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Newspaper: EU Copyright Law Stifles Innovation

  The LA Times published a scathing (well, impassioned) editorial arguing that the EU’s new Copyright Directive could squash small companies that promote aspiring music and movie creators.   To comply with the new law, everyone publishing content will need to employ sophisticated filtering technology that prevents such intolerable copyright abuses as parents sharing videos […]

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Sorry Finland: Don’t Be Happy, Worry

  By Daniel McGroarty GeoPolicy Editor   What’s the happiest country on Earth?  The data is in:  Finland.  So says the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network in its new report.  Yes, it’s really a thing.   But Finland’s happy news comes as others speculate about an inarguably unhappy scenario – that Russia may be […]

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Conflict Is The Mother Of Innovation

  By Pietro Paganini TES Contributor   Once again, reason and science are being obscured by the ideologies and magical thinking that fuel populism and authoritarianism, but weaken innovation and the coexistence of free citizens.   The scientific method favours the maturing of ideas into knowledge, bringing more innovation and prosperity and reinforcing the individual […]

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GAME OF UNKNOWNS: The Future of Brexit

  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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]