Culture and Society

Rob Walker writes in NY Times Magazine from the perspective that the iPod is already an iconic product, and he tries to undertand why: Two years ago this month, Apple Computer released a small, sleek-looking device it called the iPod. A digital music player, it weighed just 6.5 ounces and …

Serious and important paper from Jessica Litman on digital music, copyright and the Internet: Abstract: The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation and mass dissemination of a wide variety of works. Until recently, most means of mass dissemination required a significant capital investment. The lion’s share of the …

First of all, Norgies rule, and yes I am biased being 75% Norwegian. This would be a brilliant marketing move for any one of the U.S. commercial music download companies, but you know, “free” can never be monetized, can it? If you are a fan of Norwegian music, or just …

Last week we mentioned people having fun with the email scammers, stringing them along, even turning the tables on them and squeezing some cash out of them. The government of Nigeria has finally decided that being known as the scam capital of the world might not be the ideal image …

We reported last week that MP3.com has been bought out by CNET, and that all of the music was to be rather unceremoniously dumped into the digital dumpster. This is no longer true: MP3.com Artist Announcement A message from CNET Networks, Inc. (CNET) Dear MP3.com artists: Last week CNET Networks, …

There is some truth to the accusation from some anti-war partisans that those who argue for the War on Terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular – myself included – think only in generalities and don’t pay enough attention to the very real human beings fighting and …

If these guys can get access to “millions” of songs, why is it that none of the authorized digital music services in the U.S. have been able to do better than a few-hundred -thousand? It sounds like the pubs are the place to be, luv: Internet terminals offering instant access …

New vocal technology called Vocaloid: Developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and financed by the Yamaha Corporation, the software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else’s) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Just as …

Politics play a critical role in how medical patients are treated. Cultural norms and the politics that implement those norms determine even what is considered a treatable medical condition in the first place. Nowhere has the politics of medicine been more evident over the last century than in the treatment …

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an anti-spam bill today: Online marketers who flood e-mail in boxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes would face multimillion dollar fines and jail time under the measure. It passed by a vote of 392-5 at dawn on Saturday, following an all-night session of the …