[Editor Charlie says: As of Christmas Day (7 days in release) “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has grossed $890 million in worldwide box office. “How better to revive a 30-year-old series than by enlisting armies of kids to make the content interesting again?” Well, that’s one better way.] This is a repost from July 15, 2007 In his […]
Remember The Man 2.0 in the Grey Flannel Suit? Lessig’s display–jumpy knees and all–on the Colbert Report has to be seen to be believed. He reminds us again that just like the $1.65 billion Google paid for YouTube, the point of the “hybrid economy” is for value to be captured by everyone BUT the creator. […]
As more and more of the creative class start to wake up to the absolute corruption that is growing among the absolutely rich and powerful at Google, it is not surprising that authors foreshadow the apocolypse and the “final encyclopedia“, that creepy, geeky sci-fi cliff that Google is driving us all to jump over. Excellent […]
The House and Senate both introduced new versions of the “orphan works” legislation (the “Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act” named after the late AOL lobbyist). Why, you may ask? What is so important about “orphan works”? Do the songwriters, artists, photographers, illustrators, screenwriters, actors, directors you know come up to you in the street, strike […]
Once again we go through the looking glass to the hothouse atmosphere of higher learning at the Stanford Law School–a political fundraing tour for the Swedish Pirate Party hosted by Google and the Stanford Law School featuring a little chat with the head of the Swedish Pirate Party courtesy of Karl Fogel of QuestionCopyright.org. Fogel […]
Here’s a nightmare scenario for you–you hire someone to create a work, co-write with anyone, record with anyone, and you find out after the services were rendered or the works were created that you’re dealing with one of the gullible creatures who signs up for Creative Commons. If that person has made the work (or […]
The Christmas season is a great time for catching up on things you couldn’t justify devoting the time to during the rest of the year. I find myself noticing things around the house that need to be worked on, wondering why the Diggnation drunks promote the Pirate Bay, and spending a little bit of time […]
In every conversation I have with Generation L about the effects of technology on the music industry, it is only a matter of time until the world “innovation” comes up. “Innovation” must be protected at all costs, including at the cost of the entire creative community. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost? That’s the cost […]
Readers of this blog will recall “Why You Hate Net Neutrality if You Love Copyright“, a post from 2006 that got a bit of attention. My general thesis there is that at a high level of abstraction (a) there are essentially two classes of traffic on the Internet, one legal and one illegal, and (b) […]
I often say that there are two things that hold societies together: Moral lessons learned as a child, and the promise of swift and certain punishment. On Father’s Day, let’s focus on the former for a moment. I invite those of Professor Lessig’s pirate crew who are fathers to take a sampling of the literature […]
