Category Archives: General

DMCA Takedowns versus Free Speech

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, gets a lot of bad press.  Digital rights management software, or DRM, is blamed on the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause.  The MPAA went so far as to argue that the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause even prevents fair use defenses.1  But it is not all bad. Wired went so far as …

October 18, 2010 – 9:51 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in Copyright, General | Tagged , , , | Comments (4)

Busybox, Bruce Perens, and GPL Compliance; the curiousities of private common ownership and the semicommons

I.  Drama in the lands of Open Source Bruce Perens is an open source hero.  He, along with others, has done a great deal for the open source community.  One of those things was creating a program called BusyBox. In short, BusyBox helped people created very, very small, embedded Linux appliances.  We’re talking thumbdrives, floppy …

December 21, 2009 – 4:16 pm | By John William Nelson | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Death of Middlemen, the Death of Lawyers

Middlemen are dying left and right.  Technology is making them obsolete, redundant. One way technology does this is by breaking down communication and travel barriers.  It is easier to communicate with someone across the world.  It easier to transport large volumes of goods across the world. Another way technology does this is by automation.  On …

November 29, 2009 – 11:52 am | By John William Nelson | Posted in General, The Future of Law | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)