Creators, Consumers, and Distributors: Understanding the Moral Structure of Digital Copyright
Posted May 1st
John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, recently calculated that a typical American, in the course of a single day and without any use of file-sharing programs, could easily expose himself to over twelve million dollars in statutory damages should every copyright holder who’s rights he violated decide to sue. He did this by looking to a hypothetical law professor, checking and responding to email, forwarding digital pictures of a vacation, and many other innocuous activities every one of us with a digital lifestyle engages in nearly every day. While some have disputed the specifics of his accounting, the simple fact remains that “such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense ...
categorized as Essays.
If you liked this, check out my serial horror novel, The Hole.
The Hole is my serial apocalyptic horror novel, based in Mormon mythology, about a global plague, zombies, and a small group of survivors making their way across a very weird Midwest.
Traffic Light
The car was stopped. The light was red. It had held that color for a good thirty seconds so far. Miriam leaned back in her seat, looked out the ...
Baseball on the Garden Path
Creepy sounds. He spit. Creepy sounds, is what the kids said. Stuff they'd picked up from movies, television, maybe those internet videos they passed around like measles. Go check it out, daddy. ...
The Trouble With Prayer
Nothing is more central to the religious relationship with god than prayer. The deity hears the needs of his faithful and--sometimes--responds. For the unbeliever, prayer is a silly waste of ...
The Primacy of Secular Morality
Religionists often accuse humanists of being without morals. This is wrong. The difference is that humanists ground their morality in actions impacting this world and not in those that might ...
What Atheism Offers: Life’s Mysteries
One of the profound and fundamental misunderstandings theists have of atheists is the belief that the latter lead a cold and narrow existence, unconcerned with the mysteries of the universe. Anything ...
What Atheism Offers: Freedom from Sin
Theistic religion of the Christian variety espouses two kinds of morality, both owing their existence to god and his scriptural commandments. The first is familiar to all moral systems and forms ...
What Atheism Offers: Justifying a Life’s Purpose
There exists a need among theists to justify life's purpose. Far from being content with self made goals, with personal achievements set by the individual for his own existential benefit, they ...
What Atheism Offers: How Should the Atheist Act?
Mormons believe the North American continent was once populated by a race of white Christians, emigrants from Israel who built an advanced civilization in the new world over a thousand years before ...
What Atheism Offers: A Sense of Purpose
Without religion, won't life be meaningless? Won't we all collapse into nihilism, muttering "What's the point?" while we waste away our years in front of the television, waiting for it all ...