250,000 * .004 * $300 = $300,000, not $30 million. I think someone confused 0.4% with 40%.

Somehow she managed to win the 1996 Bram Stoker Prize for a "2009 novel". But the "(P.S.)" was removed by the time machine, and the protagonist was renamed from Zombie to Quentin P.

Perry says:

And what is the interesting part of the auction? A backup CD full of AWA intellectual property. If someone sues him over selling that CD and infringing upon their IP, then he knows who currently owns the IP, and he can in discovery find out how they obtained it—providing the evidence needed to file his own lawsuit.

It sounds like a bit of a gamble, though: What if, say, the customer lists and the patents went to different places? Then the owners of the former could sue him, but he would not get the information he's looking for.

Here's a choropleth map based on the first table. Unfortunately the map generator doesn't seem to handle non-integers, so "1" really means "1.0 to 1.999" and so on.

Take a look at the last two columns of table 1. I would hardly call 1.7% of the workforce in Mississippi versus 6.4% of the workforce in Massachusetts (and nearly 11% in DC) "no concentration". The hotspots aren't the three most populous states, though: Map

I found the answer oddly specific, particularly given that I was answering about my native dialect, not the common dialect in the place I live. Trying again with completely different answers, followed by looking at the page source, confirmed my suspicions: it uses GeoIP, completely ignoring your responses.

It appears I was wrong, anyway, with regards to US law. IP licensees are specifically allowed to retain their rights to the IP even if the contract is rejected: 11 USC 365(n). It may still be a problem in other jurisdictions.

Unless a bankruptcy court or the receiver can terminate the license (as a contract entered into by a non-bankrupt entity). Apparently this is an issue in Germany at least; there have been some attempts to make an exception for open source licenses, but I don't believe those have been successful yet.

As I understand it (I am not a lawyer), under US bankruptcy law the same holds: IP licenses are typically "executory contracts" (there are continuing obligations on both sides) and can be either assumed or rejected (terminated) by the trustee with court approval. A licensee would be able to sue for monetary damages, but not to continue the license. It might be possible to argue that a particular free software license doesn't meet the criteria to be an executory contract, but I have no idea how likely it would be for a court to accept such an argument.

This is why you shouldn't work on free software that requires you to hand over your copyright. This includes GNU software as well. Of course the FSF would be ideologically opposed to selling their copyrights to a proprietary software company, but what happens if one day donations dry up and they go bankrupt? Then the purchasers of the assets would be perfectly entitled to relicense your code however they want. Even if a bankrupt FSF tried to sell their assets to free-software-friendly companies, the court would probably block that if a proprietary software company made a higher offer. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions, the bankruptcy trustee, administrator, or court can terminate existing licenses—meaning that users couldn't even use an older version of the software, since they would no longer have a license to do so.

This is why you shouldn't work on free software that requires you to hand over your copyright. This applies to the Free Software Foundation, too. Of course the FSF would be ideologically opposed to selling their copyrights to a proprietary software company, but what happens if one day donations dry up and they go bankrupt? Then the purchasers of the assets would be perfectly entitled to relicense your code however they want. Even if a bankrupt FSF tried to sell their assets to free-software-friendly companies, the court would probably block that if a proprietary software company made a higher offer. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions, the bankruptcy trustee, administrator, or court can terminate existing licenses—meaning that users couldn't even use an older version of the software, since they would no longer have a license to do so.

It doesn't violate copyright, it violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions—exactly the thing that the current proposal would change. Part of the proposed change:

It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with a work protected under this title if the purpose of such circumvention is to engage in a use that is not an infringement of copyright under this title.

Circumventing an access control measure was never (by itself) an "infringement of copyright": It is a separate offense created by the DMCA.