Congrats to Dan and Kacey for winning this years Red Hook Crit!
We had a blast working with Trimble Racing and watching the race. RHC is becoming a Brooklyn institution, and we’re honored to participate alongside huge athletic brands like EMS, Giro, and Cinelli; and local stars like Ride Brooklyn and Sixpoint Brewery.
Zeke and Eric will be training for next years race.
After a lull, there has been a lot of movement with crowdfunding in the past weeks. The House re-passed the McHenry Bill inside the larger Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. The Senate has taken up the JOBS Act, but substituted the House’s crowdfunding provisions with the Merkley/Brown CROWDFUND ACT (S.2190). [Update: there is now a vote in the Senate today, which even if passed would have to be reconciled with the House version.]
As the more staid congressional chamber, the Senate is naturally more concerned about reigning in the potential for crowdfunding to unleash a flood of online start-up hucksterism. I try not to be cynical, but the approach the Senate seems to have taken is to create a crowdfunding “exemption” with so many hoops to jump through that nobody could conceivably commit fraud using it, mainly because nobody will use it. The CROWDFUND ACT calls itself an exemption from securities registration, but really creates its own little microcap-IPO registration regime.
That said, I think there is a way to fix the CROWDFUND ACT and increase its fraud prevention bona-fides at the same time.
Our copyright laws brought into the digital age have turned us all into pirates and thieves—infringers on the rights of creators to make reproductions, to perform and make public displays of their creative works. The law’s conflict with our digital age isn’t just that technology has made it easier to copy and share creative works without permission. In ways that cannot just be avoided, the virtual world has altered our social networks, so that by an accident of digital reproduction, formerly permissible acts with the same meaning and of the same fundamental social nature are instead captured by copyright.
Pinterest is the latest example.
The digital copying and public display of images has caused an outbreak of copyright hand-wringing among overwrought legal commentators and volunteer internet hall monitors. Taking what I see as an overly formulaic and abstract view of copyright law, these commentators are declaring that image sharing is infringement, and even questioning Pinterest’s immunity as a service provider host of third party content. To the contrary, I believe that a contextual look at the use of images reveals a transformative (fair use) expression in “pinning” an image.
Our friend Wayne Ferrebee has authored a well-considered post on the controversial and fundamentally flawed Internet censorship legislation currently before the US Congress. He suggests that rather than blacking out our websites, we ought to take more direct action to throw the bums out.
It is almost certain that no matter the outcome today, this will not be the last time that our legislators, acting on behalf of parochial interests, attempt to mandate a regulatory off-switch for networked speech. But don’t blame them — blame yourselves for electing the idiots! Yes in the short term, I’d rather see this legislation fail. But in the long term, the battle will have to be won on a more fundamental level. Our society as a whole will have to decide that the topic is settled. But even then, I have little faith in our politicians (and our own) ability to keep hands off such a shiny thing as the Internet. Ultimately this issue may not be resolved until the technological cat is so far out of the bag that no regulator, however corruptly motivated, can put it back in again.
Over the 16 months I’ve worked in Dumbo, it has been exciting to see the neighborhood take off as a technology and design campus. I remember the first time I grabbed a cup of Joe at Brooklyn Roasting Co., the best coffee shop in the city, which had just moved into a converted warehouse down the block. I thought, hey, maybe I will never have to work in Midtown again. Since then we’ve had daily reports of start-ups setting up shop here. Multiple tech incubators have opened nearby. My law partner and I waited a week to pull the trigger on a new lease at 20 Jay and it was snapped up from under us. No doubt it’s only a matter of time before the landlord hikes the rent, but at least we have some great new neighbors.