“One of the reasons Hamilton found the word democracy so offensive was because he realized that the vast majority of American citizens had not the dimmest understanding of what he was talking about.” – Joseph Ellis – Proving that it is easier to be a futurist than a historian, Cory Doctorow contributed a bit of soothsaying to a New York Timesseries the editors ...
A new business called OmniQ has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant cert in ReDegi v. Capitol Records, alleging that the Second Circuit’s opinion in December 2018 effectively brings an end to the First Sale doctrine. The company is developing a patent pending model that (presumably) would facilitate an online market for “used” and hard-to-find motion pictures. Its brief ...
Many years ago while still in college, I was on the train to New York City—a beautiful ride along the eastern banks of the Hudson River. Several rows from me sat a family of American tourists who caught my attention when I heard the dad say, “Look kids, there’s Alcatraz.” Reasonably confident that Alcatraz sits on an island in San Francisco ...
From the Techdirt Sycophants Department In his post of May 28, Mike Masnick dutifully opened his hymnal and joined the chorus in a rendition of “How to Criticize the CASE Act,” lending his bel canto to the refrain that the new law would create a “copyright trolling court.” As explained here and here, this is an inscrutable criticism because the ...
There should be little doubt that the video clip doctored to make Speaker Pelosi look drunk should be seen as a sign of new hazards to come in the digitally-enhanced war on reality. The video is not even very sophisticated compared to what is actually possible right now with technology like “deepfakes,” and we can expect to see far more ...
