There’s been a lot of speculation, including by me, on the question as to why TBWAChait/Day is the agency behind what is being called “Pirate Square” by folks in the artists’ rights community.  And I feel foolish for overlooking the most obvious explanation, which is selling the agency itself.  Ad agencies spend a significant amount of money and internal resources ...

I am a son of the advertising business.  The year I was born, my father was a senior writer  working for Guy Day in Los Angeles prior to the 1968 merger with Jay Chiat that would produce the industry powerhouse known as Chiat/Day and is now known as TBWAChiat/Day. In the late 1960s, my father’s contemporaries in general, and Chiat/Day ...

There is certainly no shortage of copyright in the news these days, and readers of this blog might wonder about my silence on subjects like the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kirtsaeng or the testimony before Congress by Register of Copyright Maria Pallante calling for the next great overhaul of the law. For starters, when I began writing IOM, I never ...

Ownership is the subject of “On the Media’s” recent broadcast from WNYC, and the show’s producers talked to a variety of voices about the ever-shifting tensions between intellectual property rights and disruptive technologies.  One segment featured a conversation with Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics, and the theme was a familiar one — the inevitable disruption of manufacturing by 3D ...

Just a quick post this morning regarding this story in yesterday’s New York Times about Google’s admission to violations of privacy as a component of its Street View project.  For those who haven’t followed this story, the crux of it is that while Google’s vehicles have been combing the streets, mapping the world through pictures (something that is admittedly very ...

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