This op-ed that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times is easily one of the best pieces I’ve read on both the cultural and financial dangers of forsaking copyright in the name of technological “progress.”  The entire article is a pull-quote, but here are two that get right to the heart of the matter: “The value of copyrights is being quickly ...

Y’know, I try to have a calm, productive Monday morning and not let anything rustle my jimmies, and then somebody on Twitter posts an article by Rick Falkvinge. And I CLICK ON IT!  And I know I shouldn’t because everything Falkvinge says is so mind-numbingly stupid that it’s only going to distract me into composing a response in my head when I ought to be focusing ...

There is certainly no shortage of copyright in the news these days, and readers of this blog might wonder about my silence on subjects like the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kirtsaeng or the testimony before Congress by Register of Copyright Maria Pallante calling for the next great overhaul of the law. For starters, when I began writing IOM, I never ...

Announcement of the Copyright Alert System just over a week ago brought some new readers to this blog, and among these was one who was offended by this post, which is coincidentally the most-read to date.  My use of the word slavery in context to BitTorrent sites exploiting labor inspired the reader to call me a racist. You can decide ...

I watched this Amanda Palmer TED Talk “The Art of Asking” over the weekend and  found it both remarkable and inspiring.  Her frankness and humanity are unassailable.  Who can argue with an artist who says, “I put myself and my work out there, I ask to be embraced, and I am embraced”?  Kudos to her for doing it.  Kudos to ...

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