Following its Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing last month, Aereo has gotten permission from the court to auction off its tech...
Read Article Last week was interesting for news about the evolving relationship between copyright law and the Internet. On Tuesday, lyric-annotation website...
Read Article The lyric website Rap Genius recently made headlines after pulling in a $15 million venture capital investment. But sometimes getting...
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A new grassroots movement has hit the Internet to “fix” the DMCA otherwise known as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but does...
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Representative Zoe Lofgren (D – California) is in the processes of drafting a new bill to reform copyright legislation, and she’s asking the internet to help. Specifically, Representative Lofgren is reaching out to the Reddit community for suggestions and guidance on the bill. The idea, she says, is to draft legislation designed to protect against fallacious domain seizures from copyright claims.
Reddit has a longstanding reputation of being very vocal and active when it comes to rights online. Most recently, the social media site gained huge recognition for its instrumental efforts to fight off SOPA and CISPA legislation. The effects caught the eyes of many lawmakers, including Lofgren. Lofgren even sported a “STOP SOPA!” banner as her Facebook profile picture during the SOPA deliberations.
When discussing data storage solutions for individuals, flash-drives are often one of the most efficient and frequently used options. Students, business people, technicians, and individuals alike use flash-drives because of the rapid data transfer rates and overall durability; a trait that is attributed to the device’s use of flash memory as opposed to typical “disk” solutions. However, because of the shape and size of typical flash-drive designs, many people have referenced them as “thumb drives” from the get-go.
Recently, Singapore based Trek 2000 hit a major legal milestone by having their argument that “ThumbDrive” is a proprietary, non-generic term, upheld by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. In basic, this ruling means that the term “ThumbDrive” is now recognized as a trademark of Trek 2000. Moreover, this ruling makes Trek 2000 the only company in the world that is able to produce and sell flash-drives under the “ThumbDrive” name.
Yesterday the United States Copyright Office held a rare meeting (held once every three years) to review and change some copyright law. In doing so, the Copyright Office made a landmark decision that can definitely be seen as a win for digital rights supporters. Changes to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allowed for more freedom for users wishing to install custom firmware on to their phones, as well as (some) users who wished to make backups of their DVD movies.
First and foremost the new rules allow owners of smart phones such as the Apple iPhone to legally develop, distribute, and use non-approved third party applications. On the iPhone, this process known as “jailbreaking”, allows a user to install an application from a source outside of the Apple App Store; a store that is often attacked for being too strict.
