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Justin Levine has an interesting blog post up about a book I hadn't heard of, called The Monster Engine . The author, Dave Devries, took children's drawings of monsters, and turned them into paintings that use the identical line structure of the kid's drawings (he projects them on the wall and then draws over them). Apparently, Devries' work is quite popular, and people have talked about it on the internet for years: Seems pretty cool. But Levine is wondering about the copyright issues involved in all of this: Given the fact that: There is no doubt that the children's original doodles are protected by copyright for their entire life, plus 70 additional years. There is no doubt that Devries' paintings of the doodles are 'derivative works' stemming from the original creations of the children. Do you believe that Devries should be forced to get formal copyright releases from each and every one of the kids in question? Do you think he has done so? ...

Rupert Murdoch and his minions at News Corp. have been going around banging the drum that Google and others are "stealing" from News Corp. newspapers by linking to their stories and sending them traffic. But at the same time, they seem to have no problem totally taking credit for stories that they source from elsewhere. Late last year, the Times (of London), which is a News Corp. paper was caught publishing someone's blog post without their permission at all. And then there's the News Corp.-owned NY Post, which last year had a reporter admit that it was the paper's "policy" not to credit bloggers as the sources for stories. After that story came out, the NY Post insisted that wasn't true, but it appears the paper has been caught doing it again. Andrew Fine alerted us to the news that suggests the NY Post used one of his posts as inspiration for a story. Fine had written about the rather disconcerting sign in a Chuck E. Cheese in Harlem . That blog post got some attention ...

From TechCrunch: Yesterday, [Marc] Andreessen was in New York City and we met up. We got to talking about how media companies are handling the digital disruption of the Internet when he brought up the Cortes analogy. In particular, he was talking about print media such as newspapers and magazines, and his longstanding recommendation that they should shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly. You gotta burn the boats, he told me, you gotta commit. His point is that if traditional media companies don t burn their own boats, somebody else will. Read more at TechCrunch
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Another Reason You'll Actually Miss Newspapers Internet Passes Newspapers To Become Second-Most Popular Source Of News (After TV) Study: Newspapers Are Losing Their Audience Online, Too

Lots of folks have been sending in the "news" about news consumption from a new Pew study . A lot of the attention being paid to the study focuses on how more people are using the internet for news that newspapers, but that was an obvious trend. What I find a bit surprising is how few people seem to be talking about one of the other findings: that so many people are actively involved in "shared news." That is, they either share news links or get news links from others on a regular basis. This is something we've discussed for the better part of a decade, but which many in the news business still don't get. When they put up paywalls and even registration walls to limit access to the news, they make it difficult to impossible for people interact with the news the way they want to. It shows that publishers still have a mentality that they are "delivering" a final product to consumers -- whereas most readers now think of themselves as a part of the process, hoping to spread the ...

Here's an illustrated guide to the 20 iPhone patents that Apple's suing HTC over . They're kind of a doozy. To look at the specific claims Apple is filing for, check out the full Delaware District Court and ITC filings . Take a look at Apple's smartphone patents
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IT BEGINS: Apple Sues Google-Phone Maker HTC For Stealing iPhone Technology Apple Patent Published LAST NIGHT Might Reveal How We'll Use The Table
Apple's Alleged Patent Infractions Will Be Investigated By The ITC