Mine all Mine is my blog about the laws, business practices, and social conventions that determine how cultural content in the United States is produced, distributed, and consumed. The content I'm most interested in is related to graphic design, movies, music, painting, photography, print/writing, and software, but I also post about general legal issues, groups and organizations, medicine, and occasionally even big events coming up.

The main thing that separates this blog from others on the same topic is the audience and perspective. I think there are a lot of fantastic resources on the web that provide technical and in-depth information about everything from digital rights to consumer rights and everything in between. But, what I've noticed is that a lot of these blogs and websites are really just reaching people who already understand and care about the issue. I'm hoping to reach everybody else. Actually, this blog's perspective can be summed up as, Why should I care? While a lot of the news-related posts here are talking about the same events other blogs are talking about, I'm purposefully trying to use less jargon and fewer technical terms while answering the question of why you, the average consumer or content producer (i.e. artist, musician, software developer, etc.) should care about what's going on with cultural control today.

Lastly, because it will be an issue for some people, I think I should write a few words about myself and how I came to this topic. As a long-time technology enthusiast and a professional software developer for over ten years, I've had the opportunity to see first-hand some of the benefits and drawbacks to closed, restrictive products as well as open, free ones. I've also been releasing my own free personal projects (software, digital art, music, and writing) under non-restrictive licenses at the website http://dave.caretcake.com. I'm a firm believer in laws and customs that benefit culture and society as a whole over ones that aim only to generate massive amounts of wealth for a few people at the detriment of many. And, I'm hoping that after reading the posts on this blog, you might feel the same way.

If you're still looking for a more complete bio of me, you can read it at http://dave.caretcake.com/about/bio.rhtml.