"it is already illegal to copy a photographers image."

Quite right! Including scanning and sending the standard kindergarten class photo.

And it's not just images. Try taking music charts - even of your OWN MUSIC - to a diligent copy shop. I've seen a guy turned away, even though he'd written the tunes he wanted to photocopy. The photocopy dude just won't take the chance.

The trouble isn't just that this particular copyright law sucks, though it may. It's that the very notion of intellectual property is at odds with social use of creative work.

IP exists because the ability to record (even if only by making marks on paper) and therefore to copy and promulgate exists.

At one time all music (for example) was oral, and organic, and thus not perceived to be anyone's properly. As much as I enjoy making a few bucks in royalties, I kinda yearn for such a time.

I'm ruminating over Prentice's answers to the cleverly and carefully crafted questions, and here's what I want to know: does Prentice genuinely believe the use cases suggested are marginal, and hence a distraction from the real substance of the bill, or is he willfully obfuscating on these points because they ARE in fact the substance of the bill?

Despite Cory's laudable efforts to keep us informed on the issue, I'm still yearning for a balanced "pros and cons" reading of the issue at hand.

Prentice doesn't exactly come out smelling like a rose, here, but if he said ten minutes and gave ten minutes you can't fault him for that.

It is clear, however, that whatever the merits of this bill (are there any? this space has devoted time mostly to its drawbacks), the government is doing a pretty bad sales job on the thing.

Great post, but I can't parse this sentence:

"After all, the majority of links between blogs have been made to or from blogs with four or fewer inbound links in total — that means that the Internet has figured out a cost-effective means of helping audiences of three people discover the writers they should be reading."

Cory or someone else who's smarter than me - please tell me what this means?

If there wasn't liberty in America, how could young geeks have the time and the resources and the inclination to do things like randomly follow bearded strangers?

This is part of a series of mundane moments memorialized with official-looking plaques.

Torontoist picked it up a while back:

http://torontoist.com/2007/12/banal_events_me.php

"These books need to be read today."

Mmm-hmm. Because the problem with today is, people who haven't read these books.

Of course anyone who HAS read these books is okay, right? Aren't they?

This looks ironic only to New World folks who have had the privilege of imagining "nature" as a space without people in it.

Truth is, if nature has a future, it's as a massively managed space, whether we like it or not.

What's the word to describe the situation wherein a comments thread becomes (first cheekily, and then seriously) a parody of the very thing the original post was humorously pointing out?

"Irony" doesn't seem to quite capture it.

Your resolution to stop arguing with strangers seems similar to au revoir when you went to hang out with your new infant.

As a dad, I figured that would actually RAISE your post count. Anyone want to do the math?

Okay, you convinced me not to eat it, but worst food in America? There are people eating 'possums off the road, for Pete's sakes!

"Phenomena" is the plural form of "phenomenon," not a synonym, substitute for, or fancier version thereof.

Thank you.

Nice idea, but it looks like they consider any vague resemblance a deliberate knock-off. I don't think threepio was the world's first or only fictional humanoid robot.

This is a great picture, but I can't agree with it being chosen as photo of the year.

The issue is important; the photograph is illustrative and clever, but the world's greatest photographs - purely AS photographs - don't need much in the way of explanation to work. The decisive moment ought to be decisive on its own to merit this kind of praise, IMHO.

And btw child brides are common to many, many religions and sects, including (until relatively recently, and even now in some isolated cases) Christianity in North America.

I always thought it was w00t, with zeroes, not o's.

I also thought even geeks had stopped using it about 5 years ago.

I recognize that this is by its very nature a simplified version of human history, but I can't help noticing that Kors has completely skipped over the importance of fishing in his bullet points. While the advent of agriculture is clearly of critical importance in human history, the perpetual provision of nutrition by the oceans to those living near their shores seems to repeatedly get glossed. I never understand why.

http://www.crypticmoth.com/2006/07/internet-debut-of-alphabet-soup.html

Cryptic Moth productions did a documentary on this...

It's not a continent. It's more like a soup. And the plastic is small enough not to be visible from, say, a satellite. But it's real.

Cryptic Moth productions in Canada made a video about the plastic collecting in the Pacific Gyre.

I can't find the YouTube link. Hopefully they can handle the traffic at their servers...

http://www.crypticmoth.com/2006/07/internet-debut-of-alphabet-soup.html

An ideal present for the Leonard Cohen fan in the family.

That's not how you spell accordion!