Bits and pieces

Further to John's post yesterday ("Liability in Italy -- Yahoo! held responsible", here), the text of the decision is now available, naturally in Italian, on Interlex.it, here.  Apparently the initial reports of this decision were somewhat overstated and the end of the world has not yet arrived for ISPs: the ruling is a 'procedimento cautelare', a sort of preliminary or summary judgment and not a full decision. No further reasoning will therefore be produced. The judge ordered Yahoo! to remove the links to infringing websites since the company had knowledge of the infringement because it received notices sent by the plaintiff (PFA Film srl) but had failed to activate the take-down procedure, became liable. Google Italia and Microsoft (who were also parties) were not found responsible since they did not administer their engines directly; they were held entitled to receive compensation of the costs of the judgment from PFA (thanks, Gaetano Dimita, for the link and the explanation).

This one seemed
quite nice, but
it has apparently
been taken ...

Having stuck with the portrait of Queen Anne (she of the Act of Anne) since April 2009, the 1709 Blog has decided to dispense with her services and get itself a real logo.  If you fancy your talents as a logo designer, please send your entry to Jeremy here with the subject line "1709 logo", and remember to let the blog have an irrevocable non-exclusive licence to use it on the blog and for its promotions. A prize, in the form of a copy of International Copyright by Paul Goldstein and Bernt Hugenholtz, will go to the best effort received by midnight on Sunday 3 April.

... or do they?

"Do bad things happen to works when they fall into the public domain?"  Further to Professor Paul J. Heald's thoroughly entertaining and instructive seminar last week (noted here), the 1709 Blog can report that Paul's PowerPoints are now available here.