Showtime and the Visigoths.

Round up of interesting things:

Showtime and the Visigoths from IP Central.

"Everyone in the IP debate is focused on songs, songs, songs, and now to an extent movies. But broadcast and cable TV shows, business software, books, video games, quilting patterns -- just about any intellectual property -- can be digitized. Thus, just about any intellectual property that currently is offered either on a purchase or subscription model is vulnerable to the threat of BitTorrent and its successors."

ID theft amongst children is apparently spiraling out of control.

Obscurity in patent matters. INDICARE.

"Abstract: This editorial presumes that DRM patents are a public policy issue which at the end of the value chain has an impact on the consumer experience with protected digital content. After a brief general characterization of the "social invention" called patents, DRM patents are addressed and open questions are raised which deserve further analysis. Surprisingly even seemingly simple questions like the one what the meaning of "DRM patent" is, have no easy answer. The second part of the editorial introduces the content of this INDICARE Monitor issue and draws your attention to a slight change of our publication concept."

You Could Put Someone's Eye Out With That Thing. Susan Crawford. Recommended.

"The big copyright tussle, the ancient battle between content and technology, is going into a new phase. Now it's all about product liability.

Here's how the argument goes:

1. Failing to design something so as to constrain copyright infringement is just like failing to design something so as to avoid injury. When the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by the adoption of a reasonable alternative design, failure to use that alternative design renders the product not reasonably safe..."

Digital TV's Hollywood showdown MIT Technology Review.

Publius, RIP?

"EFF's own Fred von Lohmann has a monthly column at Law.com, and fortunately we have the freedom to publish these columns in their entirety here at the EFF website. This month's column is "Publius, RIP?" -- a look at why it's critically important to our society that we preserve anonymous speech on the Internet."