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    A Splice of Mice

    Mickey isn’t the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. – Animation World Network Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse. Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard’s scientists invented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its… >>>

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    Off Switch For Big Media

    It’s the beginning of the end of the big media monopoly, argues Robert X Cringely. The big media corporations may have succeeded in making copying illegal. But even Microsoft is starting to acknowledge that there’s been a total failure in stopping the growth of a culture of copying. Big media’s next step will… >>>

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    How To Be A Genius

    Office workers at a meeting

    It’s sharing ideas that leads to innovation. The Romantic idea of the artist as a lonely genius? It’s more like Newton and Oasis and the rest of us jostling for position on the shoulders of giants. According to Malcolm ‘Tipping Point‘ Gladwell, innovation happens when people egg each other on. Group social interaction… >>>

  • Rip, Mix and Desist

    Develop an existing idea so that it becomes something new and you’ll be applauded for your creativity and genius. Unless you’re hit with a cease-and-desist letter first. The images and sounds in Illegal Art, currently at New York’s 313 Gallery, broke copyright law and so media corporations and their lawyers dragged the artists… >>>

  • Ready for My Shot

    Without copyright term extensions, old films wouldn’t get distributed, argues the entertainment industry. ‘Indiscriminate exploitation’ by public domain copyists would reduce the flow of cash to Big Media and hence the motivation Big Media needs to ‘publish’ films. – CS Monitor Intellectual property academics Lawrence Lessig and Jason Schultz say that’s so much… >>>