Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Perhaps you went to look up something on Wikipedia today, or Google, or any of a number of other sites, only to find them dark. "What the hell is SOPA?" you may be asking. What the hell indeed. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act (HR3261); PIPA is its lesser known bastard sibling: Protect Intellectual Property Act. Both were drafted at the behest of the Big Media cartels who own the rights to most movies, audio recordings, television shows, and print media. Note I did not say they created these things: they merely own the "rights" to them (whatever that means). Because their business model is broken, they've decided to break the Internet. In it's original form, SOPA criminalizes certain web technologies, whether there are legitimate uses or not. It allow the Justice Department to order the takedown of websites, without any type of due process, and make sites criminally liable for user-created content. A Big Company, irked by a website criti...

 Ever hear how Amazon managed to patent the idea of " One-Click Shopping? "  That's right -- they were granted a patent for the idea of pre-entering your credit card info so when you clicked on the "Buy Now" button, you didn't have to re-enter all your financial data.  When Barnes and Noble later offered a similar service, Amazon sued for (get this) patent infringement. Years later, large chunks of the original broad patent were thrown out, but not without a lot of money being flushed down the toilet that is occasionally our legal system. The European Patent Office refused to grant a patent. This sort of nonsense abounds. A couple of weeks ago, a new short documentary was released on-line entitled, " Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system. " In it, independent filmmaker Luca Lucarini looks at how our current patent system has managed to screw by issuing patents on the flimsiest of premises and the history of how this sorry st...

Imagine you were a guitar player. You're no Leo Kottke, but you can hold your own on open mike night at the local bar. How would feel if you discovered, buried in the fine print in the owner's manual that came with your Martin D-15, something that said you could only perform with said guitar for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes? Or suppose you were an artist - a painter - and discovered the brushes you used to paint your last masterpiece came with the same restriction: for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only? Or a writer, with the same restrictions on anything that came out of your word-processor? Freaking ridiculous, eh? Guess what, all you photographers shooting digital video, your camera may have the same restriction. It's about the technology used to encode the video (the "codec"). OS News (one of my favorite technology sites) has a long article about the licensing restrictions placed on one of the more commo...

If you've never seen it, Spin , by film-maker Brian Springer, is a brilliant essay on the art of political spin. Created over a dozen years ago it's still relevant today. It's part of the Illegal Art Exhibit , which features a number of works considered "illegal" because of various copyright encumbrances ( Spin makes use of pirated, raw unedited network satellite feeds). It's yet another example of how copyright law has been twisted to all sorts of purposes not intended by by our nation's founders. This is the brainchild of StayFree! a non-profit magazine founded by Carrie McLaren in 1992 about the politics of culture. Check the other stuff on the Illegal Art site - worth your time. Spin and other films can be downloaded from Archive.org .

Warner Bros. has probably issued many a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice against people's web sites. This time they may have screwed up: they did it against Lawrence Lessig .

At first glance, there is much to admire about California's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein: first female President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, San Francisco's first female mayor, first woman to serve in the Senate from California, first woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and first woman to chair the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. During the 1990's she led the fight to ban semi-automatic weapons and supported a number of environmental issues, including bills to protect the California desert. Lately she seems to have turned to the dark side. In August 2007, she voted with Republicans to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) making it easier for the government to monitor phone calls and email messages of American citizens. In February 2008, she again joined Republicans in voting to grant immunity to telecommunication companies for illegal wiretapping for Government agencies. In December 2005 she stated, ...

The Recording Institute Association of America (RIAA), primarily four media conglomerates that control or distribute thousands of private labels, was formed in 1952 to administer several technical standards used in manufacturing vinyl records. Nowadays they sue grandmothers and teenagers, threaten universities and internet service providers with lawsuits, and argue their right to profit overrules any and all privacy concerns. In other words, generally acting like a bunch of pompous overweening pricks. Unfortunately, these thugs have found numerous friends in the halls of Washington, including California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Vice President Joe Biden has had a long history of sucking up to both the RIAA and MPAA, sponsoring legislation that would restrict people's rights to record satellite performance, and urging the Justice Department to go after alleged file sharerers. Barack Obama, once endorsed by the likes of copyright reformer Lawrence Lessig and opponents of the RIAA...

Lawrence Lessig, one of my heroes, was on Colbert Report last night, pushing his new book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy , about how current copyright law is hampering creativity and commercial opportunities, as well as criminalizing our youth. Lessig has written for years about copyright and intellectual property issues. His last 3 books are available for purchase as hard copy or free PDF download . The man walks the walk, not just talks the talk. Damn -- he gave as good as he got from Colbert, not an easy thing to do. Enjoy. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Lawrence Lessig Colbert at Christmas Colbert Christmas DVD Green Screen Bill O'Reilly Interview Here's a more extended presentation by Lessig (about an hour) from November 2008 at NYU.

Lawrence Lessig , one of my heroes, has an essay at Newsweek.com on why we should shut down the Federal Communications Commision. While this sounds a lot like something some of my loopy Libertarian friends would preach, I have a lot of respect for Lessig so I'm willing to reserve judgment -- for now. His main contention is that the FCC enables monopolies (bad) which stifle innovation. In its place, he proposes: Congress should create something we could call the Innovation Environment Protection Agency (iEPA), charged with a simple founding mission: "minimal intervention to maximize innovation." The iEPA's core purpose would be to protect innovation from its two historical enemies—excessive government favors, and excessive private monopoly power. Lessig has been mentioned as a possible head of the FCC ; he's known Obama since the two of them taught together at the University of Chicago. In the past Lessig has been a big proponent of net neutrality and has also w...

There is an assault on the freedom of ideas these days. The weapons on this assault are copyright laws and the murky idea of "intellectual property," Rich powerful corporations hiding behind familiar and friendly names are leading this assault. It pains me to say, this unsavory alliance cuts across political lines: Democrats and Republicans are both guilty. A little history: " copyright " is the right of a creator of an original work to control distribution for a certain time period, after which it falls into the "public domain." The Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The founding fathers set the term to be 27 years. The idea was that the author was protected during the period of the copyright against unauthorized co...