The father of modern chemistry Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was beheaded in 1793 in what is now the Place de la Concorde. A victim of France’s post-revolutionary Reign of Terror, he was specifically marked for execution by one vengeful, lesser scientist named Jean-Paul Marat, whose incorrect theory about combustion had been publicly scorned by Lavoisier at the royal academy. It’s rare when revolutions ...
Embed from Getty Images A couple weeks ago, I scorned the righteously flamboyant PETA for trying to sue a British photographer named David Slater for copyright infringement on behalf of an Indonesian macaque whom the animal rights group calls “Naruto”. I mocked this monkey-pre-trial proceeding because, well, it’s pretty mockable; but as Tom Sydnor writing for TechPolicyDaily, points out, it ...
Embed from Getty Images In a wonderful book called The Battle for Christmas, author Stephen Nissenbaum relates the evolution of this holiday from its pagan roots to the modern Christmas as it came to be celebrated in the United States. He tells us that in agrarian England most labor would be done by December and that it was often a ...
Dear Peter: I read this morning on Motherboard that you have “given up your fight for the Internet.” This is the second time I’ve come across a public statement in which you say you are throwing in the towel on the ideological principles you, your partners, and your political allies believe were manifest by operating The Pirate Bay. And it’s ...
Internet companies and digital rights activist organizations have spent considerable resources over many years promoting the idea that we should think of the Web as an extra-legal territory. From Barlow’s evangelical Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace in 1996 to current debates over the relevance and meaning of an “open” Internet, one recurring theme that still holds sway among many ...
