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  • Knight-Mozilla OpenNews: Building a news ecosystem on the open web
    What is OpenNews? Knight-Mozilla OpenNews is about helping journalism thrive on the open web. It's about producing next-generation web solutions that solve real problems in news. It's about supporting communities of developers and journalists as they make, learn and invent together. And it's about deploying fellows-and code-into news organizations to collaborate and innovate in new ways. ...

    The hacker-journalist community is a vibrant one, and all our initiatives are designed to help it grow in size as well as strength. Later this year, we'll be launching Source, a new site that highlights the best code (and coders) in the community. Many more details coming very soon. - Mozilla OpenNews

  • Dickens v. Lawyers
    Lawyers appear in 11 of his 15 novels. Some of them even resemble humans. ...At 32 he filed his first suit against a pirate publisher. Dickens told a friend afterward that "it is better to suffer a great wrong than to have recourse to the much greater wrong of the law." - Joseph Tartakovsky, NY Times

  • Judge Denies Initial Effort To Shut Down 'Used' Digital Music Seller ReDigi
    ReDigi, an upstart digital company that sells "used" digital music, has announced that it has successfully fended off the recording industry's motion for a preliminary injunciton....U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan rejected Google's attempts to butt into the case, but seems to have now accepted the underlying notion that there is a lot at stake.

    According to a ReDigi press release, at the hearing today, Judge Sullivan stated, "This is a fascinating issue," adding that the case "raises a lot of technological and statutory issues."

    Among the issues that could be touched upon in the forthcoming case is the meaning of a "copy" for copyright purposes, whether the first sale doctrine applies in the digitial context, whether there's "public" performance in transmission of copies, and the ongoing liability for service providers who allow users to do things like move files around in digital clouds and re-sell them to others.

    Here is a copy of the winning brief [PDF] on the opposition to the preliminary injunction motion, filed by ReDigi's attorney, Ray Beckerman, two weeks ago. - Hollywood Reporter

  • Capitol Records Motion for injunction against ReDigi denied
    In Capitol Records v. ReDigi Judge Richard J. Sullivan, in a ruling delivered from the bench, denied Capitol Records' motion for preliminary injunction.

    We do not yet have a transcript of the decision....

    [The Court denied Google's motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief.] - Recording Industry v. The People

  • Hardware-software bundling crumbles in France
    Just a few weeks ago, in January 2012, a new judgement was issued to replace the initial one (see ruling) : Lenovo must pay the plaintiff 120 for the software, 800 for personal damage and 1000 for legal expenses. To date, it is the heaviest condemnation in a small claims court for such a case.

    The current victory symbolizes the crumbling of hardware-software bundling in France. But very significantly, the legal ground is European directive 2005/29/CE on unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market. This means that the legal arguments in Mr. Pétrus's case can be used again in any EU country. Many victories were obtained in France through the combination of a dedicated team from AFUL who published a Guide for consumers and of a talented lawyer who is a genuine free software connoisseur. This lawyer in Poitiers, France, defeated one of the top European lawyers, a former Dartmouth graduate who works for Paul Hastings... - No More Racketware