Journalism

Aged a decade, a wine that's still breaking bottles

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

Finance, insurance, real estate special interests near total victory over 3-inch fish

The immanent extinction of the Delta smelt is exciting a flurry of studies, commentaries, and government evasion. . As we approach another development surge in California, it is apparent that lawyers, lobbyists, academics  and flakpersons for the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate conglomerate that rules the state have invented new layers of obfuscation between the conglomerate's work and the damage it does.

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