Copyright and Mickey Mouse's Long Tail

“What do coffee, cell phones, and pickles have in common? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), they all pose a similar level of cancer risk to humans.”

“Hackers from Lulz Security (‘LulzSec’) broke into Sony Pictures servers, grabbed one million user accounts and plaintext passwords, then released a large sample of this data online yesterday. The data set seen by Ars Technica included names, home addresses, passwords, and e-mail addresses—perfect for malicious exploitation, since many people reuse passwords on multiple accounts. To make matters worse, the sample that LulzSec released contained data almost exclusively on (allegedly) elderly users born in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s.”

“China’s not the only Internet bad boy; a new UN report (PDF) calls out even developed democracies for slapping restrictions on the Internet.”

“Tennessee governor Bill Haslam has signed legislation that for the first time makes the theft of subscription entertainment services like Netflix a crime on par with stealing satellite television or walking out of a restaurant without paying your bill. And ‘theft’ now includes sharing your account password too broadly.”

“On her first day as the new Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante trekked across the street from the Library of Congress to the Rayburn Office Building for a House Judiciary Committee hearing on whether unauthorized Internet streaming should become a felony. ‘Copyright policy is never finished,’ she told the assembled Representatives, adding that it’s time for another tweak to the law.”