Our own Professor Jonathan Ezor presented during webOS Developer Day on Copyright Law for Developers, with the description:

This session is an introduction to the business side of developing apps for the global market. It covers the issues surrounding intellectual property and copyright laws and the implications of the development and deployment tactics used. Learn the impact of decisions such as open source vs. closed, incorporating the work of others into your app, porting and cloning apps from other platforms, and controlling ownership of your end product.

There really was a wide range of topics that anyone (not just mobile app developers) should really pay attention to.  Continue reading after the break for some highlights from the talk, along with the full video (to be added shortly).

Update: video is online and after the break!

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After a rulemaking process lasting more than a year, the U.S. Copyright Office (which is part of the Library of Congress) has issued new rules about the types of activities, which includes some smartphone-related ones, that it feels do not violate the anti-circumvention rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). 

By way of background, the DMCA, in addition to clarifying how online activities would be treated under U.S. copyright law, created a new prohibition against circumventing (going around) a copyright holder’s protections, whether code-based or otherwise, in addition to any claims of infringement. Not only is it illegal to do this circumvention, but it’s also illegal to "traffic" in technologies for doing so (which is how the people who published the DeCSS Linux DVD decryption algorithm also got into trouble). The problem is that, while the anti-circumvention rules may help to prevent piracy, they can also make it harder to do things that are otherwise legal, such as excerpting a small portion of a copy-protected DVD movie to show as part of a review, or creating tools that work well on locked-down smartphones. As a result, the Copyright Office proposed and has now finalized carveouts for some of these activities.

Among the six exceptions to the DMCA (to be published on Tuesday, July 27 in the Federal Register) are two that are of immediate relevance to our community:

(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

(3) Computer programs, in the form of firmware or software, that enable used wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is initiated by the owner of the copy of the computer program solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and access to the network is authorized by the operator of the network.

How does this affect webOS? Well, there are already plenty of open source components in webOS and beyond that, it’s much more accessible than, say, iOS. While Palm and HP have been substantially more friendly to patchers, there are still elements of the operating system and especially the third-party applications bundled with it whose interoperability and background function is, shall we say, of interest to some. Having this new guidance from the Copyright Office may provide some comfort to our developer community that their exploration might not be as potentially hazardous to their legal health as they’d previously thought.

Still – it’s fun to note that webOS is more open than some open source projects and that the very idea of having to jailbreak or root a webOS is kind of silly – that access is baked in and documented for any and all to use right out of the box.

More coverage: Android Central & What jailbreaking/unlocking DMCA means for end users at TiPb

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As we have previously reported, Aaron Ardiri, who had long ago ported the classic video game Lemmings to palmOS, had been liveblogging the efforts of his games studio Mobile 1up to re-port it to both iOS and webOS. Unfortunately, things are now on hold due to cease and desist its efforts to bring these versions of Lemmings to the public after hearing from the lawyers from Sony, which currently owns the copyright to the game..

For now, development is halted, and we won’t be seeing the game on webOS unless either Sony publishes it itself, or Ardiri and his team can work out a deal to do so.

while are did this as a tribute to the game – we can only hope that Sony actually does a conversion for platforms like iPhone and Palm Pre in the near future. we will open communication with Sony to explore the rights for these platforms!

(Unfortunately, Adriri’s old PalmOS version doesn’t currently run under MotionApps’ Classic.)

Source: Mobile1up blog

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It has been a long, strange trip, but Internet Radio (specifically Pandora) has finally been pulled from the jaws of oblivion, and will live to fight another day.  

For the past two years, Pandora and other Internet Radio sites have been on the brink of destruction due to a campaign by SoundExchange to hike streaming fees to exceedingly high levels. Since the crusade first began, there have been numerous flirtations with a solution, but nothing substantial until now.

The meat of the deal centers on a compromise by SoundExchange to reduce the per-song-per-listener rates by 40-50%. In exchange, Pandora pay either 25% of its total US revenue, or the per-song-per-listener fee, depending on which is higher. As a result, Pandora will be implementing a 40-hour per month cap on users of its free subscription service (though supposedly this will affect about 10% of all subscribers). Should you reach this cap, you’ll need to pay a $0.99 fee for unlimited listening for the remainder of the month.  Users of Pandora’s paid subscription service, Pandora One, will be unaffected by this change.

It’s good to know that our favorite Internet streaming services will survive, and that the music industry is willing to make some compromises. What are your thoughts on the news? Let us know in the comments!

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