Welcome to CopyrightWatch.ca, Canada's home for common sense and the straight goods on digital copyright law. This blog is supported by a team of academics, public interest advocates, and creators concerned that copyright serve the interests of ordinary Canadians.

Linked from Lessig's blog.

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The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to let NASA continue buying Russian spaceships to deliver astronauts and supplies to the space station until 2012.

Soyuz is way cheaper than STS for logistics missions.

House Passes Bill to Allow NASA to Buy Soyuz Spacecraft

In hiring Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, to remake the monster classic "King Kong," Universal Pictures took a daring leap, paying him $20 million to direct, produce and be the co-writer of the film.

With seven weeks to go before the movie's release, the risks are becoming clearer. After seeing a version of the film in late September at Mr. Jackson's studio in New Zealand, Universal executives agreed to release "King Kong" at a length of three hours.

A Big Gorilla Weighs In

SBC Communications, which is awaiting regulatory approval to buy AT&T, announced today that it will adopt the AT&T name once the acquisition is approved.

It just keeps getting weirder and weirder...

AT&T Brand Lives On as SBC Adopts Name

Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a group of students at an anti-Israel event on Wednesday that Israel "must be wiped off the map" and that attacks by Palestinians would destroy it, the ISNA news agency reported.

Iran's New President Says Israel 'Must Be Wiped Off the Map'

Two leading science organizations have denied the Kansas board of education permission to use their copyrighted materials in the state's proposed new science standards because of the standards' critical approach to evolution.

The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association said the much-disputed new standards "will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world."

Wow!

2 Science Groups Say Kansas Can't Use Their Evolution Papers

Coincidentally or not, Ms. Miers's withdrawal, ostensibly over the principle of separation of powers as it relates to White House papers, is the very scenario that some conservative commentators have suggested as a face-saving ploy for the nominee and the White House. And while Mr. McClellan insisted that Ms. Miers had decided on her own to withdraw, there were no indications that the White House had tried to dissuade her.

Like Tom's explanation of the filibuster showdown a few months ago. Now things may turn ugly if the fundies demand the nominee who will overturn Roe v. Wade that they think the last election entitled them to and the dems dig in their heels. The administration probably lacks the political capital at this point to shout that down.

Miers Withdraws Nomination for Supreme Court

A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to modulate, or switch on and off, a beam of laser light up to a 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry.

Engineers Report Breakthrough in Laser Beam Technology

McDonald's Corp. announced Tuesday that it will display nutrition information on the packaging for most of its menu items next year.

In the 1960s, if you'd suggested that cigarette companies would be successfully sued for product liability, you'd have been a laughingstock. McDonalds and co know that they're next.

McDonald's Plans to Put Nutrition Information on Packages

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based start-up this week is set to unveil its plans for a microprocessor based around the Power architecture--the same architecture behind chips in IBM servers and current Macs--that consumes only a fraction of the energy of existing chips.

Looks like a bunch of old Alpha and ARM guys from DEC have gotten back together...

Start-up plans new energy-efficient processor