Today for those of you in Austin. These events are always fun, and this year looks really interesting. (FYI, I used to be on the EFF-Austin board…)

For those who still don’t have plans, EFF-Austin is co-sponsoring a SXSW party this Monday at Scholz Garten. This year’s shindig (titled Plutopia) includes music by Carl Stone, Intimate Stranger, and David Demaris; The Heather Gold Show, a talk by Bill McKibben, the Lance Van de Kamp Show featuring Maggie Duval, Omega Monster Patrol, along with a diverse set of artists, hackers, bots, and poets. Admission is $10 at the door, or you can get in free if you’re in sci-fi costume and/or you have a SXSW badge.

More information can be found here:
http://plutopia.org
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/417686/

We also still have room for a few more volunteers to take tickets at the door. If you are able to help out, please let me know (matt@effaustin.org) so I can put you on the guest list.

Please save the date for the Yale Information Society Project’s (Yale ISP) third annual Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K3) on September 8-10, 2008. In a departure from precedent, please note that this year’s conference will take place in Geneva, Switzerland.

The location and timing will enable this year’s event to reach out to a significant new audience of international organizations and policy-makers, particularly those delegates preparing for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assembly a few weeks later.

This year’s conference will also benefit from the collaboration of several new partners in contributing to the conference program, which will feature three days of plenary panels, as well as workshops for smaller working groups.

As in past years, A2K3 will be free and open to the public, but advance registration will be required; more information will follow in due course. We hope you will mark your calendars and plan to join us in Geneva this September.

An event I wish, but will be unable, to attend:

American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property; Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law; and Women and the Law Program present the Fifth Annual Symposium on IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections. The symposium explores the rich intersection of intellectual property law and feminist theory.

April 4, 2008

10am-4pm

American University Washington College of Law

4801 Massachusetts Avenue, NW * Washington, DC 20016

Room 528

This year’s symposium will feature presentations by Anita Allen, Rebecca Tushnet, Olufunmilayo Arewa, Séverine Dusollier, Kevin Collins, Ian Kerr, Laurence Rassel, Debora Halbert, Kevin Jerome Greene and Francesca Coppa.

A full listing of paper topics and commenters, webcast address, registration and travel information, and copies of published symposium papers from prior years is available at:
http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/ipgender.cfm.

We encourage you to register at
http://www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm
if you plan to attend so that we may accurately gauge demand for the complimentary lunch we will serve to all attendees.

Hi everyone — I’m going to have a reduced posting schedule for the month of March due to personal and professional commitments over this month, but I will return in April to a regular posting schedule. My posts here will probably be limited to link collections and maybe the occasional note. Thanks!

Quick announcement to say that yesterday(28th February 2008) The AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the University of Edinburgh will be now known as SCRIPT. SCRIPT incidentally was the original name of the centre. Following the fine tradition of acronyms everywhere, SCRIPT used to stand for something but now doesn’t stand for anything.

Read more at the place formerly known as the Centre’s website.

Intellectual Property Watch » World Customs Organization Recommends Far-Reaching New Rules On IP

Snip:

A Brazilian diplomat suggested that the governments from leading industrialised countries in Europe and North America are aware that they would be unable to win sufficient support at the World Trade Organisation to extend the scope of TRIPS. The diplomat argued that rich countries are using the WCO, a separate body, to introduce measures that go beyond TRIPS “through the backdoor.”

These are my links for 25th February 2008 through 27th February 2008:

• The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy ? and Their Open Source Alternatives | WHDb – Great list!
• Copyright levy under EU spotlight | OUT-LAW.COM – More levies!
• Conservative copyright minister accused of breaching copyright law – “One problem: the Conservatives didn’t bother to get permission from the band or from Warner/Chappell Music Inc., which holds the publishing rights to the song.”
• InfoWorld | Double-Plus Open Microsoft – “They have defined a set of principles around interoperability, open connections, standards and data portability. And they’ll be publishing detailed specs on the company’s APIs, protocols and file formats to provide greater transparency and support for in
• Patent Troll Tracker: Blogger, Revealed – Unmasked due to a 10,000 dollar bounty…
• IPM 2.1 – “Following a first public consultation on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) held in 2006, the Commission has, through its Communication of 15th March 2007(1), committed itself to address some of the issues expressed by stakeholders regarding the risks