Famed Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel (the model for Jeremy Piven’s character in Entourage, and the brother of Chicago mayor/former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) doesn’t have a particularly good history when it comes to his understanding of how … Continue reading →

While we’ve been mostly focused on the New Zealand aspects of the Megaupload case, the company (and the individuals sued) have made two interesting filings with the district court in the US concerning the case. The first one (pdf) seeks a dismissal of… Continue reading →

The International Institute of Communications is hosting a particularly one-sided “roundtable seminar” in Hong Kong this week about “content piracy.” Just from that phrase, you should know the deck has been stacked against a reasoned analysis of the n… Continue reading →

In a case that appears to parallel the Viacom/YouTube case in the US, French TV network TF1 sued YouTube/Google (and competitor Dailymotion), claiming that those sites were liable for infringing videos uploaded to the site. However, in a new ruling, a… Continue reading →

Via Mathew Ingram we learn of a ridiculous situation in Ireland, where the organization “Newspaper Licensing Ireland” has sent an email to the Women’s Aid charity, telling it that linking to newspaper websites without a license is copyright infringemen… Continue reading →

Here’s the latest excerpt from our Techdirt Book Club selection for May, Reclaiming Fair Use by Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi. We’re running a bit late with these, and will have one more excerpt next week. If you want to see the first excerpt … Continue reading →

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has recently demonstrated its capabilities by successfully docking with the International Space Station. It’s the first example of a private company achieving this feat, and it’s paving the way for more private space ventures. … Continue reading →

Remember Paul Chambers? He’s the UK accountant who was arrested for tweeting:

“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Overly serious law enforcement officials… Continue reading →

For a few years now we’ve covered how the Thai government’s ridiculous “lese majeste” laws that forbid insulting the monarchy have been used repeatedly to censor open forums and arrest or intimidate critics. In one case, which we wrote about a few yea… Continue reading →

We recently wrote about how both Amanda Palmer and Steve Albini think that file sharing is great for musicians. In the comments to that post, dwg pointed us to a new interview with musician Regina Spektor. The whole interview is interesting, but at t… Continue reading →