http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/01/caleb_crain_why_matt_yglesias_is_wrong_about_copyright.html It turns out that Kant didn't think that an author could mount a strong legal case against piracy based on property rights in words. After all, even after pirates copied an author's words, the author himself still had them. It was better for an author to argue that his book was not an object but an exercise of his powers, which "he can concede, it is true, to others, but never alienate". In other words, ... a pirated book was not to be understood as property that had been stolen; it was rather a speech act that had been compromised.… ]]> Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:28:23 -0700 http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/01/caleb_crain_why_matt_yglesias_is_wrong_about_copyright.html http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387 Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a preteen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator—marked by her forever—remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.

The author of the story I've described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale… ]]> Sat, 29 May 2010 02:00:00 -0700 http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387 http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/pages/opensource.htm by Manuel DeLanda The plan of the essay is as follows. I will begin with a few definitions of technical terms ("source code", "compiler", "operating system") which are necessary to follow the rest of the paper. I will then discuss a few of the ideas put forward by open-source philosophers (Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond) focusing not on their weaknesses but on their practical consequences. In particular, Stallman's achievements go beyond the creation of programs and involve the design of a contract (the GNU General Public License, or GPL) which has been arguably as crucial to the success of the movement… ]]> Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:37:00 -0700 http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/pages/opensource.htm