Well, here we go. The internet industry, with its cortege of hyperventilating helpers, is shouting censorship at the prospect of passing Senate Bill 1693, known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). With its usual flair for nuance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation declares that the measure would SPELL DISASTER FOR SPEECH AND INNOVATION. Again. There is, of course, nothing ...
In July, two new lawsuits were filed against the streaming service Spotify, alleging willful copyright infringement on a “staggering scale.” Publisher Bluewater Music Services and songwriter, musician, and producer Robert Gaudio (formerly of The Four Seasons) both accuse the streaming service of infringing the reproduction and distribution rights of songwriters by failing to obtain mechanical licenses for several thousand songs ...
Last week, after antitrust scholar Barry Lynn praised the European Commission’s decision to fine Google for anti-competitive practices, his Open Markets program at the Google-backed New America Foundation was terminated. Robert Levine offers a nuanced perspective on the relevance of Google-scale money in policy think tanks, suggesting that what isn’t said may be at least as significant as what is ...
Photo by porpeller Empirical evidence tells us that all human existence is a sand castle. At best, if no other cataclysm comes first (and one probably will), the inexorable expansion of our sun will wash away the Earth and any evidence that we were ever here. One possible exception may be the two records affixed to the Voyager spacecraft, still traveling ...
(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 ...
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Daniel J. Boorstin