SANTA MONICA, CA — Every time I come to this show, I hear more technologists eager to make deals with copyright owners, legal deals rewarding both parties. Yes, one big obstacle remains — to date, returns from online distribution of creative works haven’t approached that of traditional models. But improvements are being made in that [...]

* i know, I prefer the term “creative works,” but I’m speaking the lingo of the conference here and will use “content” in this blog entry.
SANTA MONICA, CA — Another Digital Hollywood, another amalgam of creative start-ups with bizarre Web 2.0 names, another set of panels where people continue to try to figure out how [...]

Just two weeks ago I gave a presentation where I said sometimes we needed a legal process to sort out thorny issues, and cited the Google Book Search case where publishers were suing the search engine giant for reproducing copyrighted works given to them by major university libraries without obtaining the permission of copyright owners.
Well, [...]

While in NYC last week, I had the opportunity to visit the painting studio of a quite famous artist. A friend of mine, who has worked in this studio for a number of years, invited me for a tour. The artist was preparing for a show in Berlin, and so his staff was working around [...]

SANTA MONICA, CA — How can you host a conference 200 yards from the beach and expect people to attend your indoor, windowless sessions? Well, DCIA did okay today with their P2P and Video Summit, and I suspect Digital Hollywood will hang in there as well the rest of this week. I’ve spent a lot [...]

More scholarship out today on the role of performing rights organizations (PROs) in the digital marketplace, and it’s worth reading. “Creative Industries in Transition: New Directions for the Digital Era — The Songwriters’ Performing Rights Organization Imperative and Copyright Law for the Electronic Media Marketplace” debuted today at a symposium sponsored by the George Washington [...]

My oh-so-clever use of question marks in that headline is meant to convey that I find the very “battle” to be both absurd and non-existent, not unlike the so-called “copyright vs. innovation” battle. In both cases the subjects go hand in hand, in fact are symbiotic. But rarely are they portrayed that way.
This particular rant [...]

What does it mean to be an artist? Well, for anyone who wishes to have their work seen and appreciated, and anyone who then hopes to make modest income from the art, it means spending a lot of time in pursuits that have nothing to do with art.
Brian Sherwin of myartspace blog today writes to [...]

In the only truly excellent Star Trek movie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock saves the USS Enterprise but in the process exposes himself to a lethal dose of radiation. He tells his friend and captain, James T. Kirk, that “logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of [...]

How do you stop a viral spread of false information, for example the myth that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim or that a tooth left in Coca-Cola will dissolve overnight? Well, the fact is, you don’t. That’s the problem with these myths, they’re like Jason from “Halloween” – they won’t die.
That brings me [...]