Daily Archive

Every day I keep adding open tabs to my browser with interesting articles on issues related to governance across borders, hoping to find the time to blog about them; only rarely, I actually manage to do so. This is why I am starting the new year with a new series called “Tagged Tabs”. To remove at least some of the open tabs in my browser I will (un)regularly present a list of commented links to interesting articles elsewhere.

• “Copyrights vs Human Rights“: former Sun Microsystem’s open source evangelist Simon Phipps criticizes “Three-Strikes” laws for equating “loss of a significant right with a real but trivial civil matter”. I could not agree more.
• “Apple removes VLC from App Store, GPL to blame“: having discussed problems of license (in)compatibility previously on this blog (see, for example, “Money Buys You Standards?“), incompatibility of licenses with certain business models or infrastructures seems critical, as well.
• “LG and Windows Phone 7: High Expectations, Low Sales“: it is almost an irony of history that Microsoft seems to face the same challenge in the smartphone market that all its competitors face in the desktop market: the applications barrier to entry (see, for example, Prieger and Hu 2007). Nevertheless, Microsoft’s desktop earnings will allow to fight for a long, long time.
• “‘Comes With Music’ no more for most Nokia phones“: irony #2: Nokia’s service “Comes With Music”, one of the last examples of DRM in the music business (see “DRM in the Music Industry: Revival or Retreat?“), will be discontinued in 27 of 33 countries and only survive in countries with high levels of piracy such as China, where Nokia abstained from using DRM in the first place.

(leonhard)