PAUL RYAN'S TWISTED SISTER

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan used Twisted Sister’s 1984 anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as his walk-on (or perhaps walk-off) music. For those who don’t know or remember it, the song is a timeless expression of core Republican values (e.g., “your life is trite and jaded/boring and confiscated/if that’s…

Read More

'TIS A GLORIOUS THING, TO BE A PIRATE KING

A provocatively titled op-ed recently published by the New York Times, “Internet Pirates Will Always Win,” urges content providers to give up the legal fight against online copyright infringement as an exercise in futility, as new technologies make illegal downloading and streaming ever “harder to trace and to stop.”   The piece has prompted predictable responses from representatives…

Read More

WITH AMICI LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS HOSTIS?

Could a university chemistry department routinely scan copyrighted scientific journals in their entirety to create an electronic, searchable database that puts their contents at the fingertips of professors and students, so they could use the data compiled by others in perfectly appropriate ways in their own scholarship?  I think the answer is clearly “no.”  As a result, most…

Read More

THE 2001 DEFENSE

The epic Apple-Samsung patent dispute is now on trial and, justly, generating headlines in the popular press.  In particular, it has been widely reported that the Court  has prevented Samsung from introducing clips from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey in which astronauts Frank Poole and Dave Bowman are looking at tablets that have an…

Read More

TALK RADIO

I had the great pleasure of being interviewed last night by Milt Rosenberg, WGN-Chicago, about my book, Unfair to Genius.  The audio file, in which we talk radio, music, and copyright law, is here.

Read More