1: Web pirates placed in ‘slow lane’

First off today the UK, which has repeatedly balked at the idea of disconnecting file sharers, may have come up with something of a creative new solution. Rather than outright cutting off access to those sharing files, the culture secretary has a compromise, putting file sharers in the “slow lane” by throttling their access down.

This would allow alleged pirates to continue surfing the Web and using their connection, but would impede their ability to download movies or music, legally or illegally.

A researcher interviewed for the article said that, “The sign of a good compromise is one that going to annoy both sides. I think ISPs will have an issue with it and so will the music labels.” On that front, I don’t think there is any doubt.

2: Adobe Acquitted of InDesign Copyright Violation

Next up Adobe, the makers of the well-known layout and design program InDesign has had an appeals court rule that their product is not an infringement of an earlier text book design application known as K2, which was made by Science Typographers (STI) in the early 90s.

To make a long story short, expert witnesses that analyzed the code found that there was no similarities between the products, despite a rather convoluted series of deals that could have given Adobe access to the original application and some non-copyrightable similarities between the two.

It is unclear if the makers of K2 plan on filing another appeal.

3: Web Series Tied to ‘Blade Runner’ Is In the Works

Finally today, if you’re a fan of the classic 1982 sci-fi movie “Blade Runner”, you are in for a treat. Ridley Scott has announced that he is producing a series of Web videos based on the movie called “Purefold”.

While that’s great news for sci-fi fans, Creative Commons fans will also be excited to hear that the series is planned to be released under the CC-BY-SA license (the same license this site is under), making it available for remixing, sharing and other copying.

If this pans out, it would, according to the New York Times, be the first time that a major Hollywood director has embraced such a scheme.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

It has been yet another fully week for copyright news including updates from three continents and a special, perhaps unwanted, “appearance” by Gene Simmons of KISS fame.

All in all, it was a somewhat slower week and it lacked a good core theme, but there were a lot of important updates and easily one of the wildest “strange” stories we have ever reported on.

So, as always I sat down with Chris Matthieu from Numly to discuss those stories and more with our usual mix of news, views and abuse.

This week’s stories include.

• Barack Obama Finds Himself in a Controversy
• Adobe Talks DRM in Flash Files
• Yahoo! “Censors” The Pirate Bay
• RIAA Racketeering Lawsuit Suffers Setback
• The RIAA Links Terrorism and Murder to Piracy
• And Many more…

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed.

Show Notes

[audio:http://boxstr.com/files/1153723_apjr5/copyrigh20eps47.mp3]

Remember, as usual, this week’s linkroll is a “raw” link list. Some stories are duplicated, some do not point to their original sources and some may not be accurate. A great deal of refining goes into producing the show notes for the Copyright 2.0 Show.