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 […]
Tag: intellectual property
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 […]
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 […]
When mistrust brings us together
I can be staunch on IP protection in a lot of cases—but in the case of Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG hiking the price of an Aids drug from $13·50 to $750 per pill, not so much (for obvious reasons). If you’re in pharmaceuticals, then there has to be some element of wanting to […]
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 […]
There can be only one, unless you forget to register your design: the Range Rover Evoque and the copycat Landwind X7
The stunning original: the Range Rover Evoque. There has been a lot of ongoing press about Landwind’s copy of the Range Rover Evoque (a road test of the Evoque comes next week in Lucire, incidentally), one of my favourite Sloane Ranger SUVs. There’s no way Landwind would have come up with the design independently, and, […]
Geely Vision: as fast as a Citroën 2CV flat out
I was very interested to see this graphic on the Geely Instagram account today: Spot the issue? I commented (and I wonder if they will delete it): ‘I would be a bit worried if the Geely GC7 found 71·5 mph its “flat out” speed. That would make it only as fast as a Citroën […]
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Ikea tries to shut down its biggest fan site, showing us how the company thinks within
In an age of social media, you would think it was the most stupid thing to try to shut down the biggest online community you have. Ikea has done just that, on IP grounds, against Ikea Hackers, by getting their legal department to send Jules Yap, its founder, a cease-and-desist letter after her site […]
In Wellington, the players need to change
The below was written on April 22, 2013, in response to an article in The Dominion Post. It was offered to the newspaper as an op–ed, then to The Wellingtonian, but it was eventually declined. The Dominion Post’s headline on April 22 confirmed what many of us knew after numerous friends and colleagues left Wellington […]
When it comes to convention centres, it pays to think ahead
The New Zealand International Convention Centre has been announced in Auckland. In 2010, my campaign team proposed a convention centre for Miramar Wharf, which would include a technology complex, in a format that could have been licensed to other countries, earning royalties for the Wellington business that came up with the idea. The location was […]
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