The Rust Belt

  1. Microsoft Shareholders in Deep Trouble

    Microsoft is suing Motorola over nine patent infringements:

    Microsoft Corp. today filed a patent infringe­ment action against Motorola, Inc. and issued the fol­low­ing state­ment from Horacio Gutierrez, cor­po­rate vice pres­i­dent and deputy gen­eral coun­sel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:

    The state­ment from Mr. Gutierrez follows:

    Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for infringe­ment of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smart­phones. The patents at issue relate to a range of func­tion­al­ity embod­ied in Motorola’s Android smart­phone devices that are essen­tial to the smart­phone user expe­ri­ence, includ­ing syn­chro­niz­ing email, cal­en­dars and con­tacts, sched­ul­ing meet­ings, and noti­fy­ing appli­ca­tions of changes in sig­nal strength and bat­tery power.

    read the rust of it →

  2. Privacy, DRM And Sticking To Outdated Business Models

    Cory Doctorow, writer, jour­nal­ist and suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man in the world of free con­tent,  does it again:

    The topic I leave my fam­ily and my desk to talk to peo­ple all over the world about is the risks to free­dom aris­ing from the fail­ure of copy­right giants to adapt to a world where it’s impos­si­ble to pre­vent copy­ing. Because it is impos­si­ble. Despite 15 long years of the copy­right wars, despite dra­con­ian laws and sav­age penal­ties, despite secret treaties and wide­spread cen­sor­ship, despite mil­lions spent on ill-advised copy-prevention tools, more copy­ing takes place today than ever before.

    it gets even rustier →

  3. How To Compete with Free (and Pirates!)

    They say file shar­ers destroy the enter­tain­ment indus­try. In the end, it is impos­si­ble to com­pete with free. If piracy is not stopped by legal means (mean­ing by force) we are being told, there is no way con­tent cre­ators and dis­trib­u­tors can earn money. There are many rea­sons and coun­terex­am­ples that show this is sim­ply not true but since any claim made by your hum­ble anony­mous author can be eas­ily dis­missed as com­ing from some­one lack­ing exper­tise and expe­ri­ence in the field, let’s see what some of the peo­ple work­ing right on the front line of the indus­try have to say.

    it gets even rustier →

  4. 5 Reasons Why HDCP Master Key Leak Is Good News For Everybody

    HDCP, the encryp­tion sys­tem used to hin­der efforts to make copies of dig­i­tal con­tent released on, among oth­ers, Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs, has been finally cracked, Intel admits. At last, I would say, as this can only be good for both con­sumers and the enter­tain­ment indus­try if it makes use of this oppor­tu­nity to learn some­thing about its busi­ness and the way the world of dig­i­tal infi­nite goods works (I am not cross­ing my fin­gers, though). I think there are at least five rea­sons to con­sider this claim correct:

    read it before it rusts →

  5. Evisceration of Cities

    ‘Imagine you were a time-traveler from the 1980s, say 1984, and you stepped out of your TARDIS right here, out­side, uh, West Port Books.’ (Which tells you where you are.) ‘Looking around, what would you see that tells you you’re not in Thatcherland anymore?’

    This is how a fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion between Jack and Elaine, two pro­tag­o­nists of “Halting State” by Charless Stross, begins.

    it gets even rustier →

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