RIAA and Monsanto have been PWNED!!

Today has seen a great series of events in name of copyright and patent reform, with two of the most overzealous and unethical intellectual property entities getting smacked down (plus more copyright news).

First off, while the RIAA pressured Senator Reid, sadly, to introduce and amendment to the Higher Education Act that would have unreasonably deputized the IT officials for universites to track and block P2P programs (and unfunded mandate), Reid has backed down after universities protested. Under Reid's misguided amendment, universities would have been required to do the RIAA's work for it and monitor all file-sharing activity on campus. Now, currently the copyright holder is required to do this, but this isn't good enough for such an unscrupulous trade group. Why Reid pushed for such an amendment is beyond me, despite the fact that P2P has legal uses (such as distributing open source code for software like Linux distros and for artists that want to get recognized) and despite the fact that forcing a university to arbitrarily implement a costly program is based on whether or not the RIAA has a certain school on its Top 25 (a dubious statistic, as we all know that the RIAA is terrible at catching people])

At the same time, Monsanto has just had its ass handed to it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has just rejected four Monsanto patents after being contested by the Public Patent Foundation. Among the rejected patents? The one that Monsanto has used to sue farmers who save seeds!

The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) announced on Tuesday that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected four key Monsanto patents related to genetically modified crops that PUBPAT challenged last year because the agricultural giant is using them to harass, intimidate, sue - and in some cases literally bankrupt - American farmers.

In its Office Actions rejecting each of the patents, the USPTO held that evidence submitted by PUBPAT, in addition to other prior art located by the Patent Office's Examiners, showed that Monsanto was not entitled to any of the patents.

Monsanto has filed dozens of patent infringement lawsuits asserting the four challenged patents against American farmers, many of whom are unable to hire adequate representation to defend themselves in court.

The crime these farmers are accused of is nothing more than saving seed from one year's crop to replant the following year, something farmers have done since the beginning of time.

Oh...I should also mention that Britain will not be granting virtual lifetime copyrights for music recordings to record companies. Instead, the record labels will just have to settle for a short and artist-stifling term copyright of...50 years. The good news for British music fans is this means that the greatest hits from bands such as the Beatles and The Who will start entering the public domain over the next ten years (but they will stay in copyright over here). I support having reasonable copyright terms, and 50 years is plenty. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr won't be broke just because people in the U.K. will soon be able to legally download and upload "Love Me Do" on BitTorrent or Limewire. Besides, they can always do some digital studio remixes and copyright the recordings to those.

Now, for anyone here who is disgusted with groups like the RIAA or Monsanto, keep on speaking out.