False accusations from Red Points Solution SL

Yesterday, I returned to find a DMCA claim filed against us by Red Points Solution SL, purporting to act for Harper’s Bazaar España publisher Hearst Magazines SL, falsely accusing us of breaching their copyright with this article. You can read the notice here. Naturally, I filed a counter-claim because their accusation is baseless. Our source […]

Read More… from False accusations from Red Points Solution SL



How Jaguar Land Rover can still win its Land Rover Defender IP case against Ineos

I haven’t read the full judgement of the Land Rover Defender case, where Jaguar Land Rover sought to protect the shape of the original Defender under trade mark law, to prevent Ineos from proceeding with the Grenadier.    According to Bloomberg, as reported in Automotive News, ‘The judge upheld the findings by the IP Office […]

Read More… from How Jaguar Land Rover can still win its Land Rover Defender IP case against Ineos



Warning about Facebook “copyright” phishing scam—which Facebook itself covers for

Yesterday, I received an email purporting to be from Facebook, with the body reading: Hi, We are obliged to inform you that your page has been flagged because of unusual and illegal activity, therefore your page might be permanently deleted. In order to avoid such actions from our side, you need to fill the forms […]

Read More… from Warning about Facebook “copyright” phishing scam—which Facebook itself covers for



EU copyright: as far as we’re concerned, link away

European Union—www.europarl.europa.eu/downloadcentre/en/visual-identity, Public Domain; link I’m reading more about this EU copyright directive that was voted in last month.    Without doing a full analysis, I can say that we won’t go after anyone who links to our publications.    We presently don’t care if you use a brief snippet of our content and link […]

Read More… from EU copyright: as far as we’re concerned, link away



The end of US ’net neutrality: another step toward the corporate internet

Elijah van der Giessen/Open Media/Creative Commons That’s it for ’net neutrality in the US. The FCC has changed the rules, so their ISPs can throttle certain sites’ traffic. They can conceivably charge more for Americans visiting certain websites, too. It’s not a most pessimistic scenario: ISPs have attempted this behaviour before.    It’s another step […]

Read More… from The end of US ’net neutrality: another step toward the corporate internet



Instagram-created art

I don’t know if Instagram does this on all phones, but when I make multi-photo posts, it often leaves behind a very interesting image. Sometimes, the result is very artistic, such as this one of a Lotus–Ford Cortina Mk II.     You can see the rear three-quarter shot just peer in through the centre. […]

Read More… from Instagram-created art



Paging Dr Libby

Update: scroll down for a happy ending to this! Even famous people can slip up. Two posts on Instagram, one of them mine, the other an hour later on Dr Libby Weaver’s account.    If you’d like a closer inspection, here’s my photo cropped roughly where hers is. The clouds are the giveaway, and trust […]

Read More… from Paging Dr Libby



RTL orders Blitzkrieg on Alarm für Cobra 11 fan community prior to the show’s 20th anniversary

With the lead-up to the 20th anniversary of the German TV show Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, a fan group I run—the largest unofficial community on Facebook for the series—has been the subject of a Blitzkrieg by RTL. Trailers, which made up the majority of the uploaded videos, are indeed copyrighted material, but have […]

Read More… from RTL orders Blitzkrieg on Alarm für Cobra 11 fan community prior to the show’s 20th anniversary



The fall and rise and fall of Kim Dotcom, and why, according to the US, watching YouTube makes us all criminals

In response to a friend’s Facebook post applauding the possibility that Kim Dotcom would get extradited, two days ago. It’s unedited, other than the inclusion of a link and a note, and I apologize for the grammatical errors. Surely this remains the only case in the history of humankind where copyright is a multi-jurisdictional criminal […]

Read More… from The fall and rise and fall of Kim Dotcom, and why, according to the US, watching YouTube makes us all criminals



The political caricatures of old have taken human form, but they’re still nothing like us

That’s another British General Election done and dusted. I haven’t followed one this closely since the 1997 campaign, where I was backing John Major.    Shock, horror! Hang on, Jack. Haven’t the media all said you are a leftie? Didn’t you stand for a left-wing party?    Therein lies a fallacy about left- and right […]

Read More… from The political caricatures of old have taken human form, but they’re still nothing like us