Jason Schultz asks, "Will they sue kids who give competitors' toys at birthday parties where they sing the song?"

The words "Happy Birthday" can no longer be legally used if they are pinned to any other product, as a private Chinese company has claimed to have registered them as its trademark in 25 countries, including the US, Japan and European Union members this month.

Disney's being sued by a kids' hospital that has the rights to the Peter Pan novels. The hospital says that the 1998 Sonny Bono term-extension (a law that Disney bought in order to ensure that its earliest cartoons didn't enter the public domain) covers the Peter Pan stories and so Disney owes it royalties on a sequel that a publishing subsidiary put out. — Read the rest

A court in St Louis today ruled against EFF in the "BNETD" case, in which we were fighting for the right to write and use your own game-servers that run with the games you buy. We're appealing, but this sucks: it's not much of a leap from this to deciding that tools used to tweak a game's performance for creating machinima (see below) is also a crime. — Read the rest

In Wired News today, a report I filed on Microsoft's new music download service:

A help page on the beta site provides instructions describing how users can enable MSN Music downloads to play on their iPods.Microsoft's recent criticism of Apple for not licensing iPod functionality to third-party tech companies is not without irony, given past accusations of anticompetitive behavior that resulted in Microsoft agreeing last year to pay out $1.8 billion to settle consumer antitrust suits.

Snipped from 5ives:

Five things I'll be doing while you're at Burning Man

1.carefully stewarding my pallor

2. repeatedly watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on the TiVo

3. defecating indoors — copiously, often, and without queueing

4. not tongue-kissing a sweaty Java programmer in clown makeup named "Shanti"

5.

MSN Music launched today. From a CBS Marketwatch report:

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled details of a new service for downloading digital music, placing it squarely in competition with Apple's rival iTunes music service. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft will launch a preview version of its new MSN Music service tomorrow that will allow users to legally download songs mostly for 99 cents each.

Ernest Miller and Jason Schultz latch on to this great quote from MPAA hack Fritz Attaway:

"If we can't ban bad behavior and we can't ban bad technology, what is it we're supposed to do, stand back and let people steal our product?"

On today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I explore the odd universe of MP3 blogs with with host Noah Adams. On these personal websites, music lovers trade and comment on rare finds, mashups, and unusual twists on familiar favorites — and recently, major record labels have been taking notice in an unexpected way. — Read the rest

My cow-orker Jason Schultz is running EFF's patent-busting project, and high on his list of damaging Internet patents is Acacia Research's patent on streaming media. Acacia has pursued this patent by targetting porn companies and extracting settlements in order to fund a war-chest that it is now using to sue bigger media entities — presumably this trail ends with orgs like the BBC, CBC, and Live365. — Read the rest

My cow-orker Jason Schultz reports on a breaking new DMCA horripilation: a court has ordered a company to stop fixing tape-drives because in so doing, it makes unauthorized access of a copyrighted "Maintenance Code."

A district court in Boston has used the DMCA to grant a preliminary injunction against a third party service vendor who tried to fix StorageTek tape library backup systems for legitimate purchasers of the system.

NEC has announced that its batteries will have cryptographic authentication schemes to prevent "low-quality counterfeits." Jason Schultz comments on the way that the DMCA turns such a sytem into a license to screw your customers by shutting out competitors who make cheaper batteries:

The software will be introduced in Japanese digital cameras by year's end and is expected to be used in 50 million units by 2007.

My cow-orker Jason Schultz made the NYT this weekend in a piece about EFF's fight to bust crappy Internet patents. My favorite bit of the article is this bit of deadpan juxtaposition:

Another patent on the foundation's list covers a way to make telephone calls over the Internet.

Following up on this earlier Boingboing post about a downloadable Constitution for your iPod, the EFF's Jason Schultz says, "How cool would it to start an audio project having famous lawyers/judges reading various parts of the U.S. Constitution for download, similar to the distributed audio project for Lessig's latest book?" — Read the rest

BoingBoing pal boogah says:

LayerOne Technology Conference will be going on this Saturday and Sunday [June 12-13] at the Westin LA Airport. We've got a grip of really great speakers lined up for our first year… NTK's Danny O'Brien will be flogging his Life Hacks talk that's won over crowds at everywhere from Emerging Tech to NotCon.

My cow-orker Jason Schultz identifies a nice bit of Fox statistical chicanery:

Among today's top stories, a new "Fox News Poll" that says 33% of those surveyed think the media is too easy on Kerry and 42% think the media is too tough on Bush.

The new iTunes has stricter DRM than the last version, limiting the number of times you can burn your playlists to seven (it used to be ten), and detecting and blocking similar playlists. Jason Schultz has some good ranty analysis about what this means:

So after one year and 70 million songs, $0.99 now buys you less rather than more — seven hard burns instead of ten soft ones.

BoingBoing buddy boogah says:

A few of us have been working overtime to get a little technology conference together in Los Angeles. We've tried to make LayerOne an event for both the geek set and the suit in IT and our roster of speakers can back those claims up.

Jason Schultz analyzes the recording industry's withdrawal of its perp-walk "Clean Slate" program.

The RIAA has finally seen the light with regard to its "Clean Slate" program, which offered false amnesty, or shamnesty, to people who admitted to file sharing. Citing the success of its "education" campaign, the group has abruptly cancelled the program.

Responding to yesterday's post about WiFi coming to the SF Giants' home ballpark, a BoingBoing reader who may or may not want to be anonymous writes: "If I take my Powerbook to the ballpark and plug in my iSight Camera with it pointed towards the game, then isn't that an illegal broadcast of Major League Baseball? — Read the rest

Donna Wentworth's excellent tech-and-copyright blog, Copyfight, is now an all-star Corante-hosted group-blog, with contributions from Elizabeth Rader, Ernest Miller, Jason Schultz, Aaron Swartz, and Wendy Seltzer. This is the Crooked Timber or Terra Nova or Many2Many of copyright blogs.

Link