Did you hear the echo? This past weekend, as many people know (and even more people don’t), Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the event known as SOPA Blackout Day. In case you don’t remember it or missed it altogether, it was January 18, 2012 when various websites, most notably Wikipedia, went dark or semi-dark for the day in order ...
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 ...
That SOPA had little to no measurable effect on the election results in Congress is not surprsing. While the online protest against the bill was an unprecedented moment for the Internet industry and social media, I believe the reality is that the average voter actually didn’t give a damn about SOPA or even know what it was. Of course, I ...
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. ...
During the squabble over SOPA and PIPA, one of the underlying (and possibly just lying) PR bullets coming out of Silicon Valley was that the actions called for in the bills would “break the Internet.” And when that wasn’t the claim, the most consistent complaint was that the bills would chill free speech. But in the wake of violent protests ...
