Once again, a confederacy of the usual suspects has regrouped, rebranded, and relaunched a campaign on copyright in the digital age. They call themselves the Re-Create Coalition. David Lowery on the Trichordist referred to them as “getting the band back together,” and it is true that this familiar list of mostly Google-funded organizations (with bizarrely similar logos) has been trying ...

Not surprisingly, friends contact me from time to time with copyright-related questions. I’m careful not to give definitive answers to most of these, but I can usually point them in the right direction toward a solution.  Very recently, a dear friend (let’s call her Sarah) asked my advice regarding an email she received from a photographer who demanded removal of ...

Cat Sanding Many years ago, I volunteered a few hours after work to help the wood shop teacher at my son’s school.  The children had carved various hardwood animals that all needed edges honed with a belt sander the kids were too young to use.  I was just supposed to smooth out the marks left by the gouges and create ...

Last December, a few glasses of Rioja and I wrote a pretty grumpy rebuttal to Washington Post tech writer Caitlin Dewey, accusing her of cheerleading for media piracy.  A few respondents, including Dewey herself, said that I was unfair, that her article about The Pirate Bay was merely reporting facts without editorial.  Of course, with certain styles of communication, it ...

So, I stumbled across this TorrentFreak post by The Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde, in which he not only concedes that the “pirate movement” is dead but also exhorts the faithful to get over it and find new ways to further the “cause.”  Writes Sunde: You’ve all heard it. The “pirate movement” is dead, diminishing and what not. But ignore ...

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