This seems to be the week for legal blog posts. After trying a slightly revised version of COICA with new branding (now: PROTECT IP), Senator Leahy has come out with a very sensible piece of legislation, the ECPA Amendments Act of 2011. As the name says, this is is an amendment to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 for which Senator Leahy was also the lead author. The proposed amendment brings the act into the 21st century by adding email, cell phone, private messages on social ...

This seems to be the week for legal blog posts. After trying a slightly revised version of COICA with new branding (now: PROTECT IP), Senator Leahy has come out with a very sensible piece of legislation, the ECPA Amendments Act of 2011. As the name says, this is is an amendment to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 for which Senator Leahy was also the lead author. The proposed amendment brings the act into the 21st century by adding email, cell phone, private messages on social ...

Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief signed by some of the big names in computer science and software engineering to support the court decision in Oracle vs. Google that APIs are not copyrightable. The brief is well worth reading because it lays out in detail many of the instances over the last decades in which the non-copyrightability of APIs has turned out to be important for innovation. I also support this view which is based on concept that functions or methods themselves are not copy...

Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief signed by some of the big names in computer science and software engineering to support the court decision in Oracle vs. Google that APIs are not copyrightable. The brief is well worth reading because it lays out in detail many of the instances over the last decades in which the non-copyrightability of APIs has turned out to be important for innovation. I also support this view which is based on concept that functions or methods themselves are not copy...