The tips of daffodils and buds on early-bloom trees may be the sign that spring is emerging in some parts of our country. But in Alaska, where layers of snow still blanket the landscape, a race which celebrates the heartiness of winter is about to begin. The Iditarod Sled Dog Race begins on March 5 [...]

President Barack Obama awarded ten artists with the nation’s top honor for artistic achievement on Wednesday in a ceremony presenting the National Medal of Arts. The honorees include Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep, Grammy award winning musician James Taylor, author Harper Lee, jazz legend Sonny Rollins, Grammy award winning musician and producer Quincy Jones, theater producer [...]

I recommend to all our readers this piece in today’s New York Times by the novelist Scott Turow and other representatives of the Authors Guild. Not surprisingly, given the source, it is a beautifully written reminder of the importance of copyright to our culture.

The New York Times posted this moving video and commentary on its Lens blog this week about photographer Joao Silva, who took his first steps with newly fitted prosthetic legs on Monday. Mr. Silva, a Times contract photographer, has been a patient at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center since losing both his legs to a [...]

Though many traditional art forms – like the orchestra – have figured out how to become fast friends with technology, museums have been relatively slow to adapt to the digital age. This hesitation to incorporate technology into the museum experience is beginning to wane, however, as they start to look at how the audience has [...]

A Harvard Crimson editorial published today addressing unauthorized file-sharing on university networks is tagged “A Sensible Compromise.” The compromise itself? The university working with copyright owners and their agents such as the MPAA in reducing infringement on university networks. What else is “sensible” is the entire editorial, which gives lie to the notion that everyone [...]

Seventy-three-year-old British Pop artist David Hockney emailed his most recent exhibition to the art gallery in Paris where it hangs on “luminous digital screens.” The screens exhibit his images 24-hours a day, and throughout the duration of the show, Hockney on occasion emails a new “digital painting” to a screen. A visual Tweet, perhaps. A [...]

To holiday shoppers, Cyber Monday is when you use your work computer to do a bit of online shopping, hoping for some good savings. Thank you to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division) for providing their own spin on Cyber Monday — a [...]

The vote was by roll call and was unanimous. Moments ago the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved an amended anti-piracy bill that as Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said would help target massive online infringement in the “dark corners” of the Internet. S-3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, now has awaiting it a full [...]

Is the theft of a writer’s words really any different than the theft of a musician’s recording, a songwriter’s composition, a photographer’s snapshot? We’ve been posting updates on our original post on the plagiarism by the New England magazine Cooks Source, but now I’ll post a new one on the heels of the magazine calling [...]