Thinking Out Loud, aka The Broad Gaze
Thoughts on the social impacts of communication policy and educational technology.
In Secret, Nations Work Toward Crackdown on Piracy – NYTimes.com.
The Times has finally gotten around to covering the ACTA process (though, interestingly, not while the meetings were in session). It’s a largely balanced piece, though one might argue that the business interests’ positions are better explained than those of consumer groups.
Stanley Fish continues his analysis of Citizens’ United by (not unsurprisingly) explaining that 99% of his first column did not attempt to take a side–rather he was explaining the intractable differences in the 2 camp’s visions of the First Amendment.
This time around, he moves to teach some of the core First Amendment issues, mainly to point out the cases under which the Court has seen fit to regulate speech (and why we need to do so, even though “Congress shall make no law”).
If you missed media law class, and want to know a few tidbits of how our courts have constructed First Amendment jurisprudence, give it a read. If you’re hungry for more, I can recommend some books in comments.
White House Makes Full Copyright Claim on Photos | The Moderate Voice (via Slashdot)
I had no idea that the White House was posting pictures to Flickr — how cool is that! As this story explains, however, they have begun asserting that only news organizations can use the images. This runs directly against existing policy.
When you think about it, using a president’s image without consent is nothing new. The producers of the president emblazoned coins, plates, and t-shirts advertised on TV make plenty of cash without ever asking permission.
Perhaps the difference is, now the photos are so readily available in their full (original!) size glory. Perhaps now it’s too easy or tempting for advertisers to use the image of a popular president. That doesn’t give the White House any excuse to break either the policy on photos or the well established (lack of) copyright for government works.
FT.com / UK – A fight over freedom at Apple’s core.
Jonathan Zittrain cuts right to the heart of the iPad openness issue. This might be a good one to pass to friends.