A Must-Read Essay

Here is a pointer to an essay that says almost everything I wish to say on the subject of copyright. I only wish I had written it. The essay is such a marvelous piece of work, that I do not wish to chance that one day that URL may stop working. I had planned to shamelessly copy it below, so I could reliably refer to it for years to come, without worrying that Harper's might stop hosting it. Alas it is far too long for an LJ post.

In summary, it says just about everything that I would like to say on the subject of copyright and artistic endeavors, and points out (without ever mentioning it) why DRM is such an inherently bad idea, but does so much better than I ever could. Its quite long, but I recommend those interested in the issue to read it completely. The ending has far less impact if one skips.

House Hunting.

See, here's all I ask for: a nice little villa by the sea.

What I didn't know.

I've lived in this city most of my life, but its amazing what I didn't know about Montreal. For instance, did you know that most world conspiracies are headquartered here?

Another Reason Patents are Evil.

It seems that Indonesia, one of the countries of the world where avian flu is most prevalent, has stopped giving out free samples to the World Health Organization and is instead negotiating to sell them to a private American pharmaceutical company. Indonesia's reasoning is that they were giving away the samples, which pharmaceutical companies were using to create patented anti-flu drugs, which Indonesia was then unable to afford to buy. This way they get to negotiate for use free use of any anti-flu drugs that result from their samples...

Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo has just announced their new Pipes service. Its too soon to tell, but I think they've done what I proposed in this technaut article I wrote a while back. That said, there still seems to be significant differences in the actual feature lists. Still, I think it worth checking out.

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