Internet Blacklist Will Silence Social Media
Government and copyright lobbyists attempts at regulating internet content are going to end up killing social media as we know it.
Occupy Wall Street’s Memetic Structure
Since the recession began, the United States’ GDP has dropped 1% – less than any industrialized nation’s decline save Great Britain, while employment has dropped almost 5%, almost double that of the other first-world states. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the average household income for the bottom 99% has stayed level since 1979, while [...]
Neovella: Collaborative Writing With Strangers
Neovella is a new web-based writing tool where strangers can get together and write collaborative short stories. Writers take turns adding to a given story, fleshing it out, and taking it in new directions. Writers’ block is avoided as when one author finds himself stuck, another can take over and continue things his own way.
Marble Hornets
Watch Marble Hornets. Never sleep again. A few years ago, a film student named Alex started shooting the movie Marble Hornets. It was about as amateurish as one would expect from a student project, but as production continued Alex grew more and more short-tempered, unreasonable, and simply strange. This culminated in the abrupt cancellation of [...]
2nd Circuit Appeals Court rules computer code “not property”
In a decision that’s sure to impact the MPAA/RIAA’s attempts to legislate themselves back into relevancy, the US 2nd Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that downloading computer code is not a form of theft.
Apple, publishers targeted by Justice Department collusion lawsuit
The US Justice Dept has filed a suit against Apple, Simon and Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan, and HarperCollins, alledging collusion over the price of e-books. Under Apple’s policies, publishers are free to set the price of books as they will, and apple takes a share of the proceeds, as is the case with Amazon and Smashwords.
Trim Your Twitter For Success
Twitter can have a very low signal to noise ratio, and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed. Here’s a few tips to help you decide who to follow and who to let go. » Read more..
Still Choosing Our Own Adventures After All These Years
If you’d like to read about interactive fiction, Click Here.
If you’d prefer to read about Marble Hornets, Click Here.
PoMoCo to Publish e-Books
You may have noticed the appearance of the Authors tab in the menu under Postmodern Consumption’s letterhead. We’d like to formally announce the formation of the PoMoCo imprint, a publishing label for e-books in the Kindle, Smashwords, and Nook markets.
SOPA Condemned by Tech Visionaries
To Members of the United States Congress:
The undersigned are 204 entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs and executives who have been involved in 415 technology start-ups, and who have created over 70,000 jobs directly through our companies and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more through the technologies we invented, funded, brought to market and made mainstream.
We write today with one simple ask:
Work with us on effective copyright legislation, not against us.
We urge you to reject H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as well as S.968, the PROTECT IP Act, also known as “PIPA” in their current forms, and instead please collaborate with us to adopt more focused, tailored solutions. We appreciate the stated purpose of these bills, but if they are allowed to become law in their present forms, they will hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online.
Many of us wrote to you in September expressing our concern with PIPA (see attached). Since then, the number of concerned entrepreneurs on this letter has grown, as have the myriad other voices expressing their fears. We have come to DC to express our concerns directly with some of you.
Yet today the problems in this legislation remain unaddressed, and, in fact, SOPA exacerbates them. It would redefine the standard for copyright infringement on the Internet; create a new private right of action against law-abiding US companies; and subject lawful US companies to the threat of unworkable and harmful technology mandates, among other things.
We oppose piracy by rogue foreign sites as well, but there’s a better way forward than this. We stand ready to work with you on targeted legislation that focuses on these bad actors — without imposing new, harmful regulations on legitimate entrepreneurs and innovators.
We also stand ready to work with artists of all kinds to innovate in more content tools, platforms and services. These tools are a key way to address piracy, while also creating new jobs and fueling economic growth. Entrepreneurs like us can help do that; PIPA and SOPA can’t.
From http://www.engineadvocacy.org/voice/about.html. The signatories are an impressive bunch, including luminaries from Moilla, Yahoo, Kickstarter, Foursquare, Etsy, Digg, LiveJournal, Bloglines, and a ton of other tech creatives that have essentially designed the social media landscape as it is. They have very good reasons to oppose the measure.
Illinois Senator Mark Kirk Supports ProtectIP
Recently a friend of mine emailed Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) concerned about the impact that the ProtectIP Act’s impact upon the social media industry. After being unemployed for a long time and having just finished a six-month training program in social media marketing, she was worried that the act’s provisions would effectively eliminate the entire concept of social media and with it her job prospects. » Read more..
Internet Blacklist Will Silence Social Media
Government and copyright lobbyists attempts at regulating internet content are going to end up killing social media as we know it.
Occupy Wall Street’s Memetic Structure
Since the recession began, the United States’ GDP has dropped 1% – less than any industrialized nation’s decline save Great Britain, while employment has dropped almost 5%, almost double that of the other first-world states. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the average household income for the bottom 99% has stayed level since 1979, while the top 1% have seen a 400% increase – almost doubling since 2003. The median duration of all unemployment is at 20 weeks, and number some 17 million people. CEO has increased 300% since the 1990s, while production worker pay has increased 4%. » Read more..
