In response to a letter received by a charity, warning of dire penalties for 'reproducing copyright content without permission', since doing so 'is theft'. It gets better, since in correspondence they were then informed that “a licence is required to link directly to an online article even without uploading any of the content directly onto your own website”. Looking forward to seeing how this one plays out...

Just another sad story of how software patenting made a standard useless. "I had once hoped that JBIG-KIT would help with the exchange of scanned documents on the Internet, facilitate online inter-library loans, and make paper archives more accessible to users all over the world. However, the impact was minimal: no web browser dared to directly support a standardized file format covered by 23 patents, the last of which expired today. About 25 years ago, large IT research organizations discovered standards as a gold mine, a vehicle to force users to buy patent licenses, not because the technology is any good, but because it is required for compatibility. This is achieved by writing the standards very carefully such that there is no way to come up with a compatible implementation that does not require a patent license, an art that has been greatly perfected since."

'The agreement reached last month with the licensing agency includes provisions defining e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student and surveillance of academic staff email.' wow, incredibly bad terms

An amazing article, via Nelson Minar -- careful examination of the evolution of chess programs over the past 8 years appears to show clear signs of code/algorithm copying and unauthorised reverse engineering -- by many of the developers. 'Dr Søren Riis of Queen Mary University in London shows how most programs (legally) profited from Fruit, and subsequently much more so from the (illegally) reverse engineered Rybka. Yet it is Vasik Rajlich who was investigated, found guilty of plagiarism, banned for life, stripped of his titles, and vilified in the international press – for a five-year-old alleged tournament rule violation. Ironic.'

the license under which the open data from various councils around Fingal and Dublin (see www.dublinked.ie) is being published

'Once again, Warner is the fly in the ointment, the same company that praises Spotify one day, renews their licenses for the rest of the world and then the next day doesn’t want to license them in the US.'

what it's like to have your photo used for stock images

wow, sounds good! looking forward to this hitting production-ready status