The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled against a high school student who used some interesting language to describe her school officials on her personal blog, saying that the school did not violate her First Amendment rights by punishing her for calling school officials “douchebags.”

It all started with a dispute over a battle of the bands event last year. The student council, of which Avery was the secretary, had gotten into a disagreement with school officials over an already-twice-rescheduled battle of the bands….

Bookmark It

Linux started as a hobby project. But it is now 17 years old and it has grown up, and a recent report by the Linux Foundation, which extends a series of investigations by Jonathan Corbett, shows that it is no longer a hobby, it is out in the working world.

There are two main disadvantage of locking yourself out of further developments. Most obviously you may lose out on incorporating future beneficial developments which you would otherwise get for free. Less obvious but possibly far more important,…

Bookmark It

Earlier this week, a decision by the judge presiding over Elektra v. Barker was widely misreported as providing substantial support for the argument that making a song available over a P2P network constitutes copyright infringement. Another decision rendered the same day and just brought to light by the EFF actually does come to that conclusion, an

The fact that two judges issued such different rulings on the same day shows how much new ground is being covered by the RIAA's lawsuits—in no small part due to defendants that are willing to stand up to the record…

Bookmark It