According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is the last of the major browser publishers to refuse to add “do not track” to its Chrome browser.  This will come as no surprise to anyone following the growing evidence of Google’s contempt for other people’s property. It should also be food for thought for the Hargreaves […]

According to the LA Times, YouTube–regularly held up by Google as its poster child for respecting copyright–has a new policy apparently in response to the grilling that Google’s GC received from the House IP subcommittee last week.  “Under the new rules, YouTube users who receive notice that they used someone else’s content without authorization must attend “YouTube […]

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Don Henley and David Byrne stood up and enforced their rights as artists not to have their works associated with candidates without their permission.  Violating an artist’s persona and associating it with a candidate, product, motion picture–yes, even with some trivial video on YouTube–is a serious offence no matter how easily done. I don’t know the circumstances […]

Record Store Day is the 3rd Saturday in April (@recordstoreday).  Thinking about Amazon, I remembered that a noted law and economics academic wrote a short but important article in 2008 about the other great commoditizer, Google. His piece “Google the Destroyer” makes some very important points about Google’s business practices that are equally applicable to Amazon, and […]

An excellent piece by Philip Delves Broughton in the Daily Mail cautions the Prime Minister against the influences of Google on his Government.  In “Why David Cameron must stand up to his friends at Google: The future of music, books and even the law could be threatened”   he makes the excellent point that “…to suggest that […]

Very interesting rogue sites hearing including Google’s general counsel aided by Fred Von Lohman, formerly of the EFF, Grokster and Limewire fame, who is hands down the #2 greatest enemy of professional creators in my view (right behind Lessig). Here are a few highlights of the ducks of the day: Chairman Goodlatte asks the logical question, why […]

I was impressed with the directness of the questions from the Members, particularly Chairman Smith, Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Member Watts who are clearly are in no mood to be trifled with. Floyd Abrams gave an outstanding testimony supporting the Senate bill. Christine Jones of Godaddy is a real star. Google, of course, tone deaf as usual […]