stumbling toward clarity, balance, and insight
Posted in Creative on Aug 19th, 2008
I thought this comment on a TechCrunch post was wonderfully snarky (and accurate) enough to be quoted and shared:
Let me see if I have it right. The discussion centers around:
Thieves (illegal downloaders)Freeloaders (can be thieves too, believe Everything should be freeee!!)Stupid Mules (stubborn labels)Artists (content producers: will play for biscuits, new strings, one sheet of [...]
Posted in Creative on Jun 21st, 2008
I’ve been collecting posts, videos, etc. related to the copyright controversy in my Del.icio.us account, tagged copyright.
As a writer, English teacher, lover of film and literature, and friend of many artists, I’m very concerned about this issue (as a survey of recent posts here should indicate). However, the more I learn, the less sure I [...]
Posted in Creative on Jun 6th, 2008
Paul Krugman has an op-ed piece entitled “Bits, Bands, and Books” in The New York Times today about the influence of digital content on existing business models. His focus is on “books.”
The basic argument is that, as it becomes easier to duplicate and distribute digital content, the ability to make money from that content will [...]
Posted in Creative on May 31st, 2008
I keep trying to understand the position of the “copyright abolitionists,” but so far, I’m still not convinced. Here are a few points I’m stuck on … and there are probably others as well. I think this is an extremely important issue, though, so I’ll continue to learn and think about it.
Freely Sharing Ideas
Thomas Jefferson [...]
Posted in Creative on May 11th, 2008
Neil W. Netanel defines the problem newspapers face in the digital age:
Newspapers thus suffer from the classic public goods problem. Producers of quality journalism invest heavily in investigating, reporting, editing, and fact checking. But once they make their work product available, they cannot prevent many others from copying from and reading their work without payment. [...]
Posted in Creative on Apr 13th, 2008
Distributing copies of a “Harry Potter” book, in any format, without payment, is wrong according to my best understanding and ethical sense so far. But stopping the publication of a lexicon for the world of Harry Potter — which to me is a clearly transformative kind of thing — seems equally wrong.
Posted in Creative on Mar 30th, 2008
This morning, Doug Noon shared a post entitled “The Fiction of Intellectual Property.” The post and the comments are thoughtful, but ultimately frustrating. What follows isn’t a direct response (hence, I didn’t leave a comment), but just some thoughts that have been kicking around my head for a while related to that post [...]
Posted in Creative on Dec 28th, 2007
Peter Rock has been graciously helping me continue to think about copyright over on his blog. It started with his post "sharing denies nothing" in which he says:
Most certainly, file sharing does not include payment (hence “sharing”), but that’s very different than an active “denying” of payment. While the difference is subtle, it is significant [...]
Posted in Creative on Dec 21st, 2007
I’m still reading Larry Lessig’s Free Culture, which is excellent so far. In the meantime, while following the Lane Hartwell controversy, I found a link to Lessig’s March, 2007 talk at TED (posted Nov. ‘07).
He ends with a strong emotional appeal about how this controversy is affecting and will continue to affect “kids”:
We made [...]
Posted in Creative on Dec 1st, 2007
Over the last week or so, reading and the role of books have been popping up everywhere, it seems:
Reading is getting a lot of play in the press: the NEA warned that Americans are reading less and their proficiency is declining, though it appears the NEA needs to learn how to read data. Then, [...]
