J.R.McHale

A Vanity Fair profile of Christopher Poole, 4chan and Anonymous.

The Atlantic provides a short history (with audio samples) of distortion in rock ‘n roll, beginning with the accidental bass distortion in Marty Robbins’ 1961 song “Don’t Worry”.

Wired: “A key test of digital-copyright law will be heard soon in New York federal court: whether online music storage services and search engines can be held liable when users upload copyright material. The outcome could have far-reaching implications for so-called “cloud-based” services, which allow users to store their content on remote servers accessible on the internet.”

Web creator, Tim Berners-Lee, writing in the November 2010 Scientific American, about current threats to the internet as we know it, including recent attacks on the principles of universality and open standards.

Lawsuits involving publicity rights, a form of “intellectual property rights” on almost any aspect of a person — their likeness, appearance, voice, mannerisms, gestures, etc. — used for “commercial use” are becoming increasingly prevalent. TechDirt discusses an article in the ABA Journal by Eriq Gardner: “What’s in a Name? Publicity rights lawyers are finding there’s plenty of value in a growing practice.”

Adrian Hon, founder and chief creative at Six to Start, an online games company, writing in The Telegraph:

“If book publishers want to see the next decade in any reasonable health, then it’s absolutely imperative that they rethink their pricing strategies and business models right now.”

A blogger’s translation of Haruki Murakami’s interview with Yomiuri Shimbun, on June 18, 2009, about Murakami’s new multi-volume novel, 1Q84. The novel is to be released in the U.S. in 2011 (and is already out in Asia). The interview: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Epilogue.

In response to all the “X fiction writers under Y” lists floating about this year, the New Haven Review has come up with a list of twenty notable non-fiction writers under the age of forty.