Freeloading: How Our Insatiable Appetite for Free Content Starves Creativity In his new book, author Chris Ruen provides a glimpse into his personal transition from consumer of free media to advocate for artists’ rights and a more rational conversation about copyright in the digital age. Ruen shares his own thoughts about common justifications for online piracy, about the mechanics behind ...
Here’s one way the Web is being used by a group of young artists in collaboration with one of the “evil” big media companies: MTVu created a challenge campaign called “Against Our Will,” asking students to submit creative concepts to highlight the problems of modern-day slavery. The winning entry came from students at James Madison university and grew into an ...
Back in the Napster days, I had an assistant named Greg, who remains one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever been lucky enough to call a friend. I remember giving him a hard time one afternoon when I realized he was using the file sharing app to download music. With a slightly self-aware grin he said to me, “Yeah, but ...
The ongoing debate over copyright in the digital age is clouded by so many layers of new-age malarkey and overblown, political banner-waving that it’s easy to lose sight of the behavioral realities behind all the self-serving theories of bloggers, legal scholars, corporate interests, and futurists. Take a very common activity like watching movies online via torrents or other sites that ...
Last week, MPAA CEO Christopher Dodd spoke in San Francisco about fostering better collaboration between the entertainment and Internet industries. Not surprisingly, two voices from the tech industry, TechDirt and the Electronic Frontier Foundation rang out with rebuttal. Mike Masnick, editor of TechDirt, called Dodd a “predictable dissembler” and proceeded to attack him personally for “lacking the vision” for his role. ...
