Lost amid all the bluster over intellectual property and illegal file-swapping is the undeniable fact that a large part of America’s cultural history wouldn’t exist without some form of piracy. The film and recording industries got their start through the work of individuals skirting the edges of copyright and patent law, and radio still operates under a bizarre set of rules in which authors and composers are paid for the right to broadcast their work, but performers aren’t. Is online file-swapping really any worse than any of these practices?
Tag: 03.04.04
A Right To Privacy, So Long As You’re A Kid
“Two lawmakers introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate Wednesday to prohibit corporations from selling the personal information of children under the age of 16 without their parents’ consent. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) introduced the Children’s Listbroker Privacy Act to limit the sale of personally identifiable information for purposes of marketing to children, as part of a larger package of legislation intended to help parents combat commercial attacks on their children.”
Old? What Old? On TV? Where?
Why are there so few older characters on Australian TV? And those older characters there are don’t seem realistic. There’s a “failure of local dramas to depict the 60-plus generation as people with sex lives, aspirations, careers and sporting ability. ‘Everyone knows we’re not all young and gorgeous so why doesn’t television show it’?”
Hockney: Photography Is Dead
David Hockney says he believes that photography as an artform is dead. “Hockney says he believes modern photography is now so extensively and easily altered that it can no longer be seen to be true or factual. He also describes art photography as “dull”. Even war photography, once seen as objectively “true”, has now been cast in doubt by the ubiquitous use of digital cameras which produce images that can be easily enhanced or twisted.”