Copyright Commerce and Culture

Though this video is interesting, the comment thread gives a great look at people's thoughts on current copyright laws.

another good article from PC Magazine: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384913,00.asp

It's really interesting to see how Google adapts to being an international corporation. The company clearly needs to comply with each country's laws. This is where people need to ask themselves the following question: do we WANT Google to be the same in every country? What are we saying about globalization/transnationalism at this point? People show concern towards homogenization (at least in a cultural sense), but putting ourselves in the shows of Belgian Google users who may find the links and excerpts useful or integral their research, where do we draw the line? Something to think about, I suppose. Here's another article on the matter, from PCWorld: http://www.pcworld.com/article/227379/google_busted_for_copyright_violation_in_belgium.html

not actually news, but an interesting article on plagiarism from 2007. "The idea that culture can be property-intellectual property-is used to justify everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone." What do you all think of Lethem's article?