DISQUS

Great post there. Well analyzed and fairly concluded.

But more than anything, it made me all nostalgic for college, because of the Billy Joel song 'we didn't start the fire'. We used to really rock to billy joel in college and i am still a huge fan.

What a very well written article there Jonathan! I have been building up the will (or do i mean courage) to start my own blog soon, and all this information is going to come in incredibly useful to me, so thanks!

Going by what you say, it sounds as though this may be a mixed blessing then.

Sounds like a riveting list, will get to it asap. I am especially interested in the RIAA's funding slash.

I tried but i couldn't see that video. it started and then it kind of got stuck.

Thanks for delving deep into that problem, your analysis has given me great insight into how malignant this problem is.

Thanks for that, will check it out.

That article was an eyeopener for me. I had no idea that splogging was such a pernicious and malignant menace.

By the by congrats on becoming a 'high value target'!.

Seems to me that Google is way too bothered with their bottom line and only their bottom line right now! They are being all big brother with bloggers banning paid links and coming down on text link ads, while at the same time not much bothered with the very people they should be working toward protecting. Methinks there is a very strong bugged-with-Google sentiment all across the internet right now. NETIZENS OF THE WORLD UNITE??!!

Recording studio, the problem with trademark is not generic usage; when I say “I’m just going to Hoover the carpetâ€? instead of “I’m just going to vacuum the carpetâ€? it does not cause any loss or harm to the Hoover trademark. This merely demonstrates how ingrained the association between Hoover and vacuum cleaners is, in the consumer’s mind.

The real difficulty is faced when someone may use a distinctive color scheme, design, logo or other identifying factor which constitutes the trademark of a popular consumer brand to “pass-offâ€? their own unrelated lesser known (even perhaps inferior) product onto an unsuspecting public.

I think a trademark is an extremely important facet of intellectual property. It is trademark (not just the name but the design, color scheme and font and many other aspects) that creates instant brand recall and/or awareness in the mind of the consumer. I think it should be protected even more zealously than it currently is, especially from attempted passing off actions.

At the risk of repeating myself, One strives to make the system idiot-proof, but they keep making better idiots:)

I do agree that making better CAPTCHAs is the answer, because no abuse protections system is 'set-and-forget'. One needs to be constantly vigilant.

I read about this really frivolous suit filed against google for infringement of patent:

"The patent describes a distributed database system that breaks search queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster results. The patent was assigned to Northeastern University, which licensed it exclusively to Jarg, according to the lawsuit, filed last Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas."

Sounds like some abulance-chaser lawyer is trying to get some money from Google.

On the face of it, workfriendly sounds like something that simplifies the surfing process for you,but it seems to have far more ominous connotations than a novelty site.

The site is loading quicker and is making things a lot simpler, thanks.

"Digital fingerprinting of content" sounds really path-breaking! It does sound as though Attributor will be sorting out a lot of content plagiarists with this technology.

O good lets have the pix already!

Yes i agree that the loss of a service such as Whois would be a loss, so lets hope that wont happen or at least that some other regulatory authority is structured in its place.

Lets have some ghoul pix by all means!

So how was opening night?

And probably saved themselves a bunch of money.

Makes things clearer, thanks.

Good luck for your opening night:)

Fingerprint technology for Facebook? Is that even possible? Wouldn't your PC have to be enabled with the appropriate hardware or software or whatever is required?

It is a sad day when law courts are treated as a lottery ticket by litigants. Maybe it is time for some judicial activism?