The Amazon Kindle may be a failure as a new media platform, but it’s great for reading books, right?

Maybe not.

Based on the experience of Gear Diary’s Dan Cohen, buying a book on the Kindle platform is a game of digital Russian roulette.

Campaigning for sweeping reform of copyright, privacy and patent laws, Sweden’s Pirate Party this weekend won enough votes in the country’s national elections to secure a seat (possibly two) in the European Parliament. Sweden is accorded 17 representatives in the EU governing legislature, and the Pirate Party’s 7.1 percent showing is enough for at least […]

Peter Althin, the attorney representing Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde, has called for a retrial, Swedish news site The Local revealed today. Swedish radio channel Sveriges Radio’s P3 news programme reports that the judge in the case was a member of the same copyright protection groups as several of the main entertainment industry representatives, who […]

The latest episode of the “Get the Download” podcast features a discussion with attorney Colette Vogele, one of the authors of the Creative Commons Podcasting Legal Guide. Interviewed by Volo Media‘s Jeff Karnes, Vogele discusses intellectual property law, including copyright, trademark, and privacy, and how it relates to new media and podcasting. Colette also addresses […]

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.” Today Creative Commons announced that they are looking for summer interns to work […]

Writer and designer Andy Clarke and developer Brian Suda have announced the “soft-boiled” launch of a simple site, TweetCC, to help users set their Creative Commons licensing for Twitter. Clarke was writing a book, in which he was hoping to include some tweets (posts) and avatars from Twitter. His publisher told him, in order to […]

Web-wide business content tracking and programming platform company Attributor has announced the private beta version of FairShare. The program is a free service intended to help help bloggers track their content’s usage throughout the Web – and whether that usage complies with your copyright and licensing requirements. Late last year, Attributor published a report about […]

Digital civil liberties organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting that Apple is arguing that “jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA [digital millenium copyright act] violation.” These comments from Apple were filed with the U.S. Copyright Office in conjunction with the 2009 DMCA review, which happens every three years. EFF says that […]

YouTube is bringing back silent movies – by censoring at least some videos that make use of unauthorized copyrighted music. Here’s an example: More examples here and here.  YouTube displays this message under the videos: These videos cry out for remixing with some alternate music, don’t they? via Mashable

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s free podcast of all of the Beatles’ music played Hello, Goodbye as it was introduced and then quickly yanked because of licensing agreements.