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Rob Knop's Blog -- ramblings and rants about astronomy, cosmology, science education, general nerdism, and anything else.
Rob Knop earned a PhD in Physics from Caltech in 1997, and did a 5-year post-doc with the Supernova Cosmology Project, and contributed to the discovery of the accelerating Universe. He was an assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt for 6 years before scattering out of academia. He now works for Linden Lab, the producers of Second LIfe. (Note: this is not an official site of Linden Lab! Although I work for Linden Lab, all content in this blog is posted without the review or approval of Linden Lab. All statements and opinions expressed here are my own.)
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Category: Intellectual Property
An hour or so ago I heard a story on NPR about California's new "Dead Celebrities" law. In a nutshell, it allows the heirs of a celebrity to control the use of that celebrity's image after said celebrity's death... even...
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:51 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
DRM stands for "digital restrictions management". (Those who are in the business of peddling it as something positive will tell you it's "digital rights management," but the former is really a better descriptive name.) It is software that prevents you...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:45 PM • 25 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
You may have heard about the amendment proposed to a Higher Education act by Harry Reid that would make colleges responsible for enforcing RIAA and MPAA policy. The text of the amendment is absolutely every bit as scary as the...
Posted by Rob Knop at 8:37 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Rant
Because, unlike what happens with copyright violation, students at Kansas University would at least be given due process and the right to a trial in which they could defend themselves if accused of murder. Oh, and P.S., just like Josh's...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:02 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
Provocative title, eh? I expect many people to instinctively react as angrily to this as I do to the empty clause "intellectual property is property". However, the clause "copyright is censorship" is actually true. What is copyright? It is a...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:55 PM • 33 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
Scientific papers, like all other sorts of writing or creative expression, are covered by copyright. And, this is potentially a very bad thing. Copyright grants a lot of sweeping rights to the writers of a paper, or the producers of...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:42 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
One of my pet peeves is when, in an attempt to help convey to others the seriousness of respecting copyrights, patents, and trademarks, somebody says, "Intellectual property is property!" This is often followed by an emotional appeal that just as...
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:52 PM • 32 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
I guess we should excuse Wiley now, because they've backed down from pointing their lawyers at Shelly Potential cynic that I am, I have several residual thoughts on the issue. Thought #1: I really want to believe what was in...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:47 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
Fair use? If it benefits the progress of science or the dissemination of scientific knowledge, it really ought to be fair use, no matter what. But when it's cropping out a piece of a figure for an illustration in an...
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:40 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Intellectual Property
I love the way Cory Doctorow expresses it in this BoingBoing post: Now, whenever I write about trademarks, I get a bunch of emails asserting the voodoo theory of trademark: every conceivable use of a trademark has to be policed...
Posted by Rob Knop at 6:08 PM • 10 Comments •
