At the Michigan Music Educators Conference last weekend in Grand Rapids, both users and creators of copyrighted works converged for three days of workshops, lectures and performances.
The Copyright Alliance attended to talk with educators about a brand new resource for teachers – An Educator’s Guide to Copyright – now available for free in the For [...]

Here’s a recent piece of prose from an accomplished writer, Cory Doctorow:
The Internet’s a single wire that delivers freedom of speech, of assembly and of the press — it’s a conduit for civic engagement, health care, employment, education, distant family, love and life. Disconnecting people from the Internet on the basis of an unsubstantiated accusation, [...]

There’s something about the raw vitality of middle and high school students that forces one to view her surroundings with a fresh excitement, seizing on connections that can only be made with the eyes of a teenager.
Such was my experience last weekend at the Michigan Music Conference, where over 2,000 educators, parents, students, and music [...]

If anyone wants to see how culture looks without copyright law, hop on a plane to Iraq.
Head north to the Kurdish semi-autonomous region locals call Kurdistan. Next, find a recording artist, author or software designer making a living off of their work. Okay, I’ll admit that last one is impossible.
Thanks to Dean Kay I have [...]

My son recently made a model of the Great Wall of China for his fifth-grade class. It was pretty impressive, right down to the Lego skeleton men he had emerging from the wall (he taught me that as construction workers died, they were just buried in the masonry). That wall, begun in the 5th Century [...]

Numbers.
We encounter them every day. How much investors lost on Wall Street in 2008. How many billions the U.S. government will spend to stimulate the economy. How many trillions our national debt will reach. And yes, how many legal vs. illegal music downloads occur online.
The latest entry in the numbers race comes from the International [...]

The world knows history was made Tuesday at noon Eastern when Barack Obama became our 44th President. So many profound things have been said by speakers and writers far more insightful than me, so I don’t wish to travel that same ground. And I’m also hesitant to try to localize his election and inauguration to [...]

Think I can’t tie those three subjects together? Think again. And I won’t do it by suggesting the Cards stole the identity of a championship team, because they won the NFC fair and square. Anyone who watched their three playoff games — their sturdy and opportunistic defense, their poised and experienced quarterback, their gifted and [...]

There is definitely something to be said for an artist whose work evokes feelings of both seriousness and serenity, and who can explain simply why and how the work exists.
The night with Anne Geddes at the Imaging USA conference in Phoenix this week was a night to remember. She summarized beautifully the importance of [...]

While I am now back from the Consumer Electronics show, I want to do one more entry on the event. By and large, I saw once again that consumer electronics manufacturers are working to develop products that are partnered with licensed creative works. This is critical, because if we want a continued stream of new [...]