Culture and Society

The most egregious aspect of the vile DMCA is the anti-circumvention provision that says you cannot abet copy-protection circumvention, even though the consumer has the right to make a fair use copy of a DVD. This catch-22 mentality has now been reaffirmed by a San Francisco federal judge: In a …

Very interesting column from Plain Dealer TV critic Michael Dawidziak today on the perils of 24-hour television news and the whirlwind news cycle: Perhaps Shakespeare, writing 400 years ago, somehow envisioned the era of 24-hour news channels when he coined that line about “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It could …

We mentioned the controversy over the DJ Dangermouse remix of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles White Album. This is very interesting, and I am very willing to help publicize it although I am not willing to host the actual files: I do not wish to break the law, but …

Via the always informative Resource Shelf, an excellent way for the interested layman to keep track of “legal news worth reading about,” The Paper Chase. Researched and reported by Professor Bernard Hibbitts and law students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, here is a glimpse of what’s up …

Austin- based Schlotzsky’s restaurants expanding its free Wi-Fi: Schlotzsky’s today announced it has expanded its popular free wireless Internet access (Cool Cloud) from its Austin base to include 38 restaurants in a total of six states (Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, California) with more to come. The expansion reflects …

Gibson has a new digital Les Paul guitar coming in April: The first run of 3,000 instruments will retail for about $2,600 each. It looks, sounds and acts like a Les Paul, but it’s not. The technology in the standard electric guitar dates to the 1920s, with few major changes. …

I have a certain amount of affection for Sonny Bono: his self-deprecating personality was appealing (I met him once at his restaurant in Palm Springs), I liked Sonny and Cher as recording artists and entertainers, and I was sad when he skied into a tree. But the other side of …

I’m just giving our Blogads pal Henry Copeland a hard time. Check out this very promising article from Wired about political ads on blogs, er, liberal political blogs, that is: Not even his own staff would call Democratic congressional candidate Ben Chandler a nethead. “He uses the Internet almost exclusively …

A Rockaway, NJ, woman sued by the RIAA for file sharing has countersued on federal racketeering grounds: In what legal experts described as a novel strategy, [Michele] Scimeca is citing federal racketeering laws like the one that jailed mob boss John Gotti to countersue record labels that accused her in …

The RIAA continues its lawsuit campaign against alleged file sharers: The RIAA will file 531 “John Doe” lawsuits today (Feb. 17) against suspected users of illicit peer-to-peer file-sharing services. The suits will be bundled in five lawsuits and filed in federal courts in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Trenton, N.J., and Orlando, Fla. …