Just a quick note to draw attention to a very curious intellectual property issue that has come up at Harvard recently.

In a collaborative op-ed posted today in the Harvard Crimson, I read about a student who was asked to leave the Coop, Harvard’s bookstore. His offense? Writing down the values of price tags for his textbooks. The bookstore claimed that he was violating their intellectual property rights.

The high number of viable presidential candidates and the exceedingly early, and fervent din of election chatter, have made it difficult to focus on any single figure in the primary races.

I need to begin my discussion by responding to the allegation that the first quote that Brad cites, in his post “Are Bloggers the new Public Intellectuals?“, which hints at the specter of the critique of the *irrelevance* of cultural studies or critical work.

“As long as we stay in our own spaces and write in a language which is arcane and inaccessible to the majority of society, we’re not going to make the social difference that has been part of the political agenda of Cultural Studies from Day One.”

When I was a fledgling Internet user, reveling in my new 2400 baud rate modem, I decided to play a trick on my friend Josh. I set my computer clock forward an hour, and then reconfigured my email account, replacing my name and email address with his. I clicked okay to save the changes, and much like that now famous episode of The Office, I began to send Josh emails from himself.

You may be asking yourself, “Who is M2Z, and why do we care?” And with good reason as the Menlo Park, California startup only ramped up in 2005 and hasn’t received much public exposure. Those of us in areas with very few to no choices for internet service providers, may want to pay attention. M2Z is a broadband wireless company created by former head of FCC’s wireless bureau, John Muleta, and Milo Medin. M2Z filed a petition with the FCC in 2006 to license the 2155 MHz to 2175 MHz band of currently unused radio spectrum in order to provide broadband wireless to the public at no charge.

On the sixth anniversary of September 11 several members of the print media and a representative from the National Security Archive gathered at American University to discuss “The Freedom of Press in a Post 9-11 Era.” Washington D.C.’s public radio station, WAMU, has archived a recording of the discussion on their website.

The notion that our bodies play an important role in our identities shouldn’t strike anyone as totally radical. Physical appearance is of paramount importance in western culture, and an obsession over bodies, particularly women’s bodies, is a staple of popular culture.

“There is no absolute way to prevent people from copying the digital versions of your text, your music, your movie, or your data. If a computer will interpret the data and let someone use it, then that same computer can be programmed to grab the data and make a copy of it. The flexibility and programmability of these machines are a double-edged sword.