• I don’t know if I buy the “Internet is killing serendipity” argument, but this essay makes the case as well as any I’ve read.
• The history of the reeeeemiiiiiix.
• Just FYI: “Everyone else is just as bad” isn’t really a good defense, Internet commentariat.
• Obviously, the answer to “Why do we need SOPA?” is, “We don’t.”
• Pitchfork’s impact and history. For you lazy-ass TL;DR types: “A Pitchfork review may ignore history, aesthetics, or the basic technical aspects of tonal music, but it will almost never fail to include a detailed taxonomy of the current hype cycle and media environment. This is a small, petty way of thinking about a large art.”

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad.

See you in a few weeks. Photos will be posted intermittently on the tweet machine.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Linkwad.
2. Baltimore, don’t ever change.
3. There’s no end in sight.

As we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits, and all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship. This stuff matters because we’ve spent the last decade sending our best players out to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it’s just been an end-level guardian. The stakes are only going to get higher.
…
We haven’t lost yet, but we have to win the copyright war first if we want to keep the Internet and the PC free and open. Freedom in the future will require us to have the capacity to monitor our devices and set meaningful policies for them; to examine and terminate the software processes that runs on them; and to maintain them as honest servants to our will, not as traitors and spies working for criminals, thugs, and control freaks.

I think most people will remain blissfully² ignorant of this problem–every time Apple releases a new iOS device, people clamor to be allowed into their walled garden, and the piracy, copyright and patent wars³ rate similarly low on people’s priority lists. Which is an extremely long, link-heavy way of saying: “I am very pessimistic.”

More potentially-related posts:

1. EFF the RIAA.
2. Linkwad.
3. Piracy on the high HTTPs.

More potentially-related posts:

1. And I feel fine.
2. Black flag.
3. Linkwad.

Via Caroline and Andrew Sullivan.

More potentially-related posts:

1. The Obama Show.
2. It’s funny now that it’s not happening.
3. Linkwad.

Via Ryan North’s tumblr.

More potentially-related posts:

1. “Who are the Suburbs?”
2. What’s “fixie” in Mandarin?
3. “People don’t read anymore.”

• All together now, “Waaaaaaah!”
• I think this is a bit of false equivalence, as Iowa doesn’t currently have the kind of repressive voter ID law that he’s complaining about (That said, voter ID laws are transparently bullshit).
• If alternative energy weren’t a culture war touchstone, faced with this kind of information about oil (and gas), people would agree that we need other energy sources. But it is, so we don’t.
• More awful stories from North Korean defectors.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Sticks and stones…
2. Five for Friday, April 16, 2010.
3. How to win friends and influence elections.

Returns to being a superstar content creator are much much higher in 2011 than they were in 1981. That’s because the potential audience is much bigger. It’s bigger because the world’s population is larger, it’s bigger because many poor countries have gotten significantly less poor, and it’s bigger because the fall of Communism has expanded the practical market reach of big entertainment conglomerates. At the same time, the cost of producing digital media content has fallen thanks to improved computers and information technology. Now step back and ask yourself why we have copyright in the first place. Well, it’s because policymakers think that absent government-created monopolies there won’t be adequate financial incentives to go out and create new content. That’s not a crazy thing to believe. But the implication is that if globalization and technology drive the returns to content ownership up, we need less IP protection. Instead, we’ve consistently gotten more.

And as everyone from Valve² to Louis CK³ has shown, people are still buying things!

More potentially-related posts:

1. [Updated] I know I wouldn’t trust a man named Zuckerberg.
2. Linkwad.
3. Linkwad.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Easy credit.
2. Back words.
3. Haitin’.

More potentially-related posts:

1. “I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.”
2. The conservative, civil midwest.
3. I am only slightly embarrassed to be from Iowa.*