Big Media’s New Anti-File-Sharing Strategy: Irk Pirates Into Compliance

“Last year, five major Internet service providers and the big entertainment trade organizations announced a joint plan to fight illegal downloading through what might be called a strategy of annoyance. … [They will] prod and poke people into good behavior through a ‘six strikes’ system that escalate from friendly notices in their e-mail to, ultimately, throttled Internet access.”

What The Art World Power List Says About The Art World

“Two opposing camps are battling it out for domination of the international contemporary art world. On the one hand, the huge globalised art dealerships catering to the international super-rich – those individuals so dazzlingly wealthy as to be immune to the economic crisis. And on the other, a vision of art that is politically engaged, historically aware and socially inclusive.”

Britain Needs Thomas Cromwell’s Welfare State, Says Hilary Mantel

In 1536, as Henry VIII’s chancellor, Cromwell tried to get through Parliament a Poor Law providing money to those unable to work. Says Mantel, “We have reached a period where we are going back to the Middle Ages; where poverty is once again being viewed as a moral failing or a weakness, and relief by the state is a privilege and not a right.” (She also thinks Cromwell could sort out the banking system.)