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London Games Festival – October 2007

jordan — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:54:23 +0000

The London Games Festival has events happening from the 22nd of October to the 2nd of November, with the bulk of events on the 22-26 of October. They have an IP event, the “Creating and Exploiting Games IP” seminar, is on 24th October, registration from 13.30, discussion from 14.00 until 16.00 at 10 Queen Street Place, London EC4R 1BE.

On the non-IP front, there’s Dorkfest – Console Hacks. This is a spinoff of the Dorkbot meetings. Speakers include:

Tim Hunkin, engineer, cartoonist and maker of TV’s “The Secret Life Of Machines”, discusses his seaside showcase of modified simulators and arcade games
http://www.timhunkin.com

Matthew Garrett, developer for the One Laptop Per Child project, demonstrates the platform’s gaming possibilities
http://hackronym.com/olpc/gamejam

…and hardware hacker James Larsson celebrates more than 30 years of Pong TV tennis with its first “adult-oriented” controllers, among other “don’t try this at home” inventions
http://iht.com/articles/2007/07/06/arts/blume.php

Chair: Dave Green, http://www.ntk.net

WTO gambling dispute

jordan — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:56:13 +0000

The International Herald Tribune has a great article on the dispute before the WTO on gambling between Antigua and Barbuda and the United States.
Online gambling case pits Antigua against U.S. and challenges WTO, By Gary Rivlin
It lays out the angles that you wouldn’t see in just reading the case documents. My favorite quote in the article is from Charlie Nesson of Harvard Law School:

Think of this from the WTO’s point of view. They’re this fledgling organization dominated by a huge monster in the United States. People there must be scared out of their wits at the prospects of enforcing a ruling that would instantly galvanize public opinion in the United States against the WTO.

I saw Prof. Nesson speak at this year’s iSummit in Croatia about online gaming. He’s trying to lead efforts to restore a bit of sanity to the US approach and to regulate activities like online poker rather than try to ban it. He handed out packs of Berkman Center playing cards, with which I’m playing Texas Hold ‘Em.

In contrast to the US, the UK approach has been to welcome online gambling and to try to make Britain a centre for a sensibly regulated industry. The actions and reactions with the US and the WTO will have huge effects on this industry, and may encourage even more operators to the UK.

From Japanese YouTube to Posner on Wikipedia

jordan — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:48:23 +0000

Been busy for the past few days working on materials for the Free Trade Project. Check out the latest posts at the blog. Here are some of the links and news that I’ve been reading for the week.
YouTube is talking to Japanese content owners over copyright licensing. Many Japanese publishers had complained this fall about unauthorised content on the site. InfoWorld Link.

Sweden is opening up an ‘embassy’ in Second Life. It’s more of a marketing ploy than anything. CNet Link.

EBay decides to ban the sale of virtual goods. IGE, I’m sure, are cracking out the magnums of champagne. Discuss over at Terra Nova. CNet story.

The Norwegian Ombudsman has declared Apple’s DRM illegal. Out-Law.com story.

In net regulation news, the UK is attempting to put regulate advertising by non-EU online gambling companies in order to clamp down on shoddy sites. Out-Law.com story.

Former Austinite and EFF-Austin founder Bruce Sterling will be speaking at Freedom 2 Connect. F2C site.

Speaking of EFF-Austin, my former co-boardmember Silona Bonewald is getting great things off the ground with The League of Technical Voters. Check out their site.

In more wiki news, Wikipedia is being cited by judges back in the states. Even heavyweight Judge Posner weighs in. Out-law.com story.

Wii launches news channel…

jordan — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 11:00:23 +0000

…in an attempt to get users to turn on their consoles more often. Basically it is a feed sent to the console via the internet –Nintendo is introducing a browser as well. Are we in for another round of that great tech buzz word ‘convergence’?

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