For those of you that are interested, these cases all cite a landmark decision Tinker v. Des Moines, where public schools are allowed to regulate speech that materially interferes or disrupts the learning environment. Back in the tumultuous 60s, students wore armbands to school and Tinker was adjudicated on that activity. But now the courts have to deal with the Internets, and activities that don't physically take place on a school's campus.

Topping off this week in school censorship news is the action of the administration of the Southern Illinois University at Carbdondale (SUIC) surrounding a labor dispute. A Facebook page that was until now open for comments about the situation had comments critical of the university removed, along with other comments that contained obscene language. Eventually, the only content left on the page were official university messages. Rod Sievers, a university employee being quoted here, said "a certain level of debate would have been permitted but because some of it was rude, profane, name-calling, we just couldn't keep up with it."

With the removal of the comments, the students created their own Facebook page here. Does a Facebook Wall constitute a public forum, or is it private even if it is controlled by a publicly funded entity such as SUIC? There have been no suits filed as yet about this action by SUIC.

The background is this, if you haven't seen it already. An organization called Fight For the Future is trying to draw attention to Senate Bill 978, commonly known as the "illegal streaming bill." Because trying to draw attention to intellectual property legislation is usually difficult, the group tried a different approach: FreeBieber.org.

According to Bieber's lawyers, the site violates Bieber's publicity rights and intellectual property rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), however, says it's well within the Fight For the Future's First Amendment rights:

The right of publicity usually prohibits the unauthorized use of a person's name, likeness, voice, or other identifiable characteristic for a commercial purposes. However, the law is clear that an individual's right to control uses of his or her name and likeness must be weighed against important free speech rights. The First Amendment protects transformative uses (like the ones at freebieber.org), especially those that do not intrude on a celebrity's market for her own identifiable characteristics. So it's hard to believe that Bieber's lawyers really think he can prohibit this lawful (and effective) use of his image. More likely they, like so many others, were just hoping to scare Fight for the Future out of exercising its free speech rights.

It seems pretty absurd that Bieber's lawyers would even bother with a cease and desist here, but maybe they think that they'll get lucky. More than likely, all they'll do is trigger the Streisand effect. In trying to have the site taken down, they're probably just going to draw more attention to it.

Which might not be a bad thing. I'd really hate to see the "illegal streaming bill" make it to law, even if it might get Justin Bieber off the streets.

The FTC passed down the proposed settlement claims against DermApps and Acne Pwner, forcing them to pay in total $14,294 and $1,700 respectively to the thousands of people who downloaded the apps from the iTunes store in a belief that it would shape up their skin flaws.

AcnePwner sold for 99 cents and AcneApp sold for $1.99 at the Apple iTunes App Store. They have since been removed from the store. According to FTC records, AcnePwner was downloaded 3,300 times, and AcneApp was downloaded over 11,000 times.

AcneApp based its advertising claims on a study published by British Journal of Dermatology that showed that the use of blue and red lights led to decreases in acne in people who sought that treatment. But that study looked at treatments that blended the use of lights with specific creams and ointments, not with lights only, as the app makers advertised.

The settlements forbids the marketers from making any more claims about the healthful benefits of their mobile apps and other medical devices. AcneApp in particular is barred from misrepresenting research, tests, or studies.

Your personal and corporate reputation and popularity on these networks pivot on an identity known as your username. The role of usernames as brand identifiers is following a similar pattern as domain names but without any of the protections that trademarks owners enjoy.

Social networks are at a crossroads in terms of balancing the free spirit of their community and embracing the rights of brand owners. The relationship can either be adversarial or cooperative. Everyone wins if it is cooperative. Besides, for a new type of social network, trademark protection is going to happen anyway.

Even before its publication, over a hundred proposed groups have announced their plans to apply for their own TLD. This includes communities oriented around cities, countries, ethnic groups and special interest groups based on sports, games and entertainment. Microsoft, Nokia and IBM are all rumored to be exploring the idea of their own TLD. In reality, most of these new TLDs will resemble what we think of as a social network with communities of members with shared interests.

Since a community username will essentially be the same as a domain name, these social network TLDs will be applying ICANN's trademark protection policies to usernames. The result will be predictability for the end-user and predictability for trademark owners. And the policies represent good business practices for these social networks too.

These policies include:

1. A trademark dispute policy for ownership of domain names: A trademark dispute policy helps the Social Network TLD stay out of any legal disputes that occur between the network member and the trademark owner. It minimizes legal costs for Social Network TLDs, just as it has for existing domain registry operators.
2. A sunrise period and/or monitoring service: A sunrise period for trademark owners allows trademark owners to secure their brands before the general public. This will generate goodwill among the trademark community for the Social Network TLD.
3. A Whois database of usernames: The Whois database allows trademark owners to look up who has registered a domain to help determine if it’s someone with legitimate rights to the name.

Social network TLDs will likely have some additional privacy controls in place compared to today’s typical Whois, but nonetheless ownership of the user's domain name would likely be disclosed to rights owners and law enforcement that provide bona fide requests for such disclosure.

Overall, adopting these rules will help the Social Network TLD’s lower their legal costs, avoid distractions to their business model and enlist the very business partners they need to create a viable business. It is a win-win for social network operators and brand owners.

Integrating trademark rights into business strategy is not so bad. In fact, Facebook already experimented with this last year when they allowed trademark owners to reserve vanity Facebook names ahead of the general public. The move prevented the legal headache of dealing with thousands of irate trademark owners finding their brands snatched by whimsical members. Facebook also created some good will among a group of corporate sponsors that will likely be a primary source of revenue for their business.

So, the question arises: Isn’t it just good business practice for today’s social networks to treat usernames by the same rules as domain names? Should existing social networks voluntarily start adopting a trademark dispute policy and other brand policies even if they are not required to?

Augmented reality is a popular technology for new media advertising, allowing images, logos and markers to become triggers for 3D experiences on computers and mobile devices. It also could create 21st century legal dilemmas. Who has the right to create AR experiences from trademarked brand logos? Is the age of "augmented reality trademark infringement" rapidly approaching?

"This repurposing of corporate icons will offer future artists and activists a powerful means of expression which will be easily accessible to the masses and at the same time will be safe and nondestructive," they say.

Nondestructive in what sense? Yes, virtually spilling oil is safe for the planet, but the use of BP's own logo is destructive to their brand and the company has the right to protect it. It is true that BP's brand has already been irrevocably damaged due to the spill, and it is also true that augmented reality is a niche technology not likely to be a strong vehicle for further brand damage (yet), but BP still has the right to control how its logo is used.

Would BP actually benefit from defending their trademark in this way? Erik J. Heels, a trademark lawyer with the Clock Tower Law Group in Maynard, Massachusetts, says BP would be better off simply letting it go.

"The analysis falls in two categories," Heels told ReadWriteWeb. "First, what does the law allow a rights holder to do? And second, what is the smart thing to do from a business and public relations perspective? Even if BP wanted to take action against them, I don't think they would win the battle of public opinion, it could backfire on them."

Trademark law, Heels says, was created to protect similar products and services from being confused with one another, and it is unlikely a person using this app would be unsure of whether it was or wasn't officially endorsed by BP. Free speech, parody and commentary are other areas of law that overlap with this issue, which makes any action from BP even more unlikely.

If any entity is going to challenge the existence of the application, it is likely to be Apple, which has had no problem keeping any app they deemed questionable from passing inspection. It is unlikely that this application will get by Apple in its current state, but an updated version using a different logo most certainly would. In the future, however, if augmented reality takes off and is part of our everyday lives, an application like this could attract more legal attention from a popular brand.

Should brands have the same protections over the use of their logos in augmented reality (or specifically as the marker to launch an AR experience) as they do in actual reality? Who has the right to use trademarks as AR triggers? These are questions brands will be faced with as AR continues to expand its presence in digital marketing.

In an interview with UgoTrade author Tish Shute, AR developer Anselm Hook discussed what he calls the "imageDNS" - a name space for images - which could potentially be used to solve some of these issues.

"When an image becomes a kind of hyperlink - there's really a question of what it will resolve to," said Hook. "Will your heads up display of McDonalds show tasty treats at low prices or will it show alternative nearby places where you can get a local, organic, healthy meal quickly?"

Trademark laws and image disputes aside, the potential for augmented "ad busting" and virtual activism is promising on the augmented reality platform, and more mobile apps will certainly surface in this space. I can even see an app in the future that will let activists spill virtual blood on fur coats, so developers, please get to work on "Fur is MurdAR."

The complaints were due to the fact that Cryptome published a 22-page Microsoft Global Criminal Spy Guide. Microsoft claimed copyright infringement, Cryptome's editor refused to budge, and the site was taken down this afternoon.

The reason Cryptome refused to remove the PDF of Microsoft's so-called "spy guide" was that editor John Young believed its programs, which make it easier for law enforcement to obtain user data, showed "improper use of copyright to conceal [...] violations of trust toward its customers," according to an interview with Geekosystem.

"Copyright law is not intended for confidentiality purposes," he continued.

"We think all lawful spying arrangements should be made public [...] Microsoft should join the others who openly describe [their] procedures." Young named Cisco as one such company.

Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a call today, "We find it troubling that copyright law is being invoked here. Microsoft doesn't sell this manual. There's no market for this work. It's not a copyright issue. John's copying of it is fair use. We don't do this anywhere else in speech law."

For example, in cases involving libel or trade secrets, said Cohn, "You go to court, you make a case and you get an injunction. You don't just file a form. DMCA makes censorship easy."

Cohn also noted she feels the reason Microsoft actually wants the document removed from the Web is because, for a large corporation with millions of users and an aggressive PR agenda, the document raises concerns and sparks conversations the company would rather not confront.

"It's part of a very intense political debate about the role of intermediary companies like Microsoft aiding surveillance for law enforcement. It's embarrassing for Microsoft for their users to see how much the people who carry their email have arrangements with law enforcement.

"All of the people who carry our communications are an easy conduit for our government to spy on us, and a lot of people are unhappy about that. It's a legitimate public debate, and Microsoft doesn't want to be part of that debate."

We hope that Microsoft does, in fact, release their stranglehold on Young and his site and take part in a conversation with their users about how their data can be accessed by others, including law enforcement. We've reached out to them for comment and will update this post if and when we hear back.

In the meantime, let us know your thoughts in the comments.

UPDATE: Still no word from Microsoft, but here's that document they really don't want you (or anyone else) to see. We hope to hear from a Microsoft representative soon to discuss the intentions and implications of this guide.

UPDATE: Microsoft has responded. Read about it here.

Thanks to Glenn Davis of Geekosystem for the tip.

After the verdict, Thomas-Rasset told the Associated Press that the penalty was "kind of ridiculous," but also pointed out that she simply can't pay $2 million, so she is "not going to worry about it now."

As we pointed out in our earlier stories about this trial, the evidence clearly incriminated Thomas-Rasset, and the jury found that her conduct was willful. According to the Copyright Act, the jury could have awarded the music companies between $750 and $150,000 per song, but the jury, which clearly wasn't convinced by Thomas-Rasset's defense, came down in the middle at $80,000.

Could They Still Settle?

Ars Technica's Nate Anderson points out that RIAA spokesperson, Cara Duckworth, told reporters that the recording industry would still be willing to settle with Thomas-Rasset.

It seems like the RIAA is mostly interested in setting a precedent here, and if the two parties do eventually settle on a much smaller number (typically these cases ended in $5000 settlements), it surely wouldn't get the attention this current verdict received, leaving most of the public under the impression that a $80,000 fine per shared song is a real possibility.

Hard Drives, Best Buy, Kazaa, Terrastar, and Soft Drinks

There are considerable holes in Thomas' story, however. Among other things, she took her computer to Best Buy to get her hard drive replaced under warranty, exactly two weeks after MediaSentry informed her that she had been caught sharing these files. She then went ahead and brought this new drive in as evidence and swore under oath that the hard drive had been in the computer since 2004. According to a witness from Best Buy at today's trial, the drive must have been dead when Thomas took it in for repair, but it would be impossible to tell if she broke it accidentally (as she claims), or if this was done on purpose (breaking a hard drive is pretty easy, after all).

During the first day of her retrial, however, an expert witness who examined Thomas's computer also noted that an external hard drive had been hooked up to the computer, a fact that was new to the defense attorney.

Thomas' defense lawyers also produced a list of Thomas' purchases at Best Buy, but, as our friends at Ars Technica point out, if this was meant to show that Thomas was still buying a lot of music, this plan backfired, as she had bought a lot of soft drinks (seriously?), DVDs, and video games at Best Buy, but only one CD.

Thomas also generally used 'terrastar' as her handle, and the files on Kazaa were shared under that name. Given that Thomas' computer was password protected, what's the chance of somebody else using her login? In addition, Thomas also claims that she had never heard of Kazaa before this whole affair began.

It will be for the jury to decide if she is really guilty of these charges (judging from what we have seen, our best guess is that she will be found guilty), but the real problem isn't even really about her guilt or innocence. The real question here is if she really inflicted over $200,000 in damages by sharing 24 songs, as the music industry claims (or any damage at all). When the previous judge, Judge Michael Davis, Chief Justice of the Minnesota District Court, granted Thomas this retrial, he argued that the actual cost of the songs would be under $54 and implored Congress to address these damages, which he considered disproportionate, especially because Thomas didn't try to profit from her act.

The core product at LOLapps is actually two things: a quiz creator and a gift creator. You may not have much use for these types of applications yourself, but then, you would be in the minority. When it comes to social networks like Facebook, gifts and quizzes are some of the most popular activities taking place.

With the LOLapps tools, you're walked through a step-by-step process which allows you to create your very own custom gifts and custom quizzes which you can then share with your friends.

Essentially, the LOLapps application turns everyday users into application developers - without the user ever really knowing that's what's going on. With clear instructions written in casual, conversational language, the LOLapps building tools hop users through the somewhat convoluted and complicated steps (at least that's how they would appear to an end user) necessary to register as a developer on the social network and get the application published.

For now, the company says their business model is similar to that of a website-creation tool from ages ago: Geocities. Back in the early Web 1.0 days, users could create their own web pages at Geocities and the company made money by showing ads on those pages. LOLapps is working pretty much the same way today, except now the ads appear in apps, not web sites. LOLapps is also using virtual goods to drive revenue in some company-created applications but they will not be inserting those paid goods into the apps created by users themselves, LOLapps CEO Kavin Stewart tells us.

If you want to get a feel for what kinds of applications are being built with the LOLapps tools, we asked the company for the top apps, both quizzes and gifts. Here are the results - do any of these sound familiar?

Top 10 Quizzes

1. What Is Your Future Life?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/futurelife/
2. What Greek God are you
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-greek-god-fdde/
3. What Type Of Heart Do You Have?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/whatheart/
4. What's Your Best Quality?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/bestquality-asdf/
5. Which movie star are you?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/whatmovie-asdf/
6. What type of person do you attract?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/attract-asdf/
7. What song are you?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-song-are-jcge/
8. What will your Daughter be named?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-will-your-hfie/
9. What video game character are you?
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/what-video-gam-bhdb/
10. What Kind of Music Are You?
    URL: http://apps.facebook.com/musictype/

Top 10 Gifts

1. Guardian Angels
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/guardian-angel-iibg
2. Because You're Special
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/because-your-s-badgc
3. Friendship
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/friendship-ciabh
4. Pinky Gifts
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/yildizs-gifts-djah
5. Childhood Memories of the 80s
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/childhood-memo-jhcf
6. Strawberry Gifts
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/strawberry-gif-bggdd/
7. Girly Girl Gifts
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/girly-girl-gi-geheh
8. Forever Friends Bears
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/forever-friend-fbgi
9. SUSHI
   URL: http://apps.facebook.com/sushi-ifia
10. CHOCOLATE!
    URL: http://apps.facebook.com/chocolate-bbghb

The entertainment industry, as Mike Masnick points out on Techdirt, will celebrate this as a major victory in the fight against piracy, but in reality, shutting down the Pirate Bay will do little to deter filesharers and won't help the entertainment industry regain any lost market share or find a new business model.

It is also important to note that even though the Pirate Bay may be the most visible torrent-sharing site right now, others like Mininova host almost as many torrents.

The End of YouTube's Mashup Culture?

Most importantly, this move by YouTube, even though it makes perfect legal sense, might quickly put an end to the culture of remixes, mashups, and parodies on YouTube.

This new policy will also negatively affect a number of services that rely on YouTube for their audio content. Audiolizer, which we reviewed last month, for example, is, on the surface, a streaming music service, but actually gets its music from YouTube's vast catalog of music videos.

What About the Users?

In the end, this new policy will only alienate YouTube's users, while doing nothing to help the struggling music industry. It would make a lot more sense for the music industry to provide a blanket license to YouTube so that users could use copyrighted sounds tracks on their homemade videos, while the record labels (or the artists) could get a share of the advertising revenue.

The free version of Songbeat allows you to download up to 25 songs for free, but in order to download an unlimited number of songs, users will have to pay $29.99.

Features

Of course, there are already numerous application (online and offline) that allow users to search and play songs from various free music services. Some of the features that make Songbeat stand out are the ability to quickly import your downloaded songs to iTunes, Winamp, or the Windows Media Player, as well as its large directory of mixtapes. Songbeat also automatically downloads lyrics and album art with every song.

Money

Besides selling the full version of Songbeat, the company hopes to make money through the 'Songbeat Discover' service, which allows users to legally buy songs from Amazon's music store and concert tickets from Ticketmaster.

Legal?

There are some obvious legal questions about the service. Songbeat's founders Philip Eggersgluess and Marco Rydmann argue that Songbeat only creates a model for monetizing music that is already freely available online. However, it remains to be seen if the RIAA will agree with this line of reasoning.

In order to make an iPod work with an alternative software program - like gtkpod, Winamp, and Songbird, for example - developers need to understand a file called iTunesDB. To prevent people from writing to this file, Apple protects it with a checksum hash which has to be reverse-engineered. Usually that process only takes a couple of days.

With the latest iTunes update, Apple has once again changed the hash, meaning it needs to be reverse-engineered again. The developers doing so collaborate together and share their thoughts on iPodhash, an open-source project hosted on Bluwiki, a free web site that lets users create wiki pages.

Now Apple has asked for that site to come down, a request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says is out of line. Earlier this month, a lawyer from Apple's legal firm O'Melveny & Myers sent out a takedown notice to the site stating the content was illegal under the terms of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to the cease-and-desist email, the site is "disseminating information designed to circumvent Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system." It continued, "FairPlay is considered anti-circumvention technology under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such technology."

The EFF has jumped on this case, saying that Apple "doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on." According to EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann, this move is effectively bending the law in order to stifle free speech. "Apple is essentially saying here that people can't even talk about the mechanisms that Apple uses to lock in its music to the iTunes software," he said.

The EFF web site goes into more details as to why the EFF believes Apple to be in the wrong, listing the numerous reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site.

Where Does This Leave The Linux Community?

Since the Bluwiki site has complied with the takedown notice, the question is where does this leave the Linux community now? The main reason for the iPodhash project's existence is due to the fact that Apple does not provide a version of iTunes that runs on Linux. The project is an important community effort that helps Linux users create software programs that work with their iPods and iPhones.

Bluwiki's founder, Sam Odio, had said he was unsure if putting the site back online would be possible. Says Odio of his compliance with the takedown notice, "I regret having to do this. I may be able to put the site back online, but quite honestly it's unlikely because I can't afford a legal battle with Apple." Luckily for him, the EFF is now involved, so he will not have to worry with the legal fees.

Apple may only be protecting their very profitable iTunes business, but in this case, they're suggesting that the DMCA covers people merely talking about technical protection measures. If that's so, then as EFF says, "they've got a serious First Amendment problem."

You can follow this case's progress on the EFF's web site, Odio's blog, and on the iPodhash project's homepage.

Auto-Extracting Data

To use this new feature, you begin by uploading documents into Mumboe as usual, a process that involves nothing more than browsing for the file on your PC and uploading it to Mumboe. The OCR software in the system will scan the document's text and make the text searchable. Once complete, you can then select the new "Auto Extract" button which lets you automatically extract the key details from the document such as the parties involved and the agreement term. Those details are displayed for your reference along with the exact place in the document where they were found. You'll also be able to see an excerpt of the text contains those key words and phrases. You can choose to save the data as is or edit it as you see fit. If the system extracts terms you don't need to track, you can simply discard those items and keep the rest. When you're finished, just click "Done."

Pulling out the details:

Why This Matters

For consumers and every one else outside the target audience, Mumboe and other similar types of applications seem dry and boring. But for those in need of better tools, mainly those working in the legal profession, they will see this auto-extract capability as one sexy new feature. Why? Because according to the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM), poorly managed contracts result in over $153 billion in missed savings and revenue per year. Give our current economic conditions, those numbers cannot be ignored.

The only hurdle Mumboe has to overcome is the lawyers' (a typically conservative bunch) fear of moving to an online application. Their, in our opinion, misguided fear and mistrust of any sort of cloud app keeps them doing business the old-fashioned way - reading through pages and pages of documents themselves instead of enlisting the aid of some "new fangled" system to help them out. But for those who do take the leap, their efficiency will increase dramatically. If there's any occupation that understands the concept of "time is money," law would be it, and that's why Mumboe has a shot.

How To Join the Beta

The Mumboe auto-extract features are in private beta at the moment, but you can sign up to join here: https://app.mumboe.com/registration/beta_promotion_index. Mumboe will give out invites to RWW readers exclusively.

More About Mumboe:

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/law_20_news_mumboe_uses_semantics_to_pull_data_from_contracts.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/law_20_news_mumboe_uses_semantics_to_pull_data_from_contracts.php Enterprise Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:40:00 -0800 Sarah Perez If I apply some wacky new type of license to my creative work, is it going to hold up in court if a conflict comes down to that?

According to some participants, a key US court yesterday made a decision in favor of free, open intellectual property licenses like Creative Commons, though the details of the decision are complicated.

The Case

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday ruled (see court document below) that a license called Artistic License, similar to Creative Commons, was violated in a dust up between model engineer software developers. One developer created software that could be used to program the tiny trains, put it under Artistic License, and then alleged that another developer took parts of his work, incorporated it into commercial software and didn't give any credit to the original author.

At this point there appears to be no question that this did happen, the only question was whether it matters - whether the Artistic License is legally valid. The court appears to have ruled that it is.

As super-lawyer Larry Lessig puts it: "In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer."

While the water 'aint so bad for most copyright infringers, many believe that infringement is of far more consequence when it's done against "one of us," someone who has embraced an alternative, looser version of copyright.

Lack of Clarity

Put a panel of judges in a room and ask them if the sky is blue and you'll likely get an answer like "we decline to disagree with some points brought up by previous parties that have engaged with the question." So it's hard to know for sure how solid this ruling really is right now. Lessig, and others who can hardly be called disinterested, say it's a huge win.

Others, like a particularly well spoken commenter on BoingBoing and Mike Masnick, probably the most no-b.s. blogger in tech, point out that there are some wrinkles in the situation that deserve recognition before we start celebrating.

Why This is Important

Standard copyright in the US and increasingly around the world is by default a requirement that you get explicit permission to use a creative work. This slows things down a lot. Next generation intellectual property frameworks, like Creative Commons, allow creators to communicate their terms for reuse ahead of time, so that subsequent creation can build on their work immediately.

Many creators, though, need assurances that their conditions will be respected before they are willing to open their work to any limited reuse without explicit permission.

In 2006, an Amsterdam court ruled in favor of former MTV star and now Venture Capital stockpiling podcast maven Adam Curry in a case alleging that a tabloid used some of his Creative Commons licensed photos from Flickr without his permission. While that ruling was interesting and important, this week's related judgment in a key US court about software licensing is potentially of much greater signifigance.

If this decision ends up being as clear as Lessig and friends contend, and Larry Lessig is a pretty stand up guy, then the case of the model engineer software should provide solid ground for even more creators to feel safe offering their work under licenses that facilitate limited but more frictionless reuse and sharing.

New technologies require new legal frameworks and in an era so marked by regressive actions around intellectual property in film and music, it's refreshing to see some good news for once.

Want a good way to celebrate? Today could be a good day to visit the privacy and permissions tab in your Flickr account and change the default setting for new photos uploaded to a Creative Commons one. Come on in, the water's fine.