The DRAFT LESSIG movement — to encourage Prof. Lawrence Lessig to run for the U.S. Congress from California — is off to a quick start. Then again, if it’s going to happen, it has to happen fast: the special election is April 8. The Facebook group we set up a few days ago now has … Read more
RightsAgent Verification
Hip-hip-hooray for Creative Commons on its fifth birthday today! Thanks to Larry, Joichi, and all the heroes of a free culture who have worked so hard on CC, around the world, for the past half-decade. If you want to help, there’s still time to pitch in: CC is $470,000 of the way toward $500,000 in … Read more
Total blue sky, inspired in part by a wonderful gathering pulled together by Jake Shapiro at PRX and Vince Stehle at the Surdna Foundation, picking up on thoughts from various contexts: If I could start (or otherwise will into existence) any non-profit right now, what it would do is to develop and apply code for … Read more
Three recent conversations I’ve been part of offered a contrast in styles and views on intellectual property rights across the Atlantic. First, the Fordham International IP conference, which Prof. Hugh Hanson puts on each year (in New York, NY, USA); the terrific classes in Law and Economics of Intellectual Property that Prof. Urs Gasser teaches … Read more
The Berkman Center crowd gathered for a team photo to wish Larry Lessig and our cousins at Creative Commons a very happy 4th birthday! Also, check out the iCommons collage. (Photo credit to Erica George on Doc Searls’s camera.)
The chief copyright, trademark and trade secret lawyer for Microsoft, Tom Rubin, has been a consistent contributor to our teaching program at the Berkman Center for the past three years. He’s been enormously generous with his time, meeting with Berkman-related students, faculty and fellows over several years. We’ve learned a great deal from Tom and … Read more
Ethan Zuckerman blogged Erin McKean’s talk at PopTech, reporting of the fear of some lexicographers that they will be sued for scanning some books to analyze language patterns. “This scanning shouldn’t be threatening to publishers. ‘I don’t care about your plot, or your ideas – I just want to analyze your use of the language.’ … Read more
The digital copyright issue is one of the sidebars related to the Google/YouTube transaction that has merited a fair amount of digital ink. (For a few examples: don’t miss Fred von Lohmann as interviewed by John Battelle. Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache have an extensive piece highlighting the continuing uncertainty in the digital copyright space … Read more
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one of Boston’s cultural gems, has released the first-of-its-kind museum concert series podcast, called The Concert. The good people there — including Catherine and Charlotte, who did a TV spot this morning — have decided to use a Creative Commons Share Music license. They’ve had the pro bono assistance of … Read more