MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Arent Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought on Techdirt.
Category Archives: Asides
Two excellent essays on how Hollywood has completely put our legal system out of whack through years of twisting our legislative process to their ends, or as Shirky put it “imagine the possibility of a longer jail term for streaming a Michael Jackson video than Jackson’s own doctor got for killing actual Michael Jackson?”
Andrew Bridges on PandoDaily: Forget SOPA, Hollywood Already Had a Field Day with the Justice System.
Clay Shirky on his blog: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood.
Really great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities.
I've built my life on a free and open internet. As the co-founder of WordPress.org, a free software project that aims to democratise publishing, and the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com that hosts blogs from around the world in pursuit of the same goal, the proposed US legislation to regulate and censor the free and open foundation of the internet makes my mouth go dry with fear.
The rise of the web over the past two decades and the freedom to publish and express yourself online will be looked back upon as a cultural revolution.
We have gone from a world split between gatekeepers and media "consumers" to a world in which anyone regardless of geography, finances, social class, race, gender, or any other demographic identifier is free to engage with the rest of the world on their own terms.
That freedom is of paramount importance and must be protected.
That's why we're blacking out our websites on the 18th to raise awareness of this issue, and giving our users tools to do the same.
The tech world is fiercely competitive and companies seldom agree on anything, when you see so many united in solidarity on a single issue, you know there's something to it.
What concerns me the most about Sopa and the Protect IP Act is not that media companies and legislators want to have measures in place to protect copyright – for example we reply to and comply with DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices on WordPress.com when we receive them, it works well for everybody – it's that the authors of the legislation don't seem to really understand how the internet works.
The definition of domestic versus foreign sites shows a woeful lack of comprehension about how domains are used and how traffic flows on the internet.
Where do I stand? On the side of publishing freedom.
What do I hope for? That these pieces of legislation be set aside, and that any future legislation in this arena be drafted by people who understand how the internet works – and how it won't if they do the wrong thing.
My part of the set of op-eds on the BBC concerning today’s blackout. Check it out to also see Jimmy Wales, the MPAA, and the Chamber of Commerce. Hat tip to Jane for helping out with the above.
As part of the SOPA Strike, here’s the homepage of WordPress.com today. We got started a little bit early, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to go more than 24 hours.
On WP.com we’ve activated an option for any of the bloggers there to put a ribbon on their site or black it out entirely, and we’ll be participating on WordPress.org as well.
A surprisingly candid and funny report from CES, Fever Dream of a Guilt-Ridden Gadget Reporter.
Over the holidays I chatted with Mathew Ingram about the future of the web in 2012 and beyond and he turned that into an opinion piece on GigaOM you should check out.
WordPress (and Tumblr) got a name check by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show the other night. 🙂
Exclusive: Microsoft and Nokias Plans for Marketing Windows Phone in 2012.
I dont want to reveal more, and Ive been sitting on this information for weeks so that Microsoft can make its big announcement at CES this coming week. But with these leaks, as with the equally inaccurate LTE leaks last week, I felt the need to set the record straight. The way tech blogs work these days is that any information, no matter how inaccurate, is simply parroted between all the gadget blogs and then, inevitably, to the increasingly lazy mainstream news as well. So lets at least get it right.
Mr Thurrott, perhaps if you didn’t sit on stories for so long other people wouldn’t break them. Your responsibility is to your audience, not Microsoft’s CES launch plans.
“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
I’m turning 28 next week on January 11th. My friends and family always complain that I’m impossible to buy for, and it’s true, I don’t need any more stuff. (Exception is a mixtape / playlist, I eat those up.) The most important luxuries in my life are time, friends, and time with friends. The thing I covet is impact. So this year going to try something different: I’m giving up my birthday to raise money for charity: water and provide clean water to people that need it. 100% of money donated goes directly to projects in the field. Please donate — let’s build some wells. 🙂
DHH writes at 37signals Stop whining and start hiring remote workers. Automattic does the same, except we use P2 for our projects and virtual water coolers, IRC for our chat, Skype and Google+ Hangouts for calls and screensharing, and pretty much never email. When people read these things about 37signals their first criticism is always “does it scale?” For Automattic it has to a hundred people and growing.
One-click Restores
VaultPress now supports one-click database restores direct server-to-server so you don’t need to download or upload anything.
[wpvideo yIvLVXTF]
I ended up on the Forbes 30 under 30 for Social / Mobile this year, which is good because I only have two more years to make this sort of thing before being demoted to less exclusive “100 under 100” lists. For something more meaty check out this in-depth interview with Japanese devleloper magazine Gijutsu-Hyoron, by Bart Eisenberg, which included some pretty thoughtful questions.
Check out the new WordPress for Android 2.0, it’s a bottom-up redesign of how our mobile apps can work.
If I were going to start a gadget site, it’d look and work just like The Wirecutter from Brian Lam. Review sites like CNET review stuff when it comes out, and don’t update old reviews when new stuff comes out, so the best printer in March when they did the review might not be still the best printer in December when you want to buy one. Wirecutter picks one thing, and one thing only, and constantly updates their recommendations to keep the context of new products. And, of course, they’re powered by WordPress. 🙂
Where are they now? The Vancouver riot Kissing Couple. Crazy story, and apparently not a hoax like I had heard before.
Dave Kashen on building a values-driven startup on GigaOM.