Photo by mlcastle, taken at 24c3. …
Brave. New. Etc
Martin Dittus · 2008-01-01 · a new world, conferences, data mining, drop culture, intellectual property, privacy · write a comment
Tesla Salon: "verwertungsgesellschaften im digitalen zeitalter"
Martin Dittus · 2006-05-03 · a new world, conferences, intellectual property, konsum, pop culture · write a comment
I just came home from an interesting discussion: the "tesla salon" had a session at club Podewil with the topic "verwertungsgesellschaften im digitalen zeitalter" (roughly: "collecting societies in the digital age"). The event was organized by Radio 1:1. They had a well-chosen group of participants: Tim Pritlove in his role as podcaster and "discordian evangelist", Julian Finn as a representative of FairSharing (i.e., the culture flat rate), and two netradio guys whose names I haven't written down and who sadly aren't mentioned in the program. Update 2006-05-04 -- Igor writes to ask if the session will be published as podcast …
Finally: IBM Proposes Peer Review to Manage US Patent Applications
Martin Dittus · 2006-02-07 · a new world, commentary, intellectual property · 3 comments
For the last couple of years I've been toying with ideas on how to cut back on my expenses, and one of the top items is the plan to cancel magazine subscriptions. They don't actually cost that much, but I've been getting better information elsewhere, and usually quicker; to me the print media is on the verge of becoming irrelevant. But every couple of months I stumble upon an article in the printed press that I didn't catch via other channels, and that manages to refresh my interest in the old media. Today was one of those days: while …
Flip4Mac WMV Has a Very Strange EULA
Martin Dittus · 2006-01-14 · commentary, drop culture, intellectual property, osx, privacy, software · 4 comments
There currently are quite a number of very happy reactions over the announcement that Telestream's product Flip4Mac WMV is now available for free -- Flip4Mac WMV is a collection of "Windows Media® Components for QuickTime" that allows you to play certain Windows Media formats from within Quicktime, among them apparently some older formats that Microsoft's Media Player 9 for OS X can't play (I'm not actually sure about that, but this seems to be a reason why people install it -- that and the fact that MS has just discontinued their own Media Player.) It's curious that there is a …
This Week in Tech with Larry Lessig
Martin Dittus · 2005-10-25 · a new world, intellectual property, links · write a comment
The new episode of This Week in Tech features copyright lawyer and Creative Commons-guru Lawrence Lessig, and it's a great show with lots of great clarifications and anectodes about America's current state of copyright law. Probably the best way to learn about the subject and still be entertained. The cast of this show is a pretty diverse list of characters coming from different backgrounds (most are journalists of some kind, some are also publishers, hobby musicians, or software developers, and Lessig obviously is a lawyer), and it's great to see how they interact. It seems to me that this is …
PopKomm 2005 - Business as Usual
Martin Dittus · 2005-09-22 · a new world, commentary, conferences, intellectual property, pop culture · write a comment
Last week a friend invited me to visit the Popkomm, using the press pass of a colleague. Who am I to refuse a free invitation? Having never been at the Popkomm, I was curious to see what it actually was like. Another friend had already warned me that the general attraction was to meet business partners and potential clients, and that it wasn't really a place to experience new forms of culture, or a place where a lot of new bands got signed -- so my expectations were rather low. And still I was surprised by what you find there …
RFC: Patent Approval Process via Communities
Martin Dittus · 2005-09-09 · a new world, commentary, intellectual property, stuff · write a comment
Yet another patent that describes a technical "invention" both blatantly obvious, and with apparently well-know prior art: "System and method for obtaining information relating to an item of commerce using a portable imaging device". A method, system, and apparatus are provided for allowing users to readily obtain information associated with a selected item from a remote location. More specifically, a user at the location of the first entity operates a portable imaging device to capture an image of identifying data, such as a barcode, that identifies a selected item. The captured image is then communicated to a server operated by …
Tuesday Night Out (almost)
Martin Dittus · 2005-08-10 · a new world, intellectual property, pop culture · write a comment
Went to the cinema at Potsdamer Platz; due to some unfortunate timing the evening ended different than planned, but I had fun nevertheless. Some of these photos are illegal under German copyright law (UrhG), paragraphs 12-21, 23, 32, 52, 62 and 63, unless they are regarded as a quotation according to paragraph 51, or unless Flickr is to be regarded as "public space" according to paragraphs 58+59; and they violate articles 1, 3, and 4 of the European Directive 2001/29/EC ("on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society"), and article 5 of …