Culture and Society

Okay, it’s a little bit creepy and obsessive, but it’s mostly sweet and touching and another set of uses for the artifacts of our culture – that’s OUR culture, not the songwriters, the singers, the record labels – OURS: Kenneth Roberts is an old man with a broken heart and …

Today is a critical day in the digital entertainment wars: an updated study says copyright needs to be seriously revamped to balance the needs of the public with those of rights holders and creators; one ISP stands firm against the RIAA while another goes back to court to challenge the …

There is no question the idea of turning music into a service rather than a commodity has achieved critical mass, getting prominent placement in America’s “newspaper of record,” the NY Times, in the last week alone. Of course EVERYONE is talking about the future of music now that the RIAA …

If you read (and you read this), your input is sought: Hello, I’m an author working on a book about the importance of reading. I’m trying to gather information about reading people’s reading habits and and how it impacts our lives for use in the book. I’ve posted a short …

Now an Internet tax for file sharing has broached the pages of the NY Times – the meme is in the air. Do you doubt it will be the answer? Others fear that, as the futility of technological fixes becomes clearer, the response may be onerous legal restrictions on the …

Beatles take Jobs & Co. to court – again: Applecorps has filed a lawsuit in London against the computer firm over a 22-year-old agreement that Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL – news – people ) use the Apple name only for computer products–not music-related enterprises. Apparently Applecorp looks upon the digital …

Our pal Scott Matthews, the mad coder behind the Andromeda player that supports Radio Free Blogcritics writes in Salon that file sharing is tres suck. He makes many of the same points as our own bhw, although the particular target of Scott’s ire is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, more friends …

Artists respnd to the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign: “They’re protecting an archaic industry,” said the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. “They should turn their attention to new models.” “This is not rocket science,” said David Draiman of Disturbed, a hard-rock band with a platinum debut album on the charts. “Instead of spending …

It’s a different year and a different feeling, much more reflective and introspective than last year’s first anniversary of September 11 which seemed to be an outpouring, a psychic shotgun blast getting it all out in the hope that something would connect and/or stick. None of which means we should …

Orrin Hatch, the songwriting senator from the great foreign country – I mean state – of Utah who recently suggested that the computers of copyright violators should be remotely sabotaged with some kind of death ray, has suddenly made an about-face and crawled out of his own ass, at least …