By , August 31, 2012.

Principles for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet — The Trichordist offers a set of 8 principles for ensuring the internet remains a viable public forum for content creators and consumers alike. “Technology may change but principles do not. A society that encourages the creative spirit is rare in history and worth defending. The internet and digital technology have opened up many new opportunities for artists, but it has also opened up new opportunities for those who wish to exploit those artists.”

The Big Online Rip-Off — Danuta Kean has a comprehensive piece on “the burgeoning power and influence of internet venture capital, and illegal filesharing sites.” Well worth a read, Kean closes with a list of steps that creators can take to counter this power and influence.

The Illusion of More — Be sure to check out filmmaker David Newhoff’s new site, launched this week. Subtitled, “Dissecting the Digital Utopia,” Newhoff already has a number of great articles up. The site promises to be “a response to the promise of the digital age that more would necessarily be better. More content, more information, more access, and more interaction would ultimately produce more freedom, more democracy, more cultural diffusion, more innovation, and so on.  According to some, the evolution of the Internet would ultimately fuse with human evolution itself, allowing us to transcend even our own mortality. To be sure, we seem to have accomplished the more part, but whether it’s all for the better is a question worth asking.”

The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy — The New York Times profiles the increasing use of paid book reviews in the world of self-publishing. Among those the Times looks at is author John Locke, who used such services to become somewhat of an internet superstar, even parlaying his success into an e-book, “How I Sold One Million E-Books in Five Months.”

Brand banners on pirate sites: whose fault is it anyway? — Adland looks for an answer, inspired by a recent series of posts on the Trichordist pointing out many major brands that show up on display ads for notorious pirate sites — like this recent one showing over a dozen brands advertising alongside unauthorized Neil Young recordings. The list includes Ford, Mini, Target, and even the Boy Scouts. Over at Music Think Tank, Bruce Warila looks at the same series of posts and asks, Are we a community of copyright cowards?

Brian Keene: I write novels, stories, and comic books for money — Lucinda Dugger of the Copyright Alliance profiles comic artist Brian Keene. “Yet, despite the many hours of work for what would seem to many of us like little financial return, Brian continues to write and offer new opportunities to his fans. In fact, he so appreciates his fans, that he wrote a novel, Deluge: The Conqueror Worms II, which he offered for free on his website.”

Average wait time from theater to home video — An interesting graph showing how consistently and dramatically the release windows for films have dropped in the past 14 years. The companion thread on Reddit.

2 Comments

  1. I note that this and your two previous articles have not received any comments. At the same time, however, I have noted them being fvorably cited in numerous other sites. IOW, they are not at all going unnoticed, and you should be proud of the impact you are having.

    • +1
      Don’t judge the articles by the number of comments.
      I love reading your blog, Terry, i just don’t always have something to say.. i’m sure others are the same way. That might even be a good thing; you’ve hit the nail on the head, and there’s nothing to add to an insightful article!