May 3, 2013
This is by no means a legal document and don't think that this substitutes for the opinions of an officer of the court. Let me be clear - I'm going to present to you the research that I've done and what it means to me. It is NOT legal advice. Now that is out of the way, lets get to the heart of the matter on whether buying second-hand software legal or illegal.
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January 24, 2013
Half of the videos I find on YouTube always have some note in the description about how it's totally legal for the creator to use songs from their favorite band as background music. Their reasoning tends to always be in the form of two words: fair use. Unfortunately, this is often because of complete ignorance. Other times its just a total disregard for the law.
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January 23, 2013
If you have ever had a piece of work stolen and published elsewhere online, you know that it can feel pretty hopeless. Nasty content thieves just don't seem to care how they acquire anything, and their plagiarism occasionally rewards them with sweet advert revenue. Don't despair, though, for there is hope, and it comes in the form of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
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November 28, 2012
Digital Rights Management is the latest evolution of copy protection. It’s the biggest cause of user frustration today, but is it justified? Is DRM a necessary evil in this digital age, or is the model it supports no longer valid? Join me, as I explain all about DRM, why it’s needed, and why it just doesn’t work.
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October 14, 2012
Picture this: you sign into the admin page of your Wordpress blog, and your dashboard shows 15 new incoming links - awesome, you think - until you look through each of the links to find they've actually just stolen and reprinted your content, word for word, and the only reason you found out is because they forgot to strip the link, which have caused it to automatically ping you. What the heck?
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September 12, 2012
This is pretty new ground - what happens to your legally purchased MP3 collection when you die? When one of the least trustworthy British newspapers around reported that Bruce Willis was going to sue Apple because he couldn’t bequeth his digital music collection, the Internet at large jumped at the chance to spew their vitriolic Apple hate. The story was completely false of course - but it raised an important question worth considering - who does own that mp3?
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August 28, 2012
When it comes to textual works, we have seen how easy it is to catch the copycats. But what about pictures and photographs? Is image search that easy? Probably not; but that’s not to say it is impossible because image search technologies have evolved. Making an effort to defeat image plagiarism is this simple Firefox extension called Who Stole My Pictures.
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May 14, 2012
In the midst of streaming music services and (unfortunately) pirated music, we tend to forget that there’s a type called public domain music too. Public domain music quite simply is music and musical works which do not have any form of licenses or copyrights attached to them. They can be freely shared and if one sees it that way, they have no legal owner.
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January 24, 2012
In recent weeks, the Internet has been up in arms about the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation. Many people see these measures as incredibly powerful and therefore dangerous to businesses and individuals online. While most people will agree it's worth protecting the income of artists, history shows that the entertainment industry is somewhat overzealous with their accusations of copyright infringement.
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January 22, 2012
As the day of online activism opposing SOPA and PIPA continued, supporters quickly began to have second thoughts. Now, the final blows have been struck. Senator Harry Reid has decided to put the Protect IP Act on permanent hiatus, and Representative Lamar Smith pulled his support for the Stop Online Piracy Act. In doing so, the bills have been effectively killed.
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January 18, 2012
If you visit any tech news sites, you might have heard about a pair of bills proposed in the United States called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills could give United States law enforcement the authority to go after international sites committing or facilitating intellectual property infringement by obtaining court orders to block domain names.
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December 15, 2011
Ever since the Internet began, online piracy has been a big problem with the two biggest casualties being the music industry (RIAA) and the movie industry (MPAA). The Internet made it extremely easy to download whatever people wanted and the music & movie industries responded with copy protection measures, including the infamous and universally hated Digital Rights Management (DRM).
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November 11, 2011
Creative Commons has succeeded in championing the cause of open content. So much so that large swathes of intellectual properties are being kept open in the public domain…all licensed under Creative Commons. Let’s take a look at ten Creative Commons projects that could give you great content to look over and share for the price of a credit byline.
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April 28, 2011
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a major slice of law put in place by the United States government in order to crack down on piracy. Chilling Effects is an information portal and compendium of cease-and-desist or DMCA "takedown" notices, submitted by the individuals who sent or received them. Would you know what to do if you received a takedown notice?
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April 25, 2011
Creative Commons content isn’t always as easy to find as you think. In fact, most things that you find and copy are copyrighted in a way that makes it illegal to copy it without asking the owner for permission. However, the Creative Commons license can help you with that and make you feel better as a person by being a good citizen of the internet.
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