Benlog

The French are protesting Villepin’s CPE plan to reduce employment guarantees for first-time employees. This law would give employers the right to lay off young workers (under 26) within their first 2 years of work without cause. Protesters believe this special regulation will result in young employees being treated as second-class citizens in the workforce, [...]

The Fox TV show American Idol receives in excess of 30 million votes per week. Every Tuesday night, contestants sing, then people vote, then every Wednesday night, the results are announced. No doubt that tens of millions of people watch on Wednesday night just to hear the results, announced with great dramatic emphasis by the [...]

A few weeks ago, I attended Berkman’s Digital Identity gathering where we discussed the technical, legal, and business aspects of the Identity Metasystem, this new, meta approach to online identity promoted by Kim Cameron of Microsoft.

I need to write up my thoughts in greater detail, but in the meantime, Aldo Castaneda interviewed me and posted [...]

Ben Laurie finds that the disc shipped by Amazon does not conform to the audio CD standard. Why? Because the music publisher, EMI, is trying to prevent copying by shipping a disc that doesn’t quite behave like an audio CD, so that, for example, perfectly compliant audio CD players in computers aren’t able to read [...]

From Le Monde today, the French Cour de Cassation (more or less the Supreme Court), declared that making copies of a DVD for personal use violates authors’ rights. On the other hand, the rights of the consumer who legally purchased the DVD and may want to watch it on his laptop or ipod video… those [...]