) service look like, and […]
Who Shall Own .China or .Arabia? Internet IP Questions On The Rise 11/01/2006 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The cry for internationalized Internet domain names (IDNs) gets louder at every meeting related to Internet management, standardisation or politics. But questions of technology that once slowed the spread of Internet names into other languages have now been overtaken by policy questions, including those relating to intellectual property. […]
International Content Standards Effort Seen As Risky For Digital Rights 14/12/2005 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB), a Geneva-based body working on international digital television standards, is seeking to reach agreement by mid-2006 on standards for the management of digital content in the broadcasting and Internet arenas. The 270 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers and regulatory bodies who […]
Intellectual Property Issues Kept Off WSIS Agenda 30/11/2005 by Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The issue of intellectual property did not make the headlines during the concluding session of the five-year-long UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. And some critics are concerned it was intentional. Discussing the future of the information society without talking about intellectual property seems […]