In 2010, the Oregon-based, Asian-American band had its application for a trademark in the name The Slants rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The denial was based on a statute in the 1946 Lanham Act prohibiting registration of marks “which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or ...
Photo by alexskopje Pond5 This week, the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded what any rational observer would conclude about websites that make large volumes of unlicensed copyrighted works available to the public — that their owners know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. A Netherlands-based foundation that protects copyright interests argued in the nation’s Supreme Court that two ...
On December 31, 2016, in a post called The Morning After or Social Media is a Humbug, I wondered whether or not 2017 would be the year when users, advertisers, and even the major web platforms would begin to demand more accountability online and move away from the general belief that a laissez-faire approach to all internet governance was universally ...
Photo by Elnur It’s depressing how often one reads news that makes the United States seem as though we’re reliving the 19th century rather than an enlightened 21st. With that comment, you might think I’m referring to the current administration (and I certainly could be), but at the moment, I refer to Americans across the political spectrum who seem willing to ...
ReDigi is a business venture whose revenue model is based on brokering online transactions between sellers and buyers of “used” music files. A prospective seller has a collection of legally-purchased digital files of songs purchased from iTunes that he will never access again, so he places these for sale via ReDigi, which connects him with a buyer. The buyer purchases ...
