Archiving our digital heritage becomes more important each day. We all generate an incredible amount of cultural and social content. As I wrote in my article, Property, Persona, and Preservation, “Before one can access, one must preserve.” Thus, I am happy to see what appears to be an movement towards greater preservation of our digital [...]

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The folks at CITP and many others are quite excited about open government. One specific project, RECAP, looks to open access to court cases. The briefs and opinions of federal courts would be available to the public. Although I tend to laud this effort, I have also started to press on exactly why such access [...]

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Many may know about the fight between Amazon and Macmillan publishing. Yes it is about e-books and pricing, and the death of an industry, the death of print, and heck throw in Death in Venice if you like. But the real move may have been to highlight something else Amazon is quite worried about: Google [...]

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I love California, and I love the University of California. I am saddened by the recent financial problems the state and the entire education system faces. But I am more upset by what seems to be a failure of the education system: people who think 60s style protests are useful and wise responses to problems [...]

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Most of the country is facing some rather grim weather. Classes have begun. Grades are in. The holidays are over. There is work to do. Many things may be getting you down. So I offer this tune as a small pick-me-up for those who may need it. If the music doesn’t work for you, perhaps [...]

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I just returned from the Institute for Advanced Study’s Symposium on Technology and Education. Anyone interested in how education operates should contact the folks in today’s symposium or in the year-long seminar The Dewey Seminar: Education, Schools and the State. It is a great group of people thinking about justice, finance, the structure of schools, [...]

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The Google China news deserves some thought for a range of reasons. The questions about democracy, censorship, and more that swirled around Google and China’s relationship are important. One issue that is easily lost is the relationship between the claimed reasons for Google’s leaving China and policies about surveillance. My colleague at CITP, Timothy B. [...]

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One thing that Dan Burk, Mike Madison, Dan Solove, and a few others told me as I started my academic career was that it was important to read, read, read; attend conferences; and engage with other professors about their work. With that base one slowly but surely develops better material and grows a network of [...]

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As some of you know, I am at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy for the year. It is great to be around the folks here for a host of reasons. A big one is the speakers and conferences the Center hosts. I wanted to let folks know that next week, the Center is running [...]

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I call friends and family during the holidays. For me, unlike email and social networking options, talking to someone is a more intimate and fun experience. Regardless of how one “reaches out and touches someone” as AT&T used to say, it is easy to take the ability to do so for granted. As I thought [...]

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Here’s just a little free association for what I hope are ongoing happy holidays for everyone. Sherlock Holmes opens on Christmas Day and is a front runner for holiday films I want to see. I happen to think that Robert Downey Jr. is in a great groove. I loved his acting in Chaplin and am [...]

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Although I tend to prefer less regulation in many cases, the pictures below seem to call for a little more discussion about how products are marketed to kids. Candy in that mimics many of the attributes of adult products such as cigarettes probably makes it easier for a kid to think they ought to try [...]

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I am a big fan of the Planet Money series on NPR. Any student struggling with the economic aspects of business associations can use Planet Money and NPR’s other financial series, Marketplace, to get grasp of what is going on. Marketplace tends to focus on the day’s events. PM takes a little time and explores [...]

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Networks. In my youth, the term was most familiar to me as the word for large, national television stations. NBC was at the bottom of a small heap in the late 1970s. If I recall correctly, Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show supported most of the network in general. Now remember, there were only three [...]

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Wired magazine ran an interesting competition starting on August 13. Writer Evan Ratliff who had written about how people disappear tried to disappear from the world and everyone he knew while Wired encouraged and helped people try and find him. The winner would receive $5,000. Ratliff explained his motivation:
It’s one thing to report on the [...]

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Although I have used this space to question the Google Book Deal, I do not think that all The Google does is bad. Indeed, the fundamentals of where the Google Book Deal began were good. And now, as some of you may know (and Greg helped with that), Google is trying to go where no [...]

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Ann Bartow’s post about Paul Zukofsky, son of Louis and Celia Zukofsky, and his attempt to exert extreme control over his parents’ work reveals that heirs are problem for copyright. Mr. Zukofsky asserts some untenable points about his power over the material and the need for academics to seek his approval. The full letter is [...]

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You be the judge.
1976

Pastime Paradise – Stevie Wonder
1995

Gangstas Paradise – Coolio
1996
By the way, I suggest that anyone wanting a great album acquire Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.
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