Eric Crampton • Oct 09, 2015 •
David Farrar summarises the great work NZ’s IT community did in ensuring that the TPP deal was reasonable on IP. Sure, there are a few bits in there that are less than ideal – extending the duration of copyright on existing works is always absolutely nonsensical (as compared to extending it for new works, which is more debatable). Read More
Grant Jacobs • Sep 09, 2015 •
Re-introducing Code for Life: notes about what this blog is, disclaimers, comments, copywrite, and writing examples. Welcome to Code for Life. What’s with the name of the blog? Code4Life was a name I considered for my consultancy, BioinfoTools. It plays on a number of things related to my work and what I write about: My work … Read More
Eric Crampton • Aug 08, 2015 •
The recent leaked TPP copyright section has a few options for copyright duration. All of them act only to increase rents paid to existing rights-holders rather than to encourage new creation.A simple illustration.Suppose that you create a piece of IP t... Read More
Eric Crampton • Apr 09, 2015 •
A few things puzzle me in the rights-holders' cease and desist letter to New Zealand ISPs offering "Global Mode" services. That's likely because I am not a lawyer.These services make geomasking easy for broadband customers rather than requiring them to... Read More
Eric Crampton • Jan 13, 2015 •
Big Content surely has somebody estimating the relevant elasticities, surely?Netflix is getting a bit louder about that using Hola!, Unblock-Us, or other VPN options to ungeoblock Netflix context breaches the terms of service; they may also be running ... Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 20, 2014 •
The 'hump' in Amazon availability of books first published just before the Copyright Wall suggests a pretty big reduction in surplus associated with orphaned works. But, it could be the case that there isn't much demand for books from the 1930s and tha... Read More
Eric Crampton • Jan 17, 2014 •
Last year brought Netflix euphoria. I figured out how to access it from New Zealand and fell in love. Where I had been ripping my DVD collection to hard disk to save on storage costs, punting boxes of DVDs to the garage, I started just checking whether... Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 16, 2013 •
When Sky didn't like that I'd pointed the National Business Review's readers to Hola, they sent a note to NBR threatening to get the lawyers involved. And so the NBR pulled the line mentioning Hola. Pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but irritating. It isn't illegal to link to Hola, or to mention it. But Sky … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 14, 2013 •
I didn't know how good it was going to be. I weep for the surplus I failed to obtain because I hadn't bothered setting up a very very simple VPN plug-in that would let me sign up. Here's NZ ISP Orcon's explanatory guide. But even that makes it look too hard. Here's how you get your surplus.Install Hola. Read More
Eric Crampton • Sep 30, 2013 •
It seems that the lawyers at Sky didn't like my post on Netflix. They've not been in touch with me about it, nor did they get in touch with the folks at SciBlogs about it when I syndicated it there. But late last week, the National Business Review ask... Read More