In a document Public Knowledge has the conceit to call a “report,” the organization now proposes that the US Copyright Office is trapped in a state of “regulatory capture.”  Usually, this is a term reserved for a condition that arises when the people who work at a regulatory agency become either culturally or economically too close to the industry they’re ...

Just because the surgeon general serves at the pleasure of the president, that doesn’t mean we think the president is, therefore, the more qualified expert in medicine.  We want a president to have views on domestic healthcare in general but not to have opinions about actual medical practice.  That would be scary. Yet, solely on the grounds that the U.S. ...

Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published an article by Steve Knopper called Inside YouTube’s War With the Music Industry.  I would characterize the article as more of a glimpse than an inside view; but setting that aside, the article contained a quote about the DMCA that caught my attention. Knopper focuses on the fact that several major stars like Taylor ...

First of all, I hate Twitter.  Not so much as a forum for sharing links to stories or the occasional witticism.  But as a platform for “arguing” a point of view, let’s be honest, it’s total crap.  140 characters to express a thought is nothing but a means to see which idea is the most popular, not which is the ...

The performing rights organization (PRO) called ASCAP was formed on February 13, 1914 when a group of about 100 American composers met at the Hotel Claridge in New York City to create a mechanism for collecting “public performance” royalties.  The 1909 Copyright Act had extended the performance right to this class of copyright holders, but it did not define exactly ...

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)