Joe Biden, the man chosen by Barack Obama to become his vice-president, seems to be a strong supporter of copyright. His enthusiasm for civil rights seems to be a bit less.

Bad news for consumers who've bought their digital music through a site that supported Microsoft's Playforsure DRM (MSN Music) as the software company is stopping support of the format.

Scientist Rufus Pollock has published an article in which he claims that the optimum life span for copyright is around 14 years.

I just got a newsletter from X-Gaming that contained a startling announcement: The US Copyright Office has legalized abandonware. Or has it? I went to the US Copyright Office website and recognized at once that this claim is a bit exaggerated. Actually, what's happened is that the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA has been relaxed a bit regarding certain types of works. That's the part of the DMCA that makes it illegal to reverse-engineer or to do anything that attempts to bypass the copy protection schemes introduced by software companies. Here's the part about "abandonware":