Let’s compare.  Both of these videos are technically marketing pieces. I would know as I’ve made a few hundred marketing videos in my career.  But what is each video selling, and how is each doing its job? The video on the left is produced by Kim Dotcom and is selling ...

To those who comment unceasingly that copyright and anti-piracy efforts are exclusively about big labels and big studios, meet the owners of ESL.  This is an indie label that has a blanket 50/50 deal with all of its artists.  Eric Hilton comes from the technology sector, so they’re anything but Web luddites.  They are literally telling young, talented musicians they ...

Imagine your diet will henceforth be determined by the tastes of a majority of American ten-year-olds.  This may sound as unlikely as it does unappetizing, but the prospect is not really all that different from the basis for at least one of the arguments of the copyleft crowd with regard to distributing creative content via the Web.  One assumption behind DIY ...

Originally published on the blog at Copyright Alliance, and the folks at Techdirt were insulted. A few months ago, our Facebook walls were adorned with images of “pink slime,” the nickname given to Mechanically Separated Meat (MSM) that is now the subject of controversy. And although claims that pink slime is currently used in McDonald’s nuggets aren’t true, who isn’t ...

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 ...

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