Silicon Valley wins round one in SOPA fight

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Over the past week, Silicon Valley’s internet powerhouses out-communicated Hollywood, stopped internet piracy bills pushed by the big studios and even prodded the Republican presidential candidates and President Barack Obama to agree on something — that Hollywood’s internet piracy bills threatened the innovation of the web.

Traditionally, Silicon Valley has been reluctant to play by Washington’s rules. Microsoft did not build a major Washington presence until the late 1990s when it faced a big anti-trust suit. But last week, the industry demonstrated its power through a concerted campaign of shutting down some sites and posting notices on others about the industry’s opposition to the internet piracy bills.

Supreme Court decision on copyright may not injure major opera companies, symphonies

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Established opera companies and symphonies should not be hurt seriously by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week upholding a law that moved the work of composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich from the public domain to copyright protection.

Timothy O’Leary, general director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, said in an interview, “It is possible that (the decision) will add some additional costs but not substantially.” O’Leary said that about one of Opera Theatre’s four productions each season is under copyright, but that “we don’t make decisions about what operas to perform” based on whether royalties are due.

Yepsen discusses Iowa caucus

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David Yepsen has been director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, since April 1, 2009. Yepsen hails from Des Moines, Iowa where he was the political editor and writer for the Des Moines Register for 34 years and is the premier expert on the Iowa Caucus’s covering the caucus ever since their inception in 1972.

Yepsen said the caucuses have changed since the early days in the 70’s and 80’s where people would gather in living rooms, gymnasiums, and schools to discuss the candidates. Small retail politics in Iowa no longer exist and with big media outlets and huge campaign staffs focusing heavily on the candidates, some of the intrigue and relaxation of choosing a candidate has given way to sideshows and huge campaign events. Yepsen said the caucuses have lost their intimacy and neighborhood feeling of what they once were. Yepsen said it was easier to get to know each individual candidate without the glare of national media.

Bankruptcy: Lee Enterprises follows an American Business Tradition

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How would Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1879, respond to news that the newspaper’s current parent company, Lee Enterprises, Inc., on December 12, 2012, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?

It is safe to assume that Pulitzer knew that with every shift of an industrial paradigm, bankruptcy filings can mount up as high as the piles of pennies young children donated in Pulitzer’s campaign to fund installation of the Statue of Liberty in 1885. His newspapers in St. Louis and New York covered paradigm shifts as railroads outmoded wagon trains, electricity replaced gas lamps, and old technology companies began to unravel.

The Syracuse Post and Bernie Fine: An Ethical Dilemma

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As both a two-time graduate of Syracuse University and a former six-year employee of the Syracuse Post-Standard, I have been asked quite a bit what I think of the allegations about Bernie Fine and how the newspaper covered the story.

Although it’s hard to explain to the public, my fear is that the public’s criticism of the Post-Standard’s decision not to publish the story nine years ago will make news organizations more willing in the future to print one-source stories that can ruin the reputations of innocent people.