In today’s 24-hour news cycle, it’s easy for misinformation to spread, particularly when reporters rely on dispatches from other reporters in writing their own copy. We saw a wildfire like that last week, when officials from the creative and ISP industries spoke at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville. Numerous — and erroneous — [...]

SEATTLE — Here we go again.
At the end of the Federal Trade Commission Town Hall here on digital rights management at the University of Washington School of Law, during the time the FTC had set aside for audience ranting — I mean feedback — an FTC official read a question from someone watching the webcast. [...]

SEATTLE — My overall impression of the Federal Trade Commission Town Hall meeting held here at the U. of Washington School of Law regarding digital rights management? Too many lawyers and technologists.
Nothing against lawyers and technologists; some of my best friends are lawyers or technologists, or both. But the nature of those professions is to [...]

SEATTLE — I’m here at the FTC Town Hall meeting on digital rights management at the University of Washington School of Law. I just finished appearing on a panel here (well, actually I just finished an enjoyable chimichanga at a great joint right off campus, I had to eat before posting).
The FTC is webcasting this [...]

When one thinks of MySpace or Facebook, one’s first thoughts are not of copyright. Not even by me. Some think of keeping in touch with friends, or being fans of great organizations (be friends with the Copyright Alliance on Facebook!). Some think of risks to kids. Some think of ways to find good music or [...]

Copyright to me has always meant the ability to speak one’s mind and have that speech protected under the law, but some suggest copyright actually chills free speech. This is odd, because anyone can read or otherwise experience another’s expression, and anyone can comment on that expression, criticize it, or even satirize it. Fair use [...]

In the Critiquing Copyright Canards piece, the eighth myth was that “Copyright is not a property right.” I understand that some long for a commons culture, and thus oppose all property as did Robert Owen, the founder of the failed Utopian community New Harmony in Indiana. They, naturally, will resist copyright as a property right. [...]

Some readers will recall the publicity-seeking Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who decided that it wasn’t easy enough for people to kill themselves so he would make it even easier by inventing various contraptions involving IVs and gas. Whatever you may think of the morality of physician-assisted suicide, at least Dr. Kevorkian had the courage to risk [...]

U2’s Bono is unlikely to be the most sympathetic spokesman for online music theft, because in our society it seems we have anointed ourselves with the right to determine the “appropriate” level of a creator’s compensation. Bono admits in USA Today that he is in fact not the right spokesman
“because people think people [...]

John Conyers, first and foremost, is a great friend to artists and creators. He is also a great man who has accomplished marvelous things in his many decades as a public servant. But just the other day he was attacked by two people who in a better world would correctly view him as a compatriot [...]