Once upon a time in America, copyright law was intended to balance the rights of creators against the public benefit without giving either too much weight. The logic was that creators (of art, literature, music, and so on) needed to be able to earn a living from their creations, or else they would not be [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Politics category.
Are you crazy?
Today I was noticing bumper stickers as I was driving home from work. One guy had the Darwin Fish being swallowed by the Truth Fish. (Actually they’re not completely swallowed; it looks more like the Darwin Fish is caught in the Truth Fish’s throat. Which makes sense, really; the Jesus Fish crowd does kind of [...]
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
Today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, wherein we strike a quixotic blow for free speech by drawing pictures of Mohammed in spite of muslims telling us we’re not allowed to. Here’s mine: I know, I know, an artistic endeavor worthy of Picasso. Or Art Frahm. And it only took three minutes to draw. Defending freedom [...]
Do we live in a police state?
Maybe we do. Here’s a confluence of several conversations I’ve been having with various people, mostly not started by me: Free speech zones. People usually can’t stage a protest any more if it’s near the object of the protest. Instead, they are herded into tiny “free speech zones,” far from where they need to be [...]
God bless US, everyone
I live in the American midwest, in a blue state, near a large city. It’s not as left as, say, San Francisco, but it’s left-leaning. There are enough Darwin fish on cars that I don’t feel completely out of place. But there are also quite a few jingoistic religious patriotism stickers on cars, and even [...]
Public option healthcare
I’ll be brief, for once. Health insurers are blasting out flurries of FUD about the proposed public option. Their first reaction is the most telling: “We won’t be able to compete with a taxpayer-funded option.” We won’t be able to compete. In other words, “we’re afraid it will be better.” Seems like an endorsement, if [...]
Rember!
I saw this today: I have to assume this car’s been bearing this message for a month. It takes a lot to get me to laugh out loud in connection with the 9/11 attacks. (Hugo, do they call them the 11/9 attacks where you live?) But this managed. I didn’t even notice the “REMBER” at [...]
Ending the right’s war on science
I’m intrigued by the war for the soul of the Republican party and what it means for its traditional alliances. To recap from earlier posts: traditionally the Republicans have been the party of business, which in America means the party of corporations. And this has been evident in the last few Republican administrations we’ve had, [...]
Pulpit bullies
It seems the Republicans have brought their shout-em-down heckling game directly to the President. It’s not enough to send astroturfers to town meetings to shout at people there to explain his proposal; no, they have to actually shout at Obama himself, right there in Congress. I’m not sure how to interpret this. Part of me [...]
The strange benefit of copyright Nazis
I’m not a big fan of copyright law in its current form, as regular readers know. I side with Lawrence Lessig in the main. He makes a lot of points, and you should read his books to get the full argument, but it sums up to this: Copyright was intended to balance the benefit of [...]