Who can forget then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s classic line at the 1980 New Hampshire candidate’s debate:  “I’m paying for this microphone!”  And Google probably is wishing that whichever Ivy League idiot thought of rebranding their anti-SOPA campaign site with the double entendre “It’s Our Web” had not been quite so…uh..transparent…about it all. Because it certainly is “their web” […]

UPDATE: Within hours of the FCC’s wristslap on Google for obfuscating an investigation into why Google was sucking down all kinds of private data with its creepy cars, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC to force the FCC to release an unredacted version of the FCC’s […]

In a scene that could have been painted by Hieronymus Bosch or written by Franz Kafka, or illustrated by Lewis Carroll, Helienne Lindvall tells of being invited to that august body, the European Parliament.  The topic that brought out all these democrats?  A “debate” on the Anticonterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA.  Helienne Lindvall was invited […]

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Google) blasted U.S. Register of Copyright Maria Pallante because of the Register’s statement of the law regarding the purpose of copyright as well as meetings that the Register of Copyrights took with companies in the copyright business at the Copyright Office (i.e., not at Caribou Coffee, the coffee shop across the street from the White House where […]

Google’s latest lobbying effort makeover (“It’s Our Web”) comes on the eve of what will either be a hard jerk on the reins at the European Commission or a lobbying first–a company that is too big to govern no matter what it does. One always has to wonder how certain stories get written in the press, […]

UPDATE: President Obama signed the JOBS Act, a piece of legislation championed by lobbyists like Kate Mitchell according to the Wall Street Journal: “An outgoing chairman of the National Venture Capital Association and a Democratic campaign donor, Ms. Mitchell accepted an invitation to join a panel discussion at the Treasury Department in March 2011. Secretary […]

This is an interesting developing story.  According to the Wall Street Journal (and the hearing transcript): “The U.S. attorney in Rhode Island went off the reservation and gave a long interview about all the evidence and why it was he was so excited about the case,” lawyer Boris Feldman told the judge at a Delaware […]

You’ve heard it a thousand times at least:  You can’t steal copyright because when you make a copy the work is still there!  It’s MAGIC!  You still “own” the thing you had before, whatever it is, the punters just made a copy of it. And then these punters sit there looking like they’ve said something intelligent […]