I live in Stockholm, Sweden. A hundred years ago, one of the largest employers in the city was a company named Stockholm Ice. Their business was as straightforward as it was necessary: help keep perishable food edible for longer by distributing cold in a portable format.

We're all used to changing society over a weekend of coding. But changing the values of society takes much, much longer than that, and it requires all of us to keep patiently explaining what we understand to those who don't. Here's a primer on how.

Every time changes to the copyright monopoly are considered, the profits of major entertainment industry companies are at the center of the discussion. Even the people who fiercely defend the right to share information freely are going to extreme lengths to argue that this will not hurt the revenues of…

In my last column about public libraries and the many parallels with online sharing of knowledge and culture, an unexpected gem surfaced in the comments. The most fundamental reason the copyright monopoly is harmful keeps being forgotten in details and irrelevancies about business models, so we must keep reminding ourselves…