“The Pirate Bay is speech.” This is a quote from one of the gurus perched on the mountaintop of techno-utopianism, John Perry Barlow, who appeared yesterday as a member of a panel discussion held at CES2013 in Las Vegas. The subject of the discussion was “A pro-artist/pro-innovation approach to copyright,” although the panel did not include anyone representing any counterpoint ...
In response to the tragedy in Newtown, CT the idea was raised by news commentators and in the blogosphere that the names of people who commit heinous crimes should be de-publicized in order to deny them even a posthumous fame we believe to be a constituent of their twisted motives. It is hard to imagine, though, that even if we ...
Running a Small Town Paper in the Digital Age As 2012 was coming to a close, I decided to have a chat with our local Editor-in-Chief of The Columbia Paper, which serves a small, rural community in the Hudson Valley. In addition to being the founder and editor of this paper, Teasdale was also part of a new media vanguard ...
I’ve quoted Lanier several times recently, and I highly recommend his book You Are Not a Gadget. Lanier has a new book coming out and is featured in this profile by Ron Rosenbaum for Smithsonian. Lanier is one of the architects of the Web as we currently know it; and he is concerned that we have designed Web 2.0 to ...
First, I’ll lay some cards on the table: I believe, as many do, that the contemporary view of the Second Amendment exceeds common sense — that like the Third Amendment, it was written in a time and for a purpose that has been outdated for more than a century. Yet, because it is etched into the Bill of Rights, the ...
