According to Engadget: "The Stockholm district court in Sweden found the defendants guilty not of hosting materially illegally, but of "providing a website with sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and a tracker linked to the website [that helped users commit copyright violations]." Sounds like that could include anything from YouTube to Gmail to Google Searc…

Communicating the message that films are generally very expensive to make, and that widespread piracy will directly affect the number and quality of films produced and released, should have been a straight forward pitch. However after years of, literally, demonising piracy as the sponsor of terrorism and child pornography (good round up of videos at the Guardian, my fave is at bottom of this page…

Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Little Brother, is available to download for free from his website, as well as remix, share and distribute to your friends. The book has just had its fifth week on the New York Times Bestsellers list under Children's literature, and entered Publishers Weekly chart - the first Creative Commons licensed book to do so. The book is set in a near-future dystopian 'data…

As Sicko gears up for release in the US on June 29 to strong reviews from the left and right, it has already hit the BitTorrent sites in a high quality version, getting more rave reviews from the blogsphere, and even Michael Moore's approval. The director says in the video below that his motivation as a filmmaker is to spread ideas, and so long as people aren't profiting from his work…

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: The European Parliament has just voted to pass the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) without substantive amendment, despite growing public opposition from across the European Union. The final vote of 374 to 278 with 17 abstentions points to a margin of Parliamentary support that has been narrowing ever since the D…

As Universal, NBC, News Corp, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo join forces on a new video platform, MoveOn BoingBoing reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing Viacom on behalf of MoveOn.org and Brave New Films (producers of Iraq for Sale and Outfoxed), over YouTube's takedown of Colbert parody. Here's a snip from the EFF's statement: "Our clients' v…

The Patent Office is to undergo a name change on the 2nd April to the UK Intellectual Property Office. The change was recommended in the Gower Review of Intellectual Property and is meant to reflect the wider role of the Patent Office in future. Ron Marchant, chief executive of the Patent Office, explained that businesses built on other kinds of intellectual property such as trademarks and co…

"In theory copyright represents the ability to make a living off my work. In practice it represents the threat of myself or my children not being able to express themselves without fear of the rich and powerful invoking their copyrights to silence us."  Contributor OpenBusiness.cc and the Arts Council of England have published a report looking at the attitudes towards co…

"no one woke up this morning looking for a way to do less with their music or movies" Cory Doctorow has long been a tireless champion of emerging business models and shifts in copyright for creatives on the Internet. His argument is simple - a business strategy which turns the majority of web users into criminals (39 out of 40 music downloaders according to the FT) isn&…