CES 2008 People

the PK crew and friends at CES 2008 Date: Jan 22, 2008 Number of Photos in Album: 4 View Album

CES 2008 Gadgets

Gadgets found at CES 2008 Location: las vegas Date: Jan 22, 2008 Number of Photos in Album: 6 View Album

Newspapers...will..find a way...

There was a lot of talk last week regarding the proposition that strengthening copyright laws might be necessary to protect news sources from online “free riders.”  Even our own Harold Feld chimed in, in this week's episode of "5 Minutes with Harold Feld".  The flurry of commentary on this was owed in large part to a post by Judge Posner on his Becker-Posner Blog.  The most relevant (and divisive) sentence in the post is the following:

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Video: "Censordyne" Ad Mocks Australian Copyright Filtering Proposal

You've got to hand it to the folks Down Under: they've got a real knack for producing, incisive, hilarious videos that warn the general public about invasive technology mandates. First, there was the Kiwi-produced, "Kangaroo Court" short, which shed light on the (thankfully defeated) New Zealand three strikes mandate. Now, there's this brilliant parody of a Sensodyne toothpaste commercial (embedded above), which was designed to spread the word about a copyright filtering mandate that's been proposed by members of the Australian parliament. The ad was created by the folks at Get Up! Action for Australia and they're currently accepting donations in the hopes of raising enough money to run the ad on a Qantas flight that many members of Parliament are likely to be on.

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Statutory Damages: Quelling Innovation and Enabling Injustice

Last week, the jury in the retrial of Ms. Jammie Thomas-Rasset found that the willful infringement of the copyrights of 24 songs—about 2 CDs worth—warrants the awarding of statutory damages of $1.92 million. That is $80,000 per song, a huge increase over the $220,000 awarded in the original Thomas trial. Given the massive sum awarded by the jury, Ms. Thomas-Rasset, a mother of two with modest means, will now likely spend the rest of her life in debt. At present, it seems that her only hope is a constitutional challenge to the damages award, which her legal team has already filed. The sheer magnitude of these damages has started a debate over statutory damages and whether they are just as currently applied by the courts. In this blog post, I will discuss two situations where these damages are currently being unjustly applied: suits against private citizens and suits against businesses.

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Cablevision Decision Good But Music Companies Still Attacking Personal Network Based Storage

You may have read recently that the US Supreme Court declined to take up the Cablevision case. This was where Hollywood studios and some cable networks sued Cablevision for providing essentially a network-based TiVo, where the programs that the subscriber requested to be recorded were saved on Cablevision’s servers, not on the box that sat atop their television. That the Court decided to let the appeals court’s decision stand — that Cablevision was not directly liable for public performances — is a good thing because it’s a ray of hope that lets online service providers know that (for now) they’re free to develop innovative “cloud-based” services. Which is where I come in…

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Video: Harold Feld on CNBC's "The Powergrid"

Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld was a guest on CNBC's "The Powergrid" earlier today. Harold debated talk radio host Ben Ferguson on the topic of competition in the wireless telecom marketplace and discussed the Department of Justice's recent announcement that it would review the business practices of major wireless carriers. A video clip of the segment can be found below (Adobe Shockwave required):

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