If judged only by its name, the Pirate Party might seem as wacky as the UK‘s long-established Monster Raving Loony Party. Actually, there are lots of Pirate Parties around the world, affiliated under the banner of Pirate Parties International, a Belgium-registered NGO. Although a relatively new party, the Pirate Party has representatives serving in elected [more...]
It’s hard to imagine that such a commonplace song as Happy Birthday to You is still under copyright, but in most countries that’s the case. The copyright is owned by the Time Warner conglomerate, and if you sing it in a public place (such as at a restaurant) you are liable to pay a royalty [more...]
Every country has a notion of the public domain—where creative and scientific works older than a certain age are available to everyone as part of humanity’s shared culture. But what if you want to dedicate your own creative or scientific work to humanity? Many countries don’t allow you to do that, and automatically apply full [more...]
Suppose you have an image and you want to find similar images on the web? This kind of search is known as image content search, or reverse image search. The technology to do this has been gradually maturing over the years, and at last it seems to be working usefully. Image search engine TinEye is [more...]
The Convention on Modern Liberty is a broad movement taking place in the UK, with the stated goal of reversing the slide of the United Kingdom into a “Big Brother” state. Like any broad movement, it has brought together a wide range of supporting organizations. There are the “usual suspects”, such as Amnesty International and [more...]
You might assume that a book as old as the Bible is available for anyone to copy freely, but that is not always the case. When we access the text of the Bible it is not from the original scrolls but from a more recent translation or rewriting – and some of those versions are [more...]
If you use a commercial recording as the soundtrack for a video that you upload to YouTube, you risk the removal of the video or the stripping of the soundtrack if YouTube determines that your audio track is not properly licensed. By choosing appropriately-licensed music you can have a soundtrack that’s free, legal and guilt-free. [more...]