Category Archives: Copyright & IP

‘Choose open standards’ – EU commissioner

By take21 | Published: August 12, 2008

In June this year Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s competition commissioner delivered a recommendation that businesses and governments  adopt open systems. The speech was widely seen as a snub to Microsoft and not unconnected with a four year legal battle which resulted in substantial EU fines for Microsoft. “No citizen or company should be forced […]

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Making sense of numbers

By take21 | Published: August 12, 2008

BBC News Magazine is running a series by Michael Blastland on making sense of numbers: interpreting data, research, media coverage. Surveys & media coverage Myth of counting: the economy, growth, recession Michael Blastland is the author, with Andrew Dilnot, of The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers

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App Store sales: $30m in first month

By take21 | Published: August 11, 2008

Interview with Steve Jobs in the Wall Street Journal Sales of apps for the iPhone at $1m a day produced $21m for developers. “If sales stay at the current pace, Apple stands to reap at least $360 million a year in new revenue from the App Store, Mr. Jobs said. “This thing’s going to crest […]

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iPhone NDA, patents, innovation

By take21 | Published: August 8, 2008

Extract “At my company, our lawyers advised us to keep what we considered more-or-less public software under NDA for a very long time because demoing software to someone under NDA, no matter how many people it is, avoids “publishing” the software and any inventions contained therein.  We know Apple’s been building up a patent strategy […]

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Public data mapping

By take21 | Published: August 7, 2008

Public data news The Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign is a good source for policy and legal developments in the use of public data. Usually covered in the Technology edition, web and print versions, on Thursdays. They also have a blog: freeourdata A recent Guardian piece by Michael Cross covers significant advances in freeing access […]

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Mobile Blues

By take21 | Published: August 6, 2008

Tim Bray works for Sun Microsystems. He is an influential blogger, takes photographs, writes essay length pieces. Now, you know about iPhone, a bit about Google’s Android, which is an SDK without hardware and we’ve mentioned open source contender Open Moko. You know Apple’s environment is closed source. Actually, let’s say Apple’s culture is closed […]

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Senate hearings on music royalties

By take21 | Published: August 6, 2008

In the US, the Senate has been holding Judiciary Committee hearings on music royalties. Is internet radio on track to be a $20 billion (that’s billion) advertising market, as claimed by John Simson of Soundexchange? Or is internet radio a fledgling industry, likely to collapse under the burden of royalty payments imposed by the Copyright […]

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Textbook piracy

By take21 | Published: August 6, 2008

“Textbook Piracy – Book Publishers Making Inroads? Using the Internet to “improperly” download copyrighted material continues to be a major issue for a number of industries. Of late, downloading has moved beyond the pleasure phase of securing one’s favorite song and into the world of college textbooks. The issue for both industries is fundamentally the […]

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Google Street View

By take21 | Published: August 6, 2008

“Google’s controversial Street View photo-mapping tool has been given the all clear by the UK’s privacy watchdog. The system takes pictures of streets and adds them to online maps to let people see what locations look like. The project drew criticism from privacy campaigners worried it could breach data protection laws. But the Information Commissioner […]

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Free software usability

By take21 | Published: August 6, 2008

Matthew Paul Thomas has a piece which tries to get to grips with the causes of poor usability in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). He doesn’t dodge the problems and their origin in FOSS development methods and the rewards for participating in FOSS. He also has proposals for tackling the problems. Free software usability […]

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