In this TEDTalk, Jean-Philippe Vergne spends sixteen minutes proving one thing: that piracy is the wrong word for mass, digital copyright infringement. Those who operate torrent and similar sites should never have been called pirates, a word charged with romance and all too easily embraced as a badge of honor and charming rebelliousness. Never mind the fact that even this ...
When my wife and I were first starting out in Seattle, we both got retail jobs, and she worked in the Eddie Bauer basement where everything was discounted due to overstocks, minor flaws, or seasonal obsolescence. Still, she had customers who approached her daily insisting that they were entitled to some further reduction from the marked price because, “See, this ...
There are few companies on the planet that can pony up a half-billion dollar fine for criminal behavior and shrug it off like an overpriced night on the town. And there are probably even fewer companies that can pay such a fine and continue to get away with the very same behavior. But then, not every company is a as ...
Yep. I’ll throw myself on this grenade. No problem. Let me say at the outset that anyone who wants to bring up the RIAA lawsuits of the aughts in context to this post can just stifle the instinct because you’re being silly. You might as well say your scorecard on American civil liberties stops with the Trail of Tears. Let’s ...
In my follow-up about Chiat/Day and the “Pirate Square” campaign, I suggested that the agency’s decision to produce the work was motivated by an opportunity to promote the Chiat/Day brand itself in a big way and for free. And the more I look at the whole business, the more I’m convinced this is what happened. According to this article in ...
