(Image source by kentoh) Remember Clippy?  He was the animated paper-clip assistant, who lived several years ago amid the code of Microsoft Office. He would pop up rather suddenly on your desktop and interrupt your work to offer unsolicited advice as to how the work might be improved.  He was so annoying that Bill Gates reportedly sent an email memo to ...

(Angel image by in8finity) “Drat! Phooey! Shucks!” must be what the folks at VidAngel are saying after this morning’s opinion was handed down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Disney Enterprises v. VidAngel. Affirming the decision of a California district court, the panel agreed that the movie studio plaintiffs would very likely prevail on the merits in all of ...

My generation was raised on Schoolhouse Rock!. As such, we were not only told that America is a Melting Pot but were reminded of this on a regular basis in a song from that animated series, the melody of which is now ringing in the heads of any fellow Gen-Xers reading this post. Of course, the more mature truth is ...

In a new post on Copyhype, Terry Hart responds to the general assumption that the Founders would be “appalled” by the state of copyright today.  Personally, I think the Founders would be appalled by the application of the 2nd Amendment today and impressed as hell by the role professional authors and creators play in their Republic–but that’s me.  Hart writes ...

When it comes to enterprise-scale piracy, it would be great if those who advocate its existence would just make simple declarations like, “I want free media and don’t care how I get it.”  Sure, that would be a childish thing to say, but still less offensive than all the pretense to rationale that accompanies piracy—the absurd legal arguments, the mystical ...

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