I’m going to wax lyrical about the humble hyperlink – it’s quite remarkable where just clicking links can take you sometimes! One of my favorite blogs is Nerdcore, partly because its mishmash of German and English keeps me up on my German while throwing me a few lines of English when I get stuck. Plus, [...]

With the advent of new media devices, the way information circulates is reformulated. In this blogpost I would like to talk a bit about the origin of copyright, issues that have arisen from its creation, and how this tool is used today, observing which purposes and interests it stands for.
In his book, “Intellectual Property and [...]

I say the other side because having stayed and explored the issue of digital piracy in the US, I have come to find there is a definite dichotomy in the way it is perceived and hence handled there and internationally.
Learning about cases such a Zach McCune’s, is definitely a step forward for the thousands [...]

I remember coming across a post a while ago by our friends at Global Voices about the way in which Hong Kong was fighting piracy in the country. In 2006, the state enlisted Youth Ambassadors to monitor the web and report offenses. Soon after this army of “teenage internet spies” was released into cyberspace, more [...]

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience: last Wednesday, Sarah and I got to share a stage with John Palfrey, Pablo Chavez, and, best of all, Google DC’s green bouncy-ball. Google’s DC office invited John Palfrey, Sarah, and me to participate in a book talk about Born Digital. Though the Digital Natives team has done [...]

If you need a refresher, watch Part I and Part II.
In April of last year, Zack McCune was sued by the RIAA. He ended up $3,000 lighter (he settled), but with a much richer understanding of the contemporary debate surrounding music, copyright law, and file sharing. Part I [...]

Here’s the second installment of our three-part video “The Ballad of Zack McCune.” You can view part 1 here.
What do you do when you’re sued by the recording industry? And how do kids and teens reconcile the law (and corporate interests) with a culture of illegal downloading? Last year, Brown University student [...]

This video – “The Ballad of Zack McCune, Part I” – is the first of a three-part piece created by Nikki Leon and John Randall of the Digital Natives summer team. It marks another installment in our weekly “Digital Natives: Reporters in the Field” series, in which we delve into [...]

It’s not controversial to note that the meaning of words changes over time. Within the same language, different groups and cultures use the same words to different ends, or different words to the same end. It is widely noted (as so often happens when there is a linguistic shift) that Digital Natives not only alter [...]