As we noted in the context of antibiotics, it's well recognized that financial incentives cause the pharmaceutical industry to engage in research that tends to maximize profits rather than maximizing the health of the public. But a widely-circulated article in the Washington Post reveals another kind of bias that may stop us from adopting better

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We've covered the trespasses of stupid criminals here before. Bank robbers who brag about their actions on YouTube, for instance. Or thieves on the lam uploading pictures containing their whereabouts to social media sites. It seems at times that these guys and gals are just trying to get caught. But that's certainly not always the case. Take the...

When we typically discuss companies coming to blows with content control (aka censorship), the stories tend to be about what would otherwise be obscure wrong-doings going viral on a national or international level. Major automakers concocting horrible advertising around suicide, for instance. Or multi-state bus companies learning that

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We see so many bogus DMCA takedowns, and we hear the big copyright holders insisting that it's just an accident each and every time -- and not to worry about the collateral damage and censorship it leads to. So it seems interesting that TorrentFreak has uncovered a series of bogus DMCA takedown notices to Google from four different giant...

Obscenity law and the First Amendment tend to run into each other from time to time and the whole "I know it when I see it" concept makes things a bit arbitrary in the best of situations. Still, it's pretty standard for people to assume questions of obscenity revolve around imagery -- still or video -- rather than written works. Text and stories...

As negotiators are seeking to finish up the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement as soon as possible (they had originally promised a done deal by October), it appears that the controversial "intellectual property" chapter is causing the most problems, according to Sean Flynn, who is at the current negotiating round in Lima.

Officially, the

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Nuclear energy has been around for decades, but its safety and the safety of its radioactive waste have always been a political nightmare. Still, some researchers have been redesigning nuclear reactors to make them safer in many ways, but these newer designs have yet to be scaled up and used commercially. Maybe someday nuclear technology will be...

Well, well. Some Prenda supporters (shockingly, they exist) in our comments have been arguing that Judge Otis Wright's order against Team Prenda is the sign of a rogue judge who will get overturned. Of course, similar actions underway in other district courts suggest otherwise. On top of that, it would appear that the 9th Circuit appeals court...

Following the DOJ's brazen collection of info on AP reporter phone calls, we noted that it was not the first time the DOJ had been overly aggressive in going after reporters. Now, the Washington Post has another horrifying story, talking about the DOJ's investigation into a leak from the State Department to Fox News concerning classified info on...

The concepts of secondary liability seem to go right out the window (along with basic rationality) when it comes to certain people freaking out about copyright infringement. The latest is that Swedish prosecutors are apparently threatening the registrar that manages the .se domain with some form of charges because the Pirate Bay (briefly) ran on...