Kudos to the House Judiciary Committee for holding a hearing Wednesday acknowledging a growing threat to copyright owners’ ability to produce and distribute high-quality entertainment; largely for-profit sites providing real-time streaming of copyrighted works without authorization from or payment to rightsholders.
Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) began the hearing by talking [...]

Three cheers to the Obama Administration for hosting Tuesday at the White House a key jobs summit, one involving the jobs of creators and their collaborators in creation. The Associated Press quoted the host of the event, Vice president Joseph Biden, as saying of copyright piracy:
“This is flat unadulterated theft, and it should be dealt [...]

I just came from a compelling event hosted by a think tank, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. ITIF was promoting a paper released today by technologists titled “Steal These Policies: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy.” The paper is a must-read; let me summarize the event, which had a very important theme — namely, that [...]

A friend made a comment to me, though somewhat in jest, that she thought I was too “organized” and “level-headed” to be an artist. I brushed off the remark; she has seen some of my paintings – and likes them – so I know it wasn’t a statement about the quality of my work. I [...]

In rhetoric, there’s an old trick — begin with a true statement, and then follow with an argument that does not naturally follow from the true statement. When challenged, ignore the criticism of the argument and instead defend the true statement.
Here’s an example. True statement — “We’ll always have copyright infringement. You can never completely [...]

On a panel discussion on copyright on Monday, I noted how in 1995 — when few folks had heard of the Internet and they probably thought it meant the walled garden of AOL — I had my own web site, where I posted for free and distributed to a fan list full text of a [...]