Mike Masnick, editor and founder of Techdirt often writes like a smug frat boy, substituting scorn for ideas, and is frequently careless about fact-checking. This may be be why his mantra sounds sillier every day, as he bangs on about all that is wrong with just about anyone who believes copyright still plays a role in the digital age. Seriously, ...
I had to call attention to this article by Megan Garber, writing for The Atlantic about Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photo shoot for Vanity Fair. The photo itself is brilliant as is Garber’s analysis of it. Lawrence’s calling the hacking of her private photos a “sex crime” is entirely reasonable. And I am reminded why I care about copyright, why it still ...
Jenna Wortham, technology writer for The New York Times, offers this article in which she questions the illegality of IP theft online. Titled, The Unrepentant Bootlegger, Wortham begins with a description of what some may consider an unjustifiably heavy-handed raid by DHS officers in the arrest of Hana Beshara, a co-founder of the illegal media site NinjaVideo, shut down in 2009. ...
I’ve lost count at this point how many times and ways I’ve rejected the premise that piracy is a consumer-driven response to claims of scarcity in the market, especially in the United States; but now KPMG has released the results of a study of motion pictures and television programs that rebuts such pro-piracy claims with actual data. You can read the ...
Yesterday, Google chairman Eric Schmidt was interviewed on public radio and simulcast on Google Hangouts. WAMU’s Diane Rhem threw softballs, slow and over the plate at Schmidt, providing a friendly platform for the chairman to evangelize the many ways Google makes the world a better place. Coincidentally, I happened to be editing the following: For those who don’t know, ChillingEffects.org ...
