My latest Guardian column is "Internet copyright law has to have public support if it's going to work," and it goes into the difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism, and tries to understand why so many people got upset at Glee's legal ripoff of a Jonathan Coulton song:
Copyright experts were quick to explain that Fox's plagiarism was legal – the same rules that allowed Coulton to record his cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's original "Baby Got Back" also allow Fox to produce a sound-alike version.
Last weekend, I blogged about Jonathan Coulton's discovery that the TV show Glee had plagiarized his arrangement for "Baby's Got Back." — Read the rest
Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.
My co-hosts for this episode:
Glenn Fleishman. Glenn is a long-time tech reporter, a hacky perl programmer, and one of the writers of the Economist’s Babbage blog on technology and culture. — Read the rest
The wonderful folks at Humble Bundle — who produce pay-what-you-like bundles of DRM-free media, inviting customers to apportion some or all of their payments to charity — have expanded from games bundles into music. The just-launched Humble Music Bundle includes work from They Might Be Giants, OK Go, MC Frontalot, Christopher Tin, Jonathan Coulton, and Hitoshi Sakimoto. — Read the rest
The Internet has been abuzz with Emily White, a intern at NPR, and her article about how she has never bought music and probably never will. and the response from David Lowery of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker. Lowery's response is a powerful piece of writing, and contains some valuable insights into what the old music industry did well, but it's also a mess. — Read the rest
A new, two-week long daily podcast called Journey to Planet JoCo consists of a series of dialogues between John Scalzi and Jonathan Coulton — like my two favorite flavors of ice-cream in one delicious cone!
Welcome to Journey to Planet JoCo, an interview series where science fiction and sometimes fantasy author John Scalzi talks to musician Jonathan Coulton about science fiction and science fiction songs.
Chjade84 convinced an Automated Laser Corporation 20 watt fiber laser to play "Still Alive," Jonathan Coulton's epic anthem for Valve's video-game Portal; as a lagniappe, the laser performs this feat while carving Valve'sAperture Science's logo into a stainless steel plate. — Read the rest
Gweek is a weekly podcast where the editors and friends of Boing Boing talk about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.
My hosts on episode 36 are cartoonist Ruben Bolling, whose comic, Tom the Dancing Bug, premieres weekly on Boing Boing, and Dean Putney, Boing Boing's coding and development wizard. — Read the rest
Evolution Control Committee's new compilation collects all the cool stuff they have released in bits and pieces over the last few years. Who knew we'd reach a point where there were mashup nostalgia acts! It's hard to believe ECC has not been sued into oblivion since their seminal Rocked by Rape* single took aim at how the mainstream news packages fear for consumption (between similarly-themed television commercials). — Read the rest
At long last, I have finally launched my self-published short story collection With a Little Help.
With a Little Help is my first serious experiment in self-publishing. I've published many novels, short story collections, books of essays and so on with publishers, and it's all been very good and satisfying and educational and so on, but it seems like it's time to try something new. — Read the rest
Wil Wheaton, John Scalzi and Subterranean Press are proud to announce the publication of CLASH OF THE GEEKS, a special and fantastical electronic chapbook. It features stories by Wheaton, Scalzi, New York Times bestseller Patrick Rothfuss, Norton Award winner and Hugo Best Novel nominee Catherynne M.
Larry Lessig has written an editorial in response to ASCAP's bizarre attack on organizations like Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, in which ASCAP solicited funds to fight these "anti-copyright" groups. This was just weird: Creative Commons makes copyright licenses, EFF has spent the past five years advocating for the creation of ASCAP-like organizations to collect for Internet music distribution, and Public Knowledge has an unblemished track record of fighting for balanced copyright that respects authors. — Read the rest
Aperture Scie– err, Valve just put together this video highlighting the successes of their "Portal recruitment program", and yesterday's announcement that the game is free on both Windows and Mac through May 24th. The video's highlight: the tramp-stamp dig at Half-Life universe corporate rivals Black Mesa. — Read the rest
To coincide with South by Southwest, journalist Scott Kirsner is making his 2009 book Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age available free, in digital form, for the duration of the festival. — Read the rest
Publisher's Weekly just announced (on the cover, no less!) my forthcoming DIY short-story collection, With a Little Help, a print-on-demand book that explores pretty much every "freemium" model for turning a free, well-known digital object into a bunch of highly sought and profitable physical objects. — Read the rest
The Fall 2009 issue of h+ magazine, edited by our friend R.U. Sirius, is available for free as a downloadable PDF.
The Fall 2009 Issue of h+ Magazine features Erik Davis on Dollhouse, Tweaking Your Neurons, The Psychedelic Transhumanists, Sex and the Singularity, Jonathan Coulton's Inner Squid, and more.
