Now that the bill creating a small claim provision for independent authors of works is making progress in Congress, EFF has pivoted to its standard late-stage strategy whenever they try to kill legislation: the dissemination of scare-mongering bullshit. I do not mean that I disagree with them. There are not two sides to the story they are telling or considerations ...
Holy whiplash segues, Batman. There I was reading a perfectly interesting article by Sarah Jeong on the potential hazards of selling one’s personal data, when she took an incomprehensible—if mercifully brief—detour into the realm of copyright law. She presents a reasonable enough case that the companies now offering to help us “broker” our private data (e.g. health information) may be ...
“One of the reasons Hamilton found the word democracy so offensive was because he realized that the vast majority of American citizens had not the dimmest understanding of what he was talking about.” – Joseph Ellis – Proving that it is easier to be a futurist than a historian, Cory Doctorow contributed a bit of soothsaying to a New York Timesseries the editors ...
A new business called OmniQ has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant cert in ReDegi v. Capitol Records, alleging that the Second Circuit’s opinion in December 2018 effectively brings an end to the First Sale doctrine. The company is developing a patent pending model that (presumably) would facilitate an online market for “used” and hard-to-find motion pictures. Its brief ...
Many years ago while still in college, I was on the train to New York City—a beautiful ride along the eastern banks of the Hudson River. Several rows from me sat a family of American tourists who caught my attention when I heard the dad say, “Look kids, there’s Alcatraz.” Reasonably confident that Alcatraz sits on an island in San Francisco ...
