Dolly Creators Seek Clone License
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The scientists behind Dolly the sheep apply for a license to clone human embryos. They want to take stem cells from the embryos to study Lou Gehrig's disease.
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The latest version of the Induce Act, headed for markup this week, is basically the same as the first version, critics say. It could mean trouble for companies that had no intention of inducing copyright infringement. By Katie Dean.
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(InfoWorld) - In what may be the first action of its kind in the U.S., the Software Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit to enforce an open-source license. The SFLC filed the suit on Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Monsoon Multimedia on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, Erik Andersen and Rob Landley. The suit charges Monsoon with using BusyBox under the GNU General Public License version 2 but failing to publish its source code. Under the terms of the license, distributors of software that uses the licensed software must make their source code available. Failing to do so is considered copyright infringement. BusyBox, members of the public and the SFLC legal team notified Monsoon of its responsibilities, but Monsoon has not yet published the code, said Dan Ravicher, legal director at SFLC. While it's relatively common for licensees to neglect to share their code, parties typically work through the issue without having to go to court, he said. This case is a last resort after Monsoon failed to rectify the situation, he said. The suit is necessary because from a legal perspective, copyright owners can start to lose rights if they don't act to protect them, he said. BusyBox is a lightweight set of Unix utilities used in embedded systems. Monsoon develops digital video products, including a Slingbox-like device that enables remote TV viewing. If BusyBox ultimately prevails in the case, under copyright law the company is entitled to damages, an injunction prohibiting continued infringement and court costs, Ravicher said. He believes this is the first case filed in the U.S. in order to enforce an open-source license. The GPL Violations Project is a group that actively pursues license violators and has brought at least one case to court in Germany. Earlier this year, one of the project's team members publicly revealed violations that CiscoÂ made in its phone previously called the iPhone. Cisco subsequently corrected the problem. Monsoon did not reply to a request for comment.
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A software company and its parent are claiming they hold patent rights to widely used Internet song-swapping technology, and they are demanding that several file-sharing networks obtain licenses in order to continue operating.
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Now that the final version of the GNU General Public Licence version 3 has been released, the in-depth analysis of its implications can begin.  Two of the first commentaries to be published have come from the legal world, and there are doubtless many more being prepared for purely internal use within software companies wondering whether to adopt the new licence.  But important as both the legal and commercial details are, I believe the true significance of the GPLv3 lies elsewhere.
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A new initiative seeks to improve old products.
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(Source: Macrovision)  Nearly every software licensing model requires either one license or a pool of licenses bound to a machine. What machine identifier should these licenses be bound to ensure that they cannot be used on another machine? Some virtualization technologies are making it harder for software publishers to enforce their license agreements.
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Rogue copying software lets users clone anything or anyone they want in the virtual world. By letting its community respond, Linden Labs sets the stage for a bold experiment in alternatives to U.S.-style copyright. Commentary by Jennifer Granick.
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The scientist who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, was granted a license Tuesday to clone human embryos for medical research.
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I'm sorry to see that my blog entry on recent controversies over freedom turned into a thread about TiVo. But since TiVo seems to be such a hot button, I would like to address that issue directly. I made the point in the discussion that TiVo did not license its hardware under the GPL (duh, GPL is a software license, after all), or even a GPL-like license.  So all the fuss about what rights you have with respect to TiVo hardware is nonsense.  Sure, you have the right to modify the hardware because you bought it.  But you will void your warranty, and TiVo is under no obligation to provide you with the schematic, BIOS, or anything else to make it easy to modify the hardware.  Having said that, let's cut through all the posturing about what rights we have, and get to the real issue here, which is what motivated TiVo to use a digital signature, and what would motivate people to modify the TiVo software and run the modified version on a TiVo box.
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Turns out that Ludlow Music, which claims to own the copyright on a classic Woody Gutherie song, may not actually own it after all. Which means JibJab, a scrappy web animation site, gets to use 'This Land Is Your Land' to its heart's content. By Katie Dean.
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Opponents of human therapeutic cloning begin a legal challenge to the granting of the first UK licence.
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Scientists who created Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, applied for a license on Tuesday to clone human embryos to obtain stem cells for research into Motor Neurone Disease.
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Ever dreamed of being made into a statue? 3-D scanners may soon make your fantasy a cheap reality. Alexander Gelfand reports from the American International Toy Fair in New York.
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The FDA has approved the sale of cloned meat and milk products in the US, but those items won't be specially labeled. Would you want to know how your ribeye was reproduced?
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eDonkey seeks sanctuary, finds knackers' yard eDonkey is off to the knackers' yard, after a New York court ruled that the peer-to-peer (P2P) site enabled users to swap copyright material illegally. eDonkeyâs owner, New York-based MetaMachine, is ponying up $30m to settle a copyright suit brought by six record companies. MetaMachine has another P2P network, called Overnet, which the NY court also deems illegal.â¦
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New licensing language would put Zune owners in violation of Creative Commons licenses if they distribute CC-licensed songs with the devices. In Listening Post.