By CTMN TES Contributor @torqueative In mere weeks, we will begin to get a sense of how a great political drama, that has captivated Britain and much of the world for so long with its shocks, twists and double-crosses, finally comes to an end. An embattled woman holed up in the Capital, […]
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Is Instagram Destroying Teenage Girls?
International Slam Poet Rob Montz gives us a heaping dose of reality in his new video, Is Instagram Destroying Teenage Girls? The short answer: Yes. The math: A platform prizing physical appearance above all + the promise of micro-celebrity + notifications + tagging + bottomless scrolling = engineered addiction (and, most likely, […]
Copyright Directive Passed! . . .The Death Of Memes?
The Express marks the passing of the EU Copyright Directive with a deep concern for memes. Article 11 requires search engines to pay news sites for links, while Article 13 will compel online-content platforms to filter posts that haven’t secured creators’ permissions. Mercifully, memes are “explicitly excluded” from persecution. So we’ve got […]
FLASHPOINT: South China Sea from Jaw-Jaw to War-War?
By Daniel McGroarty GeoPolicy, Defense Editor Don’t make those travel plans just yet: The much-awaited Trump-Xi trade “summit” seems to be sailing deeper into calendar 2019, with word over the past 24 hours (Reuters) that the meet “won’t happen in March,” may “push into April” (Breitbart), or “may be pushed back to June” (South […]
SoftBank’s Gravity Warping Value, Expectations
Henny Sender in the FT: SoftBank and its $70 billion-in Vision Fund are privately hyperfinancing start-ups, they argue, to spur rapid growth and occasionally to beat their chests. These well-intended torrents of cash have created a bubble in the tech sector, widening the gap between massive private and modest public valuations. The […]
Europe Won’t Break The Internet
In her column at The Times, Angela Mills Wade maintains that proposed new EU copyright laws will bolster independent journalism — not break the Internet as its detractors contend. The detractors, according to Mills Wade, are well-funded tech companies whose business models depend on recycling content from original producers, from newspapers and magazines […]
Internet Giants Can’t Lose?
Writing in The Guardian, Carlos Fernandes, a World Economic Forum young global leader, argues that the proposed EU copyright law, intended to break tech juggernauts’ grip on European media, will have precisely the opposite effect. By penalizing organizations for the copyright abuses of their users, the law will incentivize digital media platforms like […]
Smirke: About Those Loopholes
Writing in Billboard, Richard Smirke takes issues with the final wording of Article 13 in the proposed new Copyright Directive, arguing that it’s too ambiguous to predict — and could have dire consequences for the music industry. (Dire.) The use of terms like “expeditiously” and “best efforts” will assure a tortured legal process […]
Brussels Losing Touch With Average Citizens
Per a Pew Research Center poll, many Europeans fear Brussels is losing touch with the needs of its citizens and fear for the region’s economic future. While Brussels is credited with promoting peace and prosperity, its “inefficient” and “intrusive” nature has cast a pall over the perception of economic well-being of most citizens […]
Brexit Talks Must Prioritize Patients: EFPIA Chief
Per EurActiv, Stefan Oschmann, President of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations and CEO of Merck KGaA, warns that Brexit talks have not sufficiently addressed the potential peril for patients. With 1 billion packs of medicines traversing the border between the UK and EU annually, Oschmann argues that member states must […]