Are intellectual property rights detrimental to innovation and creativity, and the social good?
The short answer is that intellectual property does not increase innovation and creation. Extending IP rights may modestly boost the incentive for innovation, but this positive effect is wiped away by the negative effect of creating monopolies. There is simply no evidence [...]

Out of the otherwise excited chatter emanating from Webstock comes talk of an amazingly draconian amendment to New Zealand copyright law, which is intended to protect copyright holders but could instead impinge upon the civil rights of others.
What is especially troubling about the proposed legislation is the manner in which apparent breaches [...]

Could the new Kindle reader’s text-to-speech function breach copyright by reading a book aloud?
When you buy a book, you’re also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This [...]

Since when has distributing software free of charge, or freeware, amounted to forfeiting the copyright of said freeware? When it’s open source?
Because the code was given away for free, thorny questions emerge when a violation has been discovered and someone is found to have shoved the code into their own for-profit products without giving anything [...]

Am I reading this right?
If the owner of a “copyrighted work” cannot be located by way of any “reasonably diligent search”, anyone can then use their work in anyway they choose, under the proposed “Orphan Work Act” currently being considered in the US.
The Orphan Works Act defines an “orphan work” as any copyrighted work whose [...]

Chances are you may never want to post any more of your photographs to photo sharing websites after reading this story.
A man goes to an REM concert. The conditions on the ticket banned taking photographs, but Steve Miller and his wife, who were conveniently seated in the middle of the front row in the Royal [...]

Graeme Philipson discusses the surreptitiously conceived Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which aims to strengthen digital copyright protection.
In effect the new regulations mean border and immigration officers in treaty countries will become “copyright police”, empowered to search, confiscate, or destroy, virtually at their sole discretion, any electronic device that may, or may not, hold content that contravenes [...]

The world’s 50 most powerful blogs
Maybe if had been the 100 most powerful blogs disassociated would have made the cut ;)
From Prince Harry in Afghanistan to Tom Cruise ranting about Scientology and footage from the Burmese uprising, blogging has never been bigger. It can help elect presidents and take down attorney generals while simultaneously celebrating [...]

“Intellectual property” is a silly euphemism
Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow argues that ideas, knowledge, and information, should not be referred to as “property”, as they are intangible and cannot effectively be owned by anyone once they have been shared with someone else.
If you trespass on my flat, I can throw you out (exclude you from [...]

A Designer’s Guide to Surviving Design Competitions
Carl Alviani: “If contests are so bad for the profession, why do we keep entering them?”
They require enormous effort, the chances of winning are slight, and even the grand prize doesn’t usually compensate for the time invested. Worse than all of this, participants stand to lose rights to their [...]