I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are presently grappling with existential questions posed by big data and at the same time, considering the social implications of rulings by the supreme court in both Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. In fact, I believe we have an unprecedented mandate at this point in history to more rigorously consider the ...
Sometimes one is confronted with an absurdity so self-evident that it defies an introductory sentence. So, I wrote that sentence instead. But what’s got me gobsmacked today is a story by Adam Sherwin writing for The Independent explaining that Google insisted the popular music site Drowned in Sound censor images of certain album covers on the grounds that they are ...
Bullshit and buzzwords go together like pick-up lines and Jagermeister. And the bullshit buzzword of our times it seems is disruption. Being disruptive used to get your mom called into school for a conference with the teacher; but ever since Clay Christensen published The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1989, we’ve been fascinated by the disruptive kids, especially the ones who play ...
There are certainly many troubling aspects of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. That the majority opinion rests on upholding the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act has been rightly criticized, particularly by democratic authors of that bill. The protection of religious freedom for individuals was never intended to extend to for-profit corporations, they say; and certainly this ...
This week, I sat on a panel at Harvard University as part of on-going series of roundtable discussions hosted by the USPTO about a variety of copyright issues in the digital age. The topic of our conversation was whether first sale doctrine ought to be expanded in the digital age. In case you don’t speak lawyer, first sale doctrine has ...
