Matthew B. Crawford’s new book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work,” gives IP lawyers quite a lot to think about.  (An excerpt appeared recently in the New York Times magazine, and the book as a whole originated as an essay at The New Atlantis.)  Crawford is offering a modern take [...]

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I never thought this would happen, but today I heard my first radio ad directed specifically towards copyright. The ad, airing here in Boston, criticized attempts in Congress to add a performance right for recording artists, and it encouraged listeners to fight the “tax” on radio stations.
Now, if only all of copyright becomes perceived [...]

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Michael Chabon has an elegiac  essay in the New York Review of Books (”Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood”) on what is denied to our children:
This is the kind of door-to-door, all-encompassing escort service that we adults have contrived to provide for our children. We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from [...]

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The gang at Language Log provides a thorough overview of the meaning and function of the vuvuzela, the device that provided the soundtrack to the just-concluded Confederations Cup soccer tournament in South Africa (the result in yesterday’s final:  Brazil 3 – USA 2, more or less as I predicted last week).  It leads me to [...]

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It appears that the Netflix Prize has been won. 
Thet Netflix Prize is a $1 million prize being offered by Netflix for development of a “movie recommendation system” that is 10% better than Netflix’s own Cinematch system as predicting the movie preferences of Netflix subscribers.  [Older story from the NYTimes here.]  From the prize website, here are [...]

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The technology turn and churn has claimed another piece of history. Kodak is ceasing to make its Kodachrome film. I don’t think that one should be upset about this change but some nostalgia seems proper. Here are some pictures in tribute to the film. And even if one is not a photographer, one can appreciate [...]

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So first I must admit I am not a huge fan of Michael Jackson. What? Yes. No! I’m afraid so. That being said, for all the oddity that occurred in the later part of his life the man and his work highlight some interesting points in IP and culture. Thriller is the best selling album [...]

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Here is a very nice NYT profile of Beth Noveck’s work at the White House to use technology to enhance democracy:
The White House made its first major entree into government by the people last month when it set up an online forum to ask ordinary people for their ideas on how to carry out [...]

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The recent “World Copyright Summit,” sponsored by CISAC (the “International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers”) only came to my attention after the fact. Glancing through the program materials, I came across a framing editorial for the conference that begins this way:
Faced with an era of digital disruption, what would Michelangelo think of the [...]

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In light of the events in Iran, many may laud the power of tools such as Twitter and Facebook as they allow information to reach the world. Here in the United States, however, a few stories highlight how social networking tools and blogs run into ideas of fairness, honesty, and even justice. First, the FTC [...]

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For the moment, J.D. Salinger has in hand an order prohibiting the distribution in the U.S. of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which is either an unauthorized sequel to (i.e., derivative work, based on) and an invasion of the privacy of the author of The Catcher in the Rye, more or less akin [...]

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I’ve had the pleasure of wandering through the Metropolitan Museum in New York many times over the years, but for the first time, perhaps, yesterday I was fortunate to see an exhibition that really changed the way I (and perhaps others) think about the world of art.  If you’re able, run – do not walk [...]

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Wired “senior maverick” Kevin Kelly has called a wide variety of P2P collaborations a new form of socialism. For example, he points to Craigslist as a collective where the principle “from each according to abilities, to each according to his needs” may well be functioning:
How close to a noncapitalistic, open source, peer-production society [...]

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The recording industry’s inquisitorial pursuit of downloaders has reached new heights – or depths.  Map Boon onto the interests represented by the RIAA and Katy onto the interests represented by the accused in this sequence from Animal House:
Boon:  Unbelievable. A new low. I’m so ashamed.  Almost sorry l missed it.
Katy:  What did you do, human sacrifice?
Boon: [...]

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Finally, the United States bred a world class soccer talent.  But Giuseppe Rossi was born in New Jersey to Italian parents and dreamed of playing for Italy, as the rules of international soccer allow.  Now he is not only playing for Italy – but he’s scoring the goals that beat the United States.
The United States, [...]

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I drove to Boulder and back earlier this month, which is nothing of consequence except for the fact that I live in Pittsburgh and, with an excursion to Minnesota on the return, I put 3,400 miles on our vehicle.  Picture me in a large blue pickup under the blue Nebraska sky, cruising comfortably in a [...]

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Just a quick note. I am fortunate to be in Hong Kong at The Age of Digital Convergence, An East-West Dialogue Law, Media, Technology. The Journalism and Media Studies Centre at The University of Hong Kong and Intellectual Property Law Center at Drake University Law School organized the event and the Faculty of Law at [...]

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Here in Pittsburgh, civic enthusiasts are so giddy over the prospect of the G-20 summit coming to town next Fall that that they just can’t help themselves.  A local marketing firm has announced that it is launching a campaign to create a network of links that would cause the Google search engine to reply “Pittsburgh” [...]

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