Another slick tactical media strike

Posted on | February 16, 2009 | No Comments

I have a weak spot for the web activists do tactical media strikes in the shape of mock versions of corporate websites (classics being RTmarks fake George W. Bush website back when the bozo was running for guvernor in Texas). One of the latest succesful ones target Canon – check it out…and more out. I especially enjoy WordPress’ protective role in this matter.

“NamelessleTTer” – collaborative art work

Posted on | February 14, 2009 | No Comments

Check out this collaborative art work I stumbled upon – the NamelessleTTer. The idea is to “encourage people all over the world to leave personal notes in books that are available to the public.”

I’ll let the site explain itself.

Operators of the The Pirate Bay stand trial

Posted on | February 13, 2009 | No Comments

The war rages on.

Slashdot writes: “Operators of The Pirate Bay stand trial on Monday in Stockholm. The four defendants from the popular file-sharing web site are charged with being accessories to breaking copyright law and may face fines or up to two years in prison if found guilty. The four defendants have run the site since 2004 after it was started in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån. The Swedish public service television announced that they are going to send a live audio stream from the trial. It will be broadcast without editing or translation.”

If the Swedish authorities manage to close down the service, shite will hit the fan. Not only technically – a bit torrent meltdown – but also because bittorrent users will then scatter into cyberspace in order to find new ground. Bittorrent technology is evolution, not organized crime or copyright infringement and therefore will never halt. Using (out-of-date) legislation to prevent the use of bittorrent technology on a global scale would be similar to try to stop a tsunami using a bucket. The only outcome will be the proliferation of a myriad of new torrent search engines and trackers – only probably located on the Cayman Islands, Russia and other less regulated havens, out of reach of western hemisphere courts.

Entertainment industry moguls – drop the bucket and re-develop your business model…

YouTube downloads being tested using Creative Commons

Posted on | February 13, 2009 | No Comments

Creative Commons is really bashing forward. Check out this announcement on their blog:

“YouTube just made an incredibly exciting announcement: it’s testing an option that gives video owners the ability to allow downloads and share their work under Creative Commons licenses. The test is being launched with a handful of partners, including Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCTV.”

Read their post in full – and read also the announcement on the YouTube blog.

The legal guide for bloggers

Posted on | February 12, 2009 | No Comments

Starting a blog is easy, but there are issues to consider before you start tapping away. The magnificent EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has recently updated and re-published their ‘Legal Guide For Bloggers‘.

The impact of ‘free’

Posted on | February 7, 2009 | No Comments

Chris Anderson, chief editor of Wired magazine, has become the leading proponent of ‘the economics of giving it away’ – ie. free service as a business model, as used by all major web actors right now – from Google to Skype. After writing the bestseller ‘The Long Tail‘, which I’ve read – it’s really interesting – he has been working on a book titled ‘Free‘ – and while we wait for that, we can enjoy his small droppings here and there. The book is due in July this year.

Google Maps as street art channel

Posted on | February 6, 2009 | No Comments

I just love things like that: A group of grass-root art organizers in Pittsburgh staged a street spectacle on the day the Google Maps Street View camera car came by to map their neighborhood.

Read this Washington Post article, and read about the event on the groups, Street With A View, own website.

Will Jack Bauer Change His Ways?

Posted on | January 31, 2009 | No Comments

Interesting subject in todays newsletter from Human Rights First:

“Jack Bauer is back, in the 7th season of Fox Network’s 24. Bauer has tortured more people than anyone else on TV, and virtually all of the program’s 89 scenes of torture presented it as an effective and morally justifiable interrogation technique. The new season looks to be even more of a self-conscious promotion of torture.”

Watch HRF’s video:

“In the analysis of the show’s premiere on January 11th, the New York Times and the Washington Post ran articles that discussed the coming season and featured HRF’s Primetime Torture campaign. Read HRF’s David Danzig’s opinion piece on the Huffington Post, where he explains how military trainers have cited 24 as an obstacle to ensuring that young officers comply with the Geneva Conventions.”

Epicentre war protest

Posted on | January 30, 2009 | No Comments

Boing Boing’s videoblog – BBtv – from yesterday, January 29, 2009, is really cool. First off, it takes a look at photographer Glen E. Friedman’s photos of old school hip hop artists including Run DMC and Public Enemy.
However, 4 minutes in, it gets really interesting, as it looks at an awesome large-scale anti-war statement made by same Friedman in an apartment next to the ground zero site back in 2002 and 2003.

Information accessibility

Posted on | January 28, 2009 | No Comments

As presented by the brilliant Journalism 2.0-blog, the Obama administration has once again emphasized its principle of information accessibility by opening up another previously closed-off branch of US government. This time by launching USAspending.gov, a site devoted to letting “Americans see where their money goes” and putting the spotlight on the new federal budget. The most significant thing about the site, however, beside its user-friendly customer-facing interface, is the open access to its data that is available through the API it offers.

The Journalism 2.0-blog writes: “The API will allow web developers at news organizations or independent journalism startups to mix and mash all that data, with other information sources, according to their own specific focus. That means new Web pages and database subsets built by industry, geography, voting trends or any other slice of interest. It’s info porn that’s customizable.”

Read more at On The Media.

If you’re interested in the dynamics and dialectics of media, I suggest you subscribe to Journalism 2.0.