Wikileaks.org has been ordered (last week!? how did I miss that?) to be taken completely offline in the United States because of a number of documents that “allegedly reveal that [a Swiss] bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion.” While it appears that the site is still available, but many are calling the …
BETTER THAN FREE Here’s a really interesting read on the relative cost of things that are easy to copy. When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. …
Here’s an interesting idea on how legislation drafting might follow the “development cycle” used for software. The post turns into a rant on civil procedure by Commander Taco, but it’s interesting food for thought. If I were writing laws such that I wanted everybody to agree on how to interpret them, I would use the …
Is Ombudsman Already in Jeopardy? – washingtonpost.com (via FOIA Blog) Here’s a story not to loose track of: Bush proposed shifting a newly created ombudsman’s position from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Department of Justice. The FOIA Blog defeats the administrations claims smartly, noting the “inherent conflict” between the Justice Department’s role …
John is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He studies the social impact of media technology law and policy, with a special emphasis on copyright. He also is an instructional technology consultant for DoIT-Academic Technology.
John doesn't update his blog often, and many of the thoughts are probably half-baked. While the web has sort of an eternal memory, the current and future reader is urged not to take all of this too seriously.
Think of this blog as "John thinking out loud."
(For more on this idea and why I blog, please see this category.)