Twelve years ago, when I first engaged in copyright advocacy, I was surprised to discover how many critics argued that copyright rights conflict with the speech right. Initially, I thought this had to be a fringe, internet thing—a vibe cooked up in the adolescent blogosphere that no legal scholar or expert took seriously. It would seem obviously contradictory to believe ...
I recognize the psychological need to believe the American Republic will survive the coming four years, and I freely admit to being the biggest cynic in almost any room. But if the analogy is a shipwreck, we are already treading water with no ship or shore on the horizon. “Democracy lives in the people,” say the more hopeful pundits. Perhaps. ...
Democracy dies in darkness according to the motto of the Washington Post, and this is, of course, just one of many phrases reciting the axiomatic theme that credible and responsibly reported information is the blood of a democratic society like the United States. If true, then why has the “information age” brought democracy itself to the brink of destruction? There ...
Last week, writer and broadcaster Andrew Keen invited me to his podcast Keen On to talk (of course) about artificial intelligence. When we got to the subject of the New York Times lawsuit against Open AI and Microsoft, I noted that 1) it is arguably the strongest copyright case presented to date against an AI developer; 2) that it would ...
This week, Facebook made good on its threat to block Australian news media on its platform. “Australian users cannot share Australian or international news. International users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news,” MSN reports. The move by the social giant is a hardline tactic designed to make the Australian government blink on proposed legislation that requires both Facebook and ...
