Archive for June 1st, 2009

WIPO Copyright progress

Monday, June 1st, 2009
William Lye has a comprehensive report on the conclusion of the latest round of WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright - a late agreement:
  1. to address a proposed treaty on copyright exceptions for visually impaired persons and others; and
  2. for renewed focus on the rights of audio-visual performances; and
  3. to continue discussion on the need to protect (badly misunderstood) broadcasters.
William Lye's report here; the Chairman's draft conclusions here. The discussion of exceptions seems to be much broader than just rights of the visually impaired: full range of discussion papers and working materials here and here. For some reason, the Australian government is opposed to the proposals for visually impaired persons: Nic Suzor wants to explain to you why you should do something to help change this here.

Posted in Copyright | Tags: , , , , ,  | View Comments

Googling it …

Monday, June 1st, 2009
From the blogsite:

We started with a set of tough questions:

  • Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
  • Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
  • What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms? 
After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office ... And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas ... Today we're giving developers an early preview of 

Google Wave

Wave

Lid dip @joshgans; Where Tim O'Reilly sees it fitting in (via @dhowell via Dennis Kennedy via Shelley Powers). Mashable here and here.

Posted in Technology | Tags: , , ,  | View Comments