Culture and Society

The innovative Creative Commons is taking their flexible copyright to the world: A customisable form of copyright license will soon be available internationally through the Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation based in the US. The organisation already offers US artists a way build their own copyright agreement. Each custom-made license …

Being that I’m all cool and whatnot, I have been asked to help judge the Song Remix category of the Webgeek Olympics: What: You remix a song. When: The song in question will be posted on this page at 8:00 AM GMT, Saturday May 10 2003. How: Ping the “EventGo” …

Another incisive commentary from Dave Pell, this one on the grim state of Democratic thinking, and he’s a Democrat: The tsunami from the right has been so complete in recent years that it almost seems as if they are operating in a vacuum. Politically, the Republicans have control of the …

Ongoing Verizon-RIAA dispute – U.S. District Court Judge John Bates said Verizon must reveal the names of the two alleged copyright infringers within two weeks: Bates originally ordered Verizon to reveal the customers’ names in January, but Verizon had argued that their identities should be protected as it pursues an …

The Dixie Chicks seem to be weathering the negative publicity from their anti-Bush/war statements rather well. Maybe we’ve entered a new era of show biz negative advertising campaigns, as I mentioned earlier today in relationship to Madonna. They’ve done wonders for us here, too, that’s for sure (see below). The …

I am root root rooting for 321 Studios in their court challenge to the Hollywood studios over its DVD-copying technology. As we have said here ad nauseum, all citizens have a right to make a back up copy of their own DVDs and music CDs. The DMCA denies citizens this …

It’s been a year since Wilco’s now classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out on Nonesuch. They are celebrating: thanks for your support, we’re making the previously announced “Australian ep” available here free if you have a copy of YHF. Click on the image above to launch the EP player and …

So here’s Madonna, messing with file sharers by flooding the sharing services like Kazaa with spoof files of songs from her new American Life CD that are blank other than a terse message from Herself: “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Then, playing right into her evil little …

I am no tech-head – I know what I know reasonably well because I use it all the time, but anything outside my immediate range of computer behaviors is pretty much terra incognita. But I am gradually adding to my knowledge – this post on a crackdown on file sharers …

An autopsy of a badly broken social system by a forensic psychologist, the creator of the documentary Six.