The Butt Ugly Weblog

IP quickies

I'm listing a few oddities I've encountered lately on the wonderful world of Intellectual Property (garnered from BoingBoing and elsewhere:

• Mozilla foundation "makes it impossible to enforce UK anti-copying legislation". Every week I meet people who just don't get the difference between "free" and "free" - but it's that disrupting...?
• WIPO just does not get the idea of Public Domain. Poor countries: shut up, go create your own stuff and stop whining about public domain. We'll keep our toys, and you can have your toys, that's fair, isn't it?
• Japan bans resales of electronics that are over five years old and don't have a permission. Some alarmist reactions here and less alarmist here. However, no matter what the reason, it will make it quite difficult for small second-hand shops to circulate old stuff. This will give an advantage to big companies selling new stuff (who are probably happy as Larry - however happy he is - about this). Expect a flood of old, but good, Japanese stuff flowing abroad (exports are not forbidden).
• The head of US Copyright Office says: "We've certainly lengthened the term [of copyright] perhaps -- I won't even say perhaps -- too long a term. I think it is too long. I think that was probably a big mistake, but one that Congress can make." Yeah, and when you sneeze, the rest of the world gets sick, too.
• Microsoft says that the purpose of DRM is to lock out small players: "The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with." So what happened to the idea that DRM was supposed to protect the small guys from starving? Oh, I see, it's only when the small guy signs up his soul with the largest corporations in the world. Well, that's fair.
• And, finally Helsinki catches up with the rest of the world when some rich guy gets pissed off at corporations and decides to open his own free WiFi network in downtown Helsinki. The rest of the world yawns, and keeps sipping the latte and reading blogs. No, seriously, I'm happy about this.