The GNU General Public License (GPL) is is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. Intended to promote development by ensuring open distribution and modification, the GNU General Public License Preamble notes, The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and [...]

Unknown da Vinci painting unveiled via fingerprinting. Value increases from $19,000 (purchase price) to above $160 million. From CNN. Record labels suffering from power of technology, artists, and consumers seek a new business model. From MediaShift (PBS). Yoko Ono promotes Creative Commons licensing with remix contest. From boingboing. Contest here. Micro-brewer sued for Trademark infringement [...]

EMI, who controls more than 20 percent of all songs licensed in North America, has agreed to a licensing deal in lieu of protracted litigation with music service Grooveshark. According to the site, owned by Escape Media Group, it was negotiating a deal with EMI when the suit was filed. However, Grooveshark was having difficulty [...]

Just a week after the September 25th opening arguments, the $2.58 million suit by Eight Mile Style LLC against Apple, Inc. has been quietly settled. Filed in 2004, the suit alleged that Apple, “distributed, publicly performed, [and] made available” various Eminem recordings which amounted to copyright infringement and false endorsement under the Lanham Act. More [...]

A group of authors and publishers, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Samuelson clinic), filed an objection last week to the proposed Google Book Search lawsuit settlement. The coalition of [...]

Stan Lee approves of the recent Disney-Marvel deal as a major coup. From MSNBC. YouTube seeks to license major movies for streaming video rental via internet: From AP. The history of corporate art collections and their role in future exhibitions. From The New York Times.

It was revealed here that Firas Alkhateeba, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, Photoshopped a now infamous image of President Obama as the Joker out of apparent “boredom.” Interesting that the image has been removed from Flickr due to “copyright-infringement concerns.”

Google recently rewrote its AdWords Trademark policy to “allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text.”  According to a blog post by Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords, “you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the U.S. even if you don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the [...]