Category: issues

“On Monday, after two decades of resistance, France returned to New Zealand the mummified heads of 20 Maori warriors that have been held in French museums for more than two centuries.”

“Not so long ago, the industry was upset about kids moving 3 megabyte MP3s around on Napster. Today, it’s common to see 35 gigabyte compilations of, say, seven seasons of the TV show House, all conveniently bundled together. (Note that that’s ten thousand times bigger.)”

“As Occupy Wall Street enters its fifth month, dislodged from most of the public spaces it had staked out around the country last fall, the movement seems weakened, its future uncertain. It sometimes appears to be driven by a series of tactics designed to maintain its public presence with no discernible strategy or goal–a kind of muddled, loose-themed ubiquity. The movement has proven adept at provoking media attention, but one may wonder what it amounts to, apart from its ability to reaffirm its status as a kind of protest brand name.”

“The conclusion: restrictive paperless-ticket practices depart from bedrock market principles by unjustifiably limiting consumer choice and suppressing free competition. They also might violate federal and state antitrust and consumer-protection laws. And they may warrant legislation to protect the market and consumers.”

There’s no evidence that the United States is currently suffering from an excessive amount of online piracy, and there is ample reason to believe that a non-zero level of copyright infringement is socially beneficial. Online piracy is like fouling in basketball. You want to penalize it to prevent it from getting out of control, but any effort to actually eliminate it would be a cure much worse than the disease.

“What would happen if all the content-creation industries blocked access to all their products for a day to demonstrate what would happen if they couldn’t make any money from their work owing to rogue sites. There’d be no music, no television, no film, no books, no radio. What would you miss the most – culture or Wikipedia?”

“A group formed to protect the $460 million Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and its surroundings in downtown Miami is raising new concerns about nearby traffic congestion from proposed casino resorts, and it could take a truckload of money to address it.”

Like many cities, large and small, Lancaster, California has seen a drop in crime rates in recent years. But Lancaster’s mayor gives credit to the recorded chirps and twitters of birds that his city broadcasts through 70 speakers along half a mile of boulevard.

With the Costa Concordia lying on its side off the Italian coast and its captain accused of abandoning his vessel and its passengers, one can’t help but wonder what the actual rules for evacuation are. As it turns out, actual maritime law and (relatively recent) tradition don’t entirely agree.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted on Monday, “Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!” WIkipedia’s far from the only website to go dark on Wednesday – but Hollywood says the tech companies are reacting stupidly. What’s the deal?