Tag: copyright

Word Trouble In The Land Of Scrabble

Posted on by

Fascinating insight into the commercial pressure around the words you can and can’t play in Scrabble over on FiveThrityEight. Turns out there are two lists – the book of words you can buy (the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) and the Official Word List (used in competition). And they are no longer in agreement: The Official Tournament and Club Word List (OWL) governs tournament play, and is not made readily available to the public. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) is for casual and family play, and is sold in bookstores. Aside from expurgated words — offensive or trademarked words omitted from the

The BBC will ignore image copyright if it’s “in the public interest”

Posted on by

So the BBC have clarified their comments about using pictures from Social Media sites (such as Twitter) without checking licencing conditions or attempting to contact the owner: …where there is a strong public interest and often time constraints, such as a major news story like the recent Norway attacks or rioting in England, we may use a photo before we’ve cleared it. So it’s publish first and hope nobody notices? Do they keep trying to make contact after publication? Or hope nobody makes a fuss? Or invoices them? A quick glance at the Freelance Fees Guide for online pictures suggests

Stormtrooper Helmet the perfect example of copyright working

Posted on by

When there is an agreement with “the state” that you can have copyright, it’s not indefinite. The deal is you get a period of exclusivity, and in return at some point it stops being coyrighted and goes into the pubic domain. For all the roar and anger behind the Stormtrooper Court Case in the UK last week, the facts are simple. The copyright period has expired. End of argument.

Obvious flaws in the US "Six Strikes" copyright procedure

Posted on by

Copyright holders will scan the ‘Net for infringement, grabbing suspect IP addresses from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. If they see your IP address participating in a swarm for, say, Transformers, they will look up that IP address to see which ISP controls it, then fire off a message… ISPs have agreed to institute "mitigation measures" (or, as you and I know them, punishments) based on the collected say-so of copyright holders. Well I can spot two flaws so far, (1) The lack of a legal process or the involvement of the judiciary at the punishment stage and (2) letting the copyright

…and one [Apple] patent to rule them all? Err, no.

Posted on by

In all the “sky is falling” and “only one bit of the sky is falling, so step out of the way” online discussion about the latest patent from Apple it’s worth looking at it from two angles. The first is that each patent is nothing more than a single bullet, and you need a lot of bullets in the modern patent wars. The second is that it always reminds of a delightful short story on copyright called “The People Who Owned The Bible“, by Will Shetterly; which I shall now suggest you read over a nice cup of tea.