I think music is the purest artform because it is uniquely capable of provoking strong emotional responses without necessarily conveying meaning or information. Yes, one could say the same thing about abstract visual art, but I think the brain is hardwired to at least try to read meaning in visual expression and that this is not so with instrumental music. ...
It was no surprise that the mugshot was immediately copied onto tees, hats, coffee mugs, etc. and sold to Americans who see either a martyr or a traitor in the same image. It was also no surprise that Team Trump produced merch of its own to sell for campaign (a.k.a. criminal defense) fundraising purposes. But these and other uses of ...
It was such a busy Summer that I never got a chance to write about the Supreme Court’s June decision in the cyberstalking case Counterman v. Colorado. The story caught my attention when legal scholar and president of Cyber Civil Rights Initiative Mary Anne Franks tweeted, “the Supreme Court has just decreed that stalking is free speech protected by the ...
Well, it finally happened. After criticizing the worst effects of social media for over 10 years, I was finally hacked, locked out of my Facebook account, and (I assume) will be unable to restore any of the material or connections going back to 2007. I’m sharing the details in this post because what I now believe to be a phishing-style ...
As discussed in an earlier post, Valancourt Books, a small, on-demand publisher, filed suit against the Copyright Office and the Department of Justice and argued that the Office’s demand for physical copies of published books is unconstitutional. Valancourt alleged that the authority granted by §407 of the Copyright Act to demand the copies (or be fined) is a violation of ...
