Public Knowledge recently published the second in a series of reports on copyright reform, this one entitled Updating 17 U.S.C. §1201 for Innovators, Creators, and Consumers in the Digital Age (May 13, 2010), written by students and faculty from the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the UC Berkeley Law School and the Stanford Cyberlaw Clinic.

Firehose #6: Content & Copyright; Software; Patents; The Net; Competition; Innovation; China; Events

Arlington VA has a community garden program – eight sites with 200 plots where residents can garden. Base fees are $60/year, plus some surcharges that vary with the location. One site is near my apartment, and while walking the dog this morning I noticed some promising Boston lettuce. Being a graduate of Harvard University (twice [...]

Content & Copyright ars technica, The death of the album (in handy graph form) (May 10): “the shift to digital singles, the death of the album, and the rise of streaming. To an industry accustomed to fattening up on album-only CD revenue for two decades, this new world has been tough to accept.” Chicago Reader, [...]

My predilection is for representational rather than abstract art. It need not be photographic; Impressionism is fine, for example, and most German Expressionism, but there must be something to anchor me to the real world and orient my response. Pure abstraction seems to me like a bit of a con – I must accept something as great art on pain of branding myself a philistine.

Ed Bott posted a great analysis on why Microsoft chose H.264 for HTML5. At 10 to 20 cents per user in royalty payments (capped at 10% increase every 5 years), generous hardware support, and indemnification from hundreds of patents from 26 companies across 10 different countries, the choice was obvious.

An interesting website which I just found by accident is Technology|Academics|Policy (TAP), created by Microsoft to be: [A] forum for academics leading the dialogue on the impact of technological innovation in the following areas: intellectual property, patents and licensing cloud computing/software + services competition policy and antitrust economic growth and the knowledge economy privacy and [...]

This past week saw the publication of competing visions about the importance of intellectual property protection to the economy.

At IPI’s IP Day event on April 26, NDP Consulting released The Impact of Innovation and the Role of Intellectual Property Rights on U.S. Productivity, Competitiveness, Jobs, Wages, and Exports (April 2010) (supported by the Global Intellectual Property Center).

The IP Day (April 26) program put on by the Institute for Policy Innovation was a high-quality affair, with a series of entertaining and educational panels and speakers. One of the best was on Creative Development: Countries Building Creative Industries, with Victor Tieku (CEO, Kampsite Music – Ghana); Stephen Siwek (Principal, Economists, Inc.); and Mark [...]

[The explanation of the title Firehose is here.] Content & Copyright Microsoft on the Issues, Celebrating World Intellectual Property Day (April 26): “The choice has never been between IP and freedom or between IP and openness. While IP certainly isn’t a panacea, at least it enables relative openness and sharing by creating incentives for the [...]