Law, Policy—and IT?

Drones. Both of my boys are inveterate video game players, so I am long familiar with them. When Nikko was...

The content industry has come out barreling after the failure of their pet bills, SOPA and Protect IP. Carey Sherman writes with real feeling in his NYT Op-Ed Column last week, and the movie industry, with its representative Alfred P. Perry, has reached out in a softer mode to legal scholars, many of whom have criticized either, or both, these industries and current U.S. Copyright law.

We do, because of the Internet and its intersection with business, law and people. All one has to do is...

I like this acronym, and so far, I like this law. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) is an appropriate response to the failed SOPA and Protect IP Acts.

Whether 'tis nobler to abide by a law out of sync with technology or to take arms against a sea of troubles, that is the question for the common user of the Internet who desires content at the lowest price point, instantaneously and within some framework of economic fairness and personal ethics.

Little did Jagger and Richards know that their 1965 hit would become a meaningful metaphor for a twenty-first century conundrum involving the law, technology, user norms and the market.

The culture, law and politics of copyright are starting to get interesting. The Obama signal not to support SOPA over the weekend, the Web Blackout of sites in protest of that proposed legislation yesterday at the same that the Supreme Court decided to uphold Congressional action in support of copyright protection demonstrate in the political realm the kind of instability that culture has experienced over copyright for almost a generation.

Just when I thought I had one concept identified as the last of my three Internet issues for 2012, more...