I’ve written about this subject before, but a recurring, underlying theme that pits the powers of Silicon Valley against all types of producers of creative works is the premise that the digital age is all about abundance in contrast to a pre-internet epoch of scarcity. To read some of the purpler prose on the subject, one would think the early ...
Y’know how some of us keep saying the Silicon Valley agenda is not progressive and that it’s anti-copyright (think labor rights) positions are not in any way about YOU the users of its wondrous TUBES? Well, welcome to the real face of Google, which may start to look a lot more like a portrait of Grover Norquist than its progressive ...
It’s almost de rigueur at this point. Somebody pisses off a group of people who reach for their keyboards and let slip the doggerel of wrath in the form of assault by Twitter. This holiday weekend, the target of death threats was Alabama football kicker Cade Foster and family, following his poor performance in the Iron Bowl against Auburn. Foster ...
As Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, thoughts turn to the subject of American exceptionalism, seeded by those zealous pilgrims who set out from England to establish their New Jerusalem on the American continent. I don’t mean the supposedly freedom-seeking, mythological caricatures with the dumb hats the kids are told about in school, but the flesh-and-blood puritans whose presumptively divine ...
[NOTE: Since publishing this post, GoldieBlox removed access to its original video and has replaced it with a generic version absent any reference to the Beastie Boys song.] I’d seen this video make the rounds on Facebook but didn’t know that it was at the heart of a new controversy regarding copyrights and fair use. A promo for the innovative ...
