technews.am is a new community for breaking news across the technology sector. We are still in Alpha, so please bear with us.
We just wrote about how major Hollywood studios had included links to the freely available, Creative Commons-licensed documentary, TPB AFK, in a bunch of bogus DMCA notices to Google, meaning that perfectly legitimate links were likely being removed.
I've always liked the state of Vermont -- but mainly because it was a nice place to visit. But, now the state appears to be declaring war on patent trolls.
Remember Jacques Nazaire? He's the local counsel for Prenda in a case in Georgia who was trying desperately to get the judge there to ignore Judge Wright's order in California, which lays out how Prenda's lawsuits are highly questionable, and likely against the law.
If you're a government with something to hide, there are plenty of shady ways to handle Freedom of Information Act requests.
Does DRM stop (or even slow down) piracy? This question's hardly hypothetical. It's been answered with a resounding "no" all over the internet.
We've had plenty of stories of dumb criminals being caught in surprising ways thanks to new technology.
So, a lot of people are talking about Kim Dotcom's latest gambit, which was to point out that he holds a patent (US 6,078,908 and apparently others in 12 other countries as well) that covers the basics of two-factor authentication, with a priority date of April of 1997.
Here's an interesting one. Amazon is getting some buzz today for launching Kindle Worlds, a setup by which authors of fan fiction can effectively profit from their works without fear of legal repercussions.
I'm obviously a big fan of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, but I've always argued that it's just one of many models that content creators can use to succeed today.
Here's an amusing one out of the UK. Nick Henderson has created something of a Swiftian "modest proposal" for people who feel guilty about infringement.