rightsholder
UK "Pirate Finder General" law innocuous now, could get ugly
The Queen announced on Wednesday that her government would deliver Internet piracy legislation; today it arrived in the form of the massive Digital Economy bill meant to modernize the UK’s approach to everything from copyrights to broadband to video game ratings to domain names. The bill contains no sanctions against suspected P2P file-swappers, but it introduces a “reserve power” that can be deployed whenever the Secretary of State feels that it’s time to bust out the switch and administer some beatings. The bill implements the Digital Britain report , which was completed earlier this year and attempted to chart a course forward for Britain in a high-tech world.
Continue reading »EFF gives copyright education a crack with new curriculum
Teaching copyright to schoolkids is a recent innovation, one spurred in large part by the fantastical growth and amazing ease of digital copying—both legal and illegal. Most such programs have been drawn up by rightsholders in a not-so-subtle attempt to bolster their business models. For instance, ” Think First, Copy Later: Respecting Creative Ownership ” may have some educational value, but the title makes clear that this is not the kind of dispassionate material that belongs in our nation’s classrooms.
Continue reading »