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 ...

                    Let’s compare.  Both of these videos are technically marketing pieces. I would know as I’ve made a few hundred marketing videos in my career.  But what is each video selling, and how is each doing its job? The video on the left is produced by Kim Dotcom and is selling ...

To those who comment unceasingly that copyright and anti-piracy efforts are exclusively about big labels and big studios, meet the owners of ESL.  This is an indie label that has a blanket 50/50 deal with all of its artists.  Eric Hilton comes from the technology sector, so they’re anything but Web luddites.  They are literally telling young, talented musicians they ...

This is a piece I wrote as a guest post for The Copyright Alliance. It got the folks over at TechDirt into a lather, but I suspect that’s because it wasn’t read or read very carefully by most of them.   Not only have Copyright and Free Speech coexisted peacefully for the entire history of the Republic, but I would ...

No doubt, the U.S. Pirate Party will be in a caffeinated kerfuffle over yesterday’s upholding by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston of the $675,000 fine being levied at Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs several years ago.  And no doubt anyone under the age of about 35, who very likely has a lot more ...

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