Archive for December 6th, 2006

New Brunswick Court Weighs In On Bloggers

I'm late to this case (NY Times and Slaw have covered it), but a New Brunswick court has recognized blogging as an occupation in a case involving an arrest for obstructing a police officer.  The decision, R. v. LeBlanc, involved an arrest for obstructing a police officer.  The person charged is a well-known blogger who was covering a political demonstration for his blog.  The judge acquitted the man, concluding that there was reasonable doubt that there was willful obstruction.

More interesting are the judge's comments regarding blogging.  In particular, the judge notes that that the blogger was "simply plying his trade, photographing a demonstration for inclusion in his blog when he was arrested."  He goes on to state that:

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December 6, 2006 1 comment News

Spanish Court Raises Doubts About Creative Commons License

Andres Guadamuz reports that a Spanish court in Pontevedra has ruled in favour of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) against a café named Direccion000. SGAE initiated action against the cafe to claim royalties for de public performance of music in the locale, while the owners claimed that […]

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December 6, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

EMI Offers Clean MP3s

The Wall Street Journal reports that EMI, one of the major record labels, plans to offer a handful of songs as clean MP3s without DRM.  I don't think that should be particularly newsworthy, but the article does a nice job of assessing the current music market. Update: Fred offers a […]

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December 6, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

The Gowers Report

The much-anticipated UK Gowers Report[pdf] on IP is out.  On the copyright front, the report recommends no extension in the term of copyright for sound recordings, no retrospective term extension, a limited private copying right for format shifting with no accompanying levy, an expansion of fair dealing, private copying for […]

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December 6, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

Canadian Documentary Film Makers Speak Out on Copyright

Another enormously important Canadian group has spoken out on copyright.  The Documentary Organization of Canada, which represents more than 650 independent documentary film makers, has jumped into the copyright debate with a public letter to the Ministers, a background white paper that assesses the legal environment for documentary film makers, […]

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December 6, 2006 4 comments News