This is a piece I wrote as a guest post for The Copyright Alliance. It got the folks over at TechDirt into a lather, but I suspect that’s because it wasn’t read or read very carefully by most of them.   Not only have Copyright and Free Speech coexisted peacefully for the entire history of the Republic, but I would ...

No doubt, the U.S. Pirate Party will be in a caffeinated kerfuffle over yesterday’s upholding by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston of the $675,000 fine being levied at Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs several years ago.  And no doubt anyone under the age of about 35, who very likely has a lot more ...

No doubt, the U.S. Pirate Party will be in a caffeinated kerfuffle over yesterday’s upholding by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston of the $675,000 fine being levied at Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs several years ago.  And no doubt anyone under the age of about 35, who very likely has a lot more ...

In late January, Justice Scalia drew the ire of Democrats and civil libertarians when he said the following about the flood of soft-money, political ads flowing from the 2010 decision in Citizens United v FEC:  “I don’t care who is doing the speech — the more the merrier.  People are not stupid.  If they don’t like it, they’ll shut it off.”  ...

Yesterday, I was listening to a discussion with Tom Brokaw broadcast on NPR from The Commonwealth Club.  Asked his opinion of news and information in the digital age, the veteran journalist said that he believes the variety of available content is generally a benefit to the world but that the consumer must “apply filters” to the information being delivered.  In ...

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