Molo

Hello out there

2010-12-10T14:04:00.001-08:00

I just realized that this blog is still up. Indeed it's the number one hit I get if I do a vanity google search.

Yes, it's been a long time. A lot has happened since I last posted. Starting with twins! (2 beautiful boys, Max and Charlie). I finished my dissertation (Consuming identities: Clubs, Drugs, and an Asian American Youth Culture) and Ph.D. And I co-authored a book: Youth, Drugs, and Nightlife

So, it's been a little busy around here. (Hence the whole abandoning the blog thing). And I'm not making any promises :-)

Visual evidence that I have too many books

2007-02-04T20:36:00.000-08:00

I've caught the bug over at Library Thing and made a photo mosaic of Michael and me, using pictures of the covers of all of our books. (Okay, they're mainly mine, but some are his. I wonder if there's a library thing for comic books?). Directions of how to do this can be found here.

Mars is actually quite far away

2006-08-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

Had you heard that yesterday Mars would appear closer than the Moon? That this was a once in a lifetime chance to see Mars upclose, which would not be repeated for decades and decades? My parents, along with millions of other email recipients, had. My poor dad even got the telescope ready!

So, if you peered up at the night sky last night and wondered why Mars didn't seem so big afterall, have solace that at least it wasn't because you were looking in the wrong place. This supposed phenomenon is simply not true. (Nor was it true in any of the previous years in which this email rumor circulated). Phil Plaitt helpfully explains in this article.

Phil runs a great site-- bad astronomy-- devoted to debunking myths, frauds, and bad science related to astronomy. And as an extra bonus, I listened to Phil (along with Cory Doctorow, and Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden and others) on an engaging panel about bloggers as public intellectuals at last week's WorldCon.

(And yes, I had a great time at WorldCon-- hopefully I'll get a chance to blog about it later)

Deadwood Pancakes

2006-08-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

The latest little amusement on youtube: Deadwood Pancakes. As with the show itself, not at all safe for work, nor for those easily offended by foul language. But, if you're a fan of the show, you're sure to appreciate this little diversion.

Word Nerd

2006-08-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

So, I finally made it to see Wordplay, the new documentary about NYT Crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and the national crossword puzzle tournament. It's one of those movies that just made me smile-- nothing earth shattering, but truly delightful. While I'm a bit biased to the material, as someone who dabbles in puzzling, I think it would be fun for non-puzzlers too.

In the spirit of celebrating my (not-too-hidden) inner word nerd, here are a few other sources of amusement and edification for my fellow logophiles.

* AN ARTICLE: I liked Sudoku, I can see how it's an entertaining way to spend a few minutes, but I honestly got bored with the sameness of it after a while. Crosswords, on the other hand, draw on so many different things, often have a bit of novelty or serendipity-- challenging the history buff, trivia junky, and word nerd in me all at once. A quick look at the effect of Sudoku's wild success (my Dad for instance is a true addict!) on the world of crosswords: Matt Gaffney's Surviving Sudoku

* A NEWSLETTER: Michael Quinion's World Wide Words is a weekly newsletter that includes amusing discussions of neologisms, word mysteries, and word histories-- much in the spirit of his wonderful book Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds and , which debunks numerous folk etymologies, or urban legends about word origins. For example the word "crap" did not come from inventor of the toilet Thomas Crapper. And the expression "rule of thumb" does not derive from Puritan laws about the size of stick one's allowed to beat one's wife with. (These two I'd heard from what I'd taken to be somewhat credible sources).

* A BOOK: I always enjoy Geoff Nunberg's commentaries on Fresh Air when I come across them. His new book on conservative manipulation of language is definitely on my to-read-soon list. The book's title pretty much sums it up: Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show

* A DATABASE: The Eggcorn Database is a wonderful collection of a very specific type of errors found in common English usage-- common malapropisms that almost make sense. Or as they describe it on the site:

"And eggcorns are not like just any amusing erroneous substitution: they are special because they arise when a writer knows an expression well enough to employ it in an appropriate context, but is mistaken about the term's or its constituents' meanings, origins or the under~~lining~~lying metaphors. If you are not convinced, browse our Â?nearly mainstreamÂ? section. Are you sure you've never honed in on an important point or goal? Given free reign to your creativity, or, on the contrary, towed the line? Check out what the man has to say whose refrigerator has given up the goat, so brilliantly retold by Jeanette Winterson in the (London) Times."

* A BLOG: The linguists over at Language Log (Mark Lieberman, Geoffrey Pullum, et al) have compiled their writings into a new book (blook!), Far From the Madding Gerund. I haven't read the book, but I've read enough of their blog postings to know that there's a lot of good material there. At times they delve into linguistic discussions that exceed my grasp of the discipline, but I've learned quite a bit in reading them. It's not purely academic discussion, though, and much of it is quite witty, engaging with politics, popular culture and beyond. See for example their various articles on Dan Brown

*A PODCAST: A Way with Words: This podcast, of a radio show from KPBS in San Diego, in not appropriate for those who cringe at bad puns. Indeed, if you believe in the concept of a "bad pun" you may want to shy away. It's an incredibly cheesy-- but always fun and often quite informative-- hour-long weekly show devoted to etymology, grammar debates, etc. (Um, it's better than it sounds. But only if you're a word nerd.)

Deep Genre

2006-08-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

I just frittered away my lunch hour, immersed in the new-ish blogDeep Genre. The group blog features contributions from Constance Ash, Carol Berg, Barbara Denz, David Louis Edelman, Kate Elliot, Katharine Kerr, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Sherwood Smith, and Lois Tilton-- quite a nice slate of accomplished SF/fantasy writers, that. The blog is chock full of provocative posts about story, narrative, and particularly interesting to me have been the discussions about the boundaries of genre definitions and the relationship between SF and Literature (with a big-fat capital L). See for instance Lois Tilton's posts "Genre Don't Get No Respect" and "Genre Don't Want No Respect." If you're an avid sf reader, it's definitely a blog to take a tour through. If you do check it out, be sure to read the comments-- like one of my very favorite blogs Making Light (from which I'm pretty sure I first found the link to Deep Genre), some of the best isn't just in the (themselves very good) formal entries, but in the ensuing discussions.

Jenkins blogs

2006-07-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that Henry Jenkins has a blog. (Long overdue, in my opinion!) It's only been up since June, but not surprisingly it's already chock full of great, provocative posts, examining such topics as: The longtail and the future of television , using one of my favorite shows (Firefly) as a case study; the meaning and possibilities for video game criticism; and the difficulties facing academics attempting to publish books with a wider audience. And it looks like his forthcoming book, Convergence Culture is due out soon as well. Jenkins's writings on fandom, on popular culture, on convergence and digital media have been quite influential for me. So, I'm happy to have more of his work to dig into.

World Con/Hugos

2006-07-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

In August, we’ll be attending the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), which is in California this year. I've never been before, and I'm looking forward to so many aspects of this—

the more literary emphasis of the con will be a nice change of pace from the ComiCon (though I promise we’ll go back to the ComiCon… and they do have a fair amount of media-related programming at WorldCon as well; for instance: a "Once More w Feeling" (Buffy musical) singalong!). It looks like there will be an excellent lineup. Plus, one of my favorites,Connie Willis, is Guest of Honor
getting to see Michael in action: he’s going to be on a panel, representing his game Star Trek Online, in the future of ST/40^th anniversary track
the lovely billion-degree weather that Anaheim promises in August (er, well, not so much on that one)

But, goofy though it may be, one of the things I’m looking forward to most is voting for the Hugo Awards. When I was first starting out reading the genre and didn’t know where to begin, I used these(and the Nebulas-- and at the time I didn't really understand the difference) to structure my initial reading, and I continue to be interested in (often applauding, occasionally baffled by) who wins each year.

The 5 nominees for best novel (a very boy-centric list this year…) are all entertaining reads, though not all ones likely to go onto my list of all-time faves. Some abbreviated thoughts on them are below.

I’m still working through the nominees for shorter categories (novella, short story, etc.) I’ll admit that I read far less short fiction than I do novels, but the impending the awards (combined with the fact that all of the shorter fiction nominees are available online) has inspired me to dig into them more. So, I’ll hopefully post more about those soon.

A Feast For Crows George R.R. Martin

The one fantasy novel on the list this year, this is the fourth installment in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. This is a remarkable series. While it’s accurate, I think, to describe it as sword & sorcery epic fantasy (though much heavier on the sword than the sorcery), it far surpasses many others in this category in the complexity of the characters, the eschewal of black/white character divisions in favor of a murky, sometimes dismal, gray. This volume was somewhat disappointing (especially after such a long wait) in that it only covered half of the POV characters—the other half of the characters (and the other half of the book, really)—will appear in the next volume. As a stand-alone book, I don’t think it deserves the Hugo (though there’s still much to be admired in it). As a proxy for the series as a whole, I could be convinced—as it is a series very much deserving of the high acclaim it receives.

Learning the World: Ken McLeod

A standalone book by McLeod, Learning the World on the surface could seem like a bit of a throwback to earlier days in the genre—a generation ship/alien first contact tale (albeit one mixed in with some blogging)—and a good one at that. McLeod plays around with (or winks at) the conventions of such a tale in entertaining ways. Less overtly politically engaged than some of his earlier books, it’s not my favorite of his (I’m partial to his initial Fall Revolution series), but a nice read nevertheless and as in all of his books is filled with loads of nifty ideas. It’s not my top Hugo pick, but I just noticed that he still hasn’t received a Hugo—something that seems wrong to me!

Old Man's War: John Scalzi

Scalzi’s debut novel is an entertaining read, to be sure. The book, widely acknowledged as a homage of sorts to Heinlein (and particularly Starship Troopers) tells the story of a new recruit to a fighting force of soldiers, comprising old-aged humans who trade 10 years of service (in deadly fights against aliens) for bodily enhancement/life extension. I’m not particularly a fan of military sf, but while there’s lots of action, the book isn’t terribly violent and though occasionally the dialogue sounded tinny to me, I generally enjoyed the voice of the narrator. It was a fast, fun read. I’m a bit puzzled, though, by Old Man’s War’s hugo nomination. While impressive as a debut novel, to be sure (and the Campbell best new writer award would seem quite appropriate), it just doesn’t quite seem in the league of the other books nominated. Still, though, it makes for good beach reading (and that’s not a category I use pejoratively). I’m also a bit unsure what to make of the politics of the book—or rather, what I think the politics of the book (vis-à-vis war) particularly are—while I suspect its unfair to simply label it as pro-war-rah-rah, it leaned a bit too heavily in that direction to leave me entirely comfortable. If you’ve read the book, I’d be keen to hear your insights on this.

Accelerando: Charles Stross

Perhaps the most important of the books on the list this year, the one that’s having the most impact on the field, Accelerando, however, is not really my favorite of the bunch.

Though most of the novel previously appeared as short stories, I read it for the first time in this full-book form; at times I felt that the parts didn’t completely gel together—though I can also see the argument that this makes sense given the huge transformations/disruptions going on within the near-future universe of the book.

To say that Stross exploded onto the scene in recent years is to risk understatement—his half-dozen novels in fewer than that many years would be hard (and a shame) to miss (and that on top of his prolific short story writing as well). Stross is perhaps the leading chronicler of the singularity and the buzz about him is more than mere hype. His books abound with ideas, fabulous riffs on technologies and politics and economics, and all share a wonderful sense of humor (no shortage of laugh-out-loud moments in this books—the geek-in-jokes, though occasionally distracting are usually quite good). On these fronts, Accelerando is probably his strongest book yet. This tale of 3 generations of humans negotiating (post)humanity on the cusp of a cultural and technological singularity, compresses and collates a phenomenal number of wild concepts and ideas.

Yet, as with Singularity Sky (though to a lesser extent; I do much prefer Accelerando), there is still something about this writing that leaves me a bit cold. The plots are interesting generally, the ideas provocative, yet the characters are perhaps too thinly drawn to fully pull me into the books. My favorite Stross book is actually The Family Trade, the first of his “Merchant Princes” series (I’ve not yet read the follow-up books, but hope to soon). Though I’ll concede that the book (which has misleadingly been labeled as “fantasy” and which was published within weeks of Accelerando) may be fluffier, less significant, there was something about it that drew me in in a way quite missing from my other encounters with Stross. All of that said, though, I would not be at all disappointed to see Accelerando win the Hugo—while not completely enamored with it, I do understand why it has generated the great acclaim that it has.

Spin: Robert Charles Wilson

Spin definitely gets my vote for best novel. Though I don’t predict that it will win—indeed it will be a (pleasant) surprise to me if it does—I do very much hope that Wilson takes the Hugo. Robert Charles Wilson (not to be confused with the Illuminatus Trilogy’s Robert Anton Wilson) is one of the most underrated writers in the genre today; I can’t fathom why he’s not much more widely recognized than he is.

Spin’s not my very favorite of his books—that honor remains with The Chronoliths (though I suspect that my particular fondness for The Chronoliths is deeply tied to the fact that it was the first of Wilson’s books that I’d read—so it was able to elicit from me an “Oh! Look what I’ve been missing!” response that a later novel can’t.) Spin does, though, share the basic characteristics and strengths of his other books—mysterious happenings, intriguing science, interesting extrapolations, a few spine-tingling moments as disparate parts of the story start to come together, beautiful prose, and rich, wonderful characters. It’s hard to do justice to his books with plot description: what happens to a few characters (and the world) after one night when the stars suddenly “turn off”? So, I particularly want to emphasize the latter elements, excellent writing/prose and richness of characters—which I really think is the lifeblood of his books—to correct anyone who may share the misapprehensions I had about Wilson before reading them. I’m not sure where I got this impression of Wilson’s books, but I distinctly remember thinking I should probably get around to reading him someday, he gets a lot of good reviews from people I respect, yet there was something that made me keep putting it off. I was under the impression that it was a sort of writing—big science, little characterization, decent plots, clunky prose (like, say, Greg Egan)—that I can get something out of, but never truly love. But that conception of Wilson was completely off-base, it’s really the opposite of how I’d characterize Wilson now, after having actually read him, and I’m still not entirely sure as to the true origins of my misperception.

Bonus: though it’s a stand alone book (not leaving one totally hanging at the end) I was happy to read (just today, actually, though it’s probably been known for a while) that there is a sequel in the works: Axis. Yay!

Happy Bloomsday

2006-06-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Friday is Bloomsday-- the annual celebration of James Joyce. In honor of the day, get thee to this excellent New Yorker article, THE INJUSTICE COLLECTOR, which provides as good an example as any I've seen recently of the absurdities of current copyright overreach and the erosion of fair use.

Stephen Joyce, James's grandson, controls and inhibits scholarly use of Joyce's works with an iron-fist and with what seems to be incredible caprciousness:

Most prickly literary estates are interested in suppressing unflattering or intrusive information, but no one combines tolltaker, brand enforcer, and arbiter of taste as relentlessly as Stephen does, and certainly not in such a personal way. In 2003, Eloise Knowlton, a Joycean and a novelist, asked permission to publish a fictional version of “Sweets of Sin,” the risqué novel that Bloom picks up for his wife, Molly. (“Ulysses” offers only a glimpse of its contents.) Stephen wrote back, “Neither I nor the others who manage this Estate will touch your hare-brained scheme with a barge pole in any manner, shape or form.” When turning down a request for permission from an academic whose work was going to be published by Purdue, he said that he objected to the name for the university’s sports teams: the Boilermakers. (He considered it vulgar.)

But perhaps he's now met his match: Joyce's attempts to censor publication of Carol Scloss's work on Lucia Joyce will provide the basis for a lawsuit soon to be filed by Lawrence Lessig. This will definitely be a case to follow.

(p.s. speaking of Joyce: we've decided on a honeymoon spot: Ireland!)

Stemloney

2006-03-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

We've officially set a date (March 10, 2007-- just over a year away) and a location (Madisons at the Lake Merrit Hotel in Oakland, CA).

This blog, though, won't turn into bridezilla-central. For that you need to go to our new wedding website at stemloney.weddingannouncer.com (there's not much there yet-- and it's likely to be in this in-construction phase for a while, but it's a start)

Octavia Butler will be missed

2006-03-07T20:30:00.000-08:00

Last week, one of my favorite authors-- Octavia Butler-- died. I recently finished her latest (and sadly, now last) book, Fledgling, which like so many of her other books managed to be both deeply engaging on a narrative/story-telling level and highly provocative in the questions it raises about identity, difference, and race. While Kindred may be her most famous book (and its reputation is well-deserved; her exploration of slavery, responsibility, guilt, and love is truly haunting), I think my favorite book of hers is the first I read: Dawn, the beginning of her xenogenesis trilogy. I can't think of any work of science fiction that better captures (or, rather, mines) the utter alienness of aliens (as well as confronting issues of colonialism, environmental destruction, etc.) One danger in trying to describe Butler's work is that it can sometimes sound just like message-stories, good-for-you reading about key social problems. While she would be notable if this was her sole contribution-- bringing issues of race, gender, identity, colonialism, to the forefront of science fiction to an unprecedented degree-- her legacy for the genre extends much further. For, at the same time as dealing with these issues-- and as a part of dealing with these issues-- she was always a powerful and compelling storyteller who created memorable and complicated characters.

But others can say it far better than I can. Some links via Locus Online

Octavia E. Butler died Friday evening, February 24th, after falling and striking her head on a walkway outside her home. She was 58 years old. One of the few prominent African-American SF writers, she won 2 Hugos and 2 Nebulas during her career, including a Nebula for her 1998 novel Parable of the Talents. She was awarded a MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant' in 1995.
» Initial report from Steven Barnes
» SFWA News
» Wikipedia entry
» Obituaries: Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Seattle Times; Chicago Tribune; USA Today
• Correction 27 Feb: Butler died on the 24th, not the 25th
» Boing Boing post by Cory Doctorow
» Tribute by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
» The SF Museum in Seattle will host a Octavia Butler Memorial Gathering on Thursday, March 2nd at 7:30 p.m., with Greg Bear, Eileen Gunn, Vonda N. McIntyre, and others.
» KGB Bar in New York City is hosting an informal gathering this Friday, March 3rd, in memory of Octavia Butler (details).
» Long Los Angeles Times obit
» Washington Post profile
» 1 March: New York Times obituary
» 2 March: John Clute's Independent obituary
» Slate: Tyler Cowen's obit/tribute Octavia Butler: The outsider who changed science fiction
» Cleveland.com tribute by Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs
» LA Weekly's Sister from Another Planet by Jervey Tervalon » 3 March: LA Times's appreciation by Susan Salter Reynolds
» NPR's 1993 interview with Butler
» 7 March: Dragon Page podcasts this recent Octavia Butler interview
» Village Voice tribute by Dream Hampton

One more update

2006-01-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

Well, this isn't exactly my usual blogging material (if I can claim to have "usual blogging material" after such a long absence from actually blogging), but I thought one more update was in order, this one of a more personal nature.Yesterday (New Year's Eve), Michael and I got engaged to be married. No date's set-- indeed the logistics are sure to be a nightmare considering we're still separated by a couple hundred miles. But, it's official. Eek.

A little update

2005-12-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

Hello all. It's been a long time since I've updated this blog. So, as a preemptive strike on one of my New Year's resolutions, I thought I'd give a few updates.

First, in January, I'll be starting as Managing Editor of the film studies journal Camera Obscura. I've been working for the journal as an intern/editorial assistant for the past two years and am excited about the expansion in my responsibilities. The journal recently received an excellent write-up in the Times Literary Supplement, particularly for our special issue on Todd Haynes and on "New Women of the Silent Screen: China, Japan, Hollywood" (due out soon). I can't seem to find an online link to the review, though-- (I'll try to remedy that in a bit)-- but for now a quote:

"Since the 1970's, Camera Obscura's editorial line has been continuously redefined, moving away from its original stance, predominantly informed my Laconian pyschoanalysis (never perhaps themost fruitful way of looking at film), and broadening its field of scholarship to include new kinds of spectatorships, from race-related and postcolonial perspectives to queer theory. The hybrid result, with
its variety of voices and subject matter, makes for provaocative reading."

Second, I recently had a publication of my own released. It's the paper/chapter on television critics that I co-authored with my dissertation chair, Denise Bielby, and Bob Ngo and appears in the issue on Transformation in Cultural Industries of Research in the Sociology of Organizations series. It was pretty exciting to (finally!) get the hard copy in the mail last week. Here's a link to the volume's introduction.

Media Reform Conference

2005-05-17T08:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back from St. Louis and the National Conference for Media Reform. It was energizing to see and be around so many people passionately engaged with issues of media policy and transformation; there were over 2,000 registered participants.

Bill Moyers's closing speech (audio version/MP3; video version; transcript), in which he takes on the current crisis at PBS stemming from the conservative stacking of and attack on the CPB (which has been specifically an attack against Moyers in many cases) was a definite highlight.

Some of the fun of the conference came from celebrity appearances ("celebrity" of both the academic, activist, and media-star varieities) -- Al Franken's emceeing of the Saturday night keynote event (MP3) (which included appearances by Jim Hightower, Patti Smith (who, somewhat surreally, was backed up by FCC Commish Jonathein Adelstein on the harmonica!), and others; Phil Donahue moderating a panel with Naomi Klein and Juan Gonzalez; Amy Goodman all over the place, etc.

The theme of the conference was "Building Momentum" and they did a good job of rallying the troops, highlighting the victories of recent years and the importance of the struggles to come. Too often discussions of media, policy, and ownership issues get stuck at the level of (important) critique, painting a bleak picture of the current situation but without linking to strategies for change, hence enabling a kind of fatalism.

However, in some ways the weekend was more successful as an extended rally than as a conference, per se. One of the assets of the conference was the wide variety of participants/attendees-- from nationally prominant folks to people doing lots of work at the local grassroots level; from professional media workers, to full-time activists, to academics, to people who are involved in struggles that connect to but may not be primarily focused on media matters; from veterans to neophytes. This diversity, though, also provides some challenges.

For instance, at what level of expertise or towards what potential audience should sessions be aimed? Clearly, for the big, whole group events (the keynotes, plenaries, etc.) it makes sense to aim things rather broadly, to rally people, join issues together, etc. (and these sessions were largely successful at this.) For the smaller, topic-focused sessions, though, there sometimes seemed to be more of a struggle. Often I felt that things were so aimed down the middle that they may not have been fully satisfying for anyone-- too general for anyone steeped in the issue to learn anything new, but also too general for anyone truly new to that issue to gain much particular knowledge, either. These sessions tended to be quite large and participants, other than the speakers themselves, were positioned as listeners, audience members, but little chance to actually participate. Perhaps having more concurrent sessions-- which could be smaller and more specialized-- could help this in the future? (Not that everything should be specialized-- but having more of a blend of small and large venues; of celebrity-driven sessions and more ordinary-folk sessions, of rallying speeches and specifically educationally-oriented sessions, etc.)

I did get enjoy some of the smaller sessions. A panel comprising past (Nicholas Johnson and Gloria Tristani) and present (Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps) FCC Commissioners was cerly interesting (MP3 of FCC panel) The panel on copyright reform issues (MP3 of copyright panel)-- with Cady McLaren, Siva Vaidhyanthan, and Kembrew McLeod-- was very engaging. One interesting and important question was raised at the end of the session that I would have liked to have more time to explore: examining the barriers to links between the media reform movement and open source and copyfighting movements (e.g., the progressive politics of the former and the often pro-market libertarian bent of the latter). (Other than this session and Mark Cooper's contributions on two panels, there wasn't much of a copyfight presence at the conference.)

But like I said, overall the weekend was very energizing and these issues are so important right now-- especially in light of current events such as the attack on public broadcasting and as Congress is set to revisit the disastrous 1996 Telecommunications Act in the next year or so (about which CommonCause has recently published a helpful primer on:"The Fallout from the Telecommunications Act of 1996: Unintended Consequences and Lessons Learned," pdf) , among other things.

Conferencing

2005-05-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

My bags are (almost) packed and I'm just about off to the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis. The program looks great and the website is reporting that they're completely booked, in terms of capacity/registrations. Apparently, they'll be posting MP3s of the panels, etc. which is a nice bonus for those of you who can't attend. It will be interesting (and exciting) to be at a non-academic, explicitly activist-oriented conference.

And then after that, the following weekend is our much smaller conference, which covers many of the same issues: Media Ownership: Research and Regulation sponsored by the new Center for Film, Television, and New Media here at UCSB. (The conference itself, though, will be downtown at Victoria Hall, part of their effort to engage beyond the walls of academe.)

Bye Bye Broadcast Flag

2005-05-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

I have ZERO time to post right now, but I had to make an exception for this:
The DC Circuit Court has just released its ruling in the lawsuit filed against the broadcast flag: it unanimously struck it down!

Ernest Miller provides myriad links to reporting on and reactions to the ruling, from across the media and blogosphere: "Victory in Broadcast Flag Case!"

UPDATE: Of course, despite the title to this post, we've probably not really seen the end of the broadcast flag. The court-ruling means that the FCC can't act in this way without explicit Congressional authorization-- so the MPAA is writing legislation to get that authorization, and maybe more, Ernest Miller reports.

Turning the TV Off?

2005-04-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today marks the beginning of TV Turn Off Week. I've always had some ambivalence toward this project.

On the one hand, I share many of the critiques of television made by the project's organizers-- critiques of specific television content and critiques of television's connection to the hyper-commercialization of our culture. Turning the television off encourages us to step back for a moment and evaluate the place that TV holds in our lives; certainly that's a good thing to do. Television's ubiquity and its position as a dominant channel of our media culture means that we often take it and its role for granted. As with most social institutions it is in part precisely because of and through this invisibility that it can be such a significant force. Making visible those things we don't always stop and look at in our daily lives, of course I support and encourage that. Indeed, that's what sociology is all about, isn't it?

However, I've long been uncomfortable with the tone of some of the critiques associated with TV Turn Off Week. These critiques are often dripping with contempt for anyone who watches television, which gets painted as universally mind-numbing or soul-killing. The medium as a whole is treated as unambiguously and inevitably negative and beyond repair. But is it really? This seems to me to be a dangerously technologically determinist position. And it completely forecloses any possibilities to engage with and intervene in television-- either at the user or production level.

Listening to a short segment about on this year's TV Turn Off Week, "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" on the public radio program Weekend America, helped to bring into focus for me some of what's made me uneasy.

Apparently, the new twist in TV Turn Off Week, this year, is the inclusion of the TV-B-Gone in some of the culture jamming plans from adbusters.org etc. The TV-B-Gone is that key-chain, universal remote control, released a few months ago amidst much hooplah [I'll admit that I was amused when I heard about it], that allows one to turn off random televisions anywhere.

In the Weekend America piece, they visited sports bars, mocked those who might or might not be watching the TVs, zapped the televisions off, then used the fact that almost no one seemed to notice as evidence of... actually I'm not quite sure what that was evidence of. But the patronizing contempt toward both television and tv viewers, which permeated the piece, was more than a little off-putting and really distracted from some of the real criticisms of the unexamined place that television holds in our lives and the ever-expanding encroachment of commercialism that our current television system is a fundamental part of.

This was already irking me, but what really set me off was the juxtaposition of that story about television with one that followed just a few minutes later. In the TV Turn Off story, one of the criticisms was that television keeps us from participating in real life-- how sad it is that we spend more time watching Friends than having friends, viewing images of sexuality than having sex, watching nature programs rather than going into nature, etc. Just minutes later, though, was a story ("Poetry and Place: Susquehanna River")about the power of literature and poetry and specifically about how reading a poem or novel about something or some place can sometimes be more real for us than actually going there. But now, of course, this "more real than reality" quality-- just moments before invoked to dismiss television-- is used to celebrate literature.

The two stories were treated as totally unrelated to one another, but the easy dismissal of television and the easy praise of poetry for the same condition, frustrated me a great deal. The knee-jerk defense of written media and knee-jerk dismissal of the televisual are both part of a problematic technological determinism, which blinds us to the promises and dangers of both and the ways in which the power of either is the result of specific social and cultural practices that are never inevitable or set in stone.

Having just finished reading Steven Johnson's essay (blogged below) about the positive aspects of some current television, just before hearing this radio piece on TV Turn Off Week, undoubtedly helped prime my irritation about the treatment of television vs. poetry on Weekend America, as well as with the tone of the TV Turn Off Week discussion more generally. With all of this on my mind, I went to Johnson's blog and discovered that he, in the larger book from which the TV article was drawn, critiques just this sort of tendency-- the too easily privileging of some media and the too quickly dismissing of others-- along similar lines. Akin to the television/poetry juxtaposition that was frustrating me, Johnson raises these questions about books vs. video games:

It's a little thought experiment that comes near the beginning, trying to get around the traditional prejudice that assumes that reading is invariably "good for you" and that games are mostly a waste of time.
"Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: videogames were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuries—and then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly they’re all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:

Reading books chronically under-stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying—which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

Smart TV

2005-04-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

Steven Johnson provides an interesting defense of the current state of television in this week's New York Times Magazine, with the provocative title "Watching TV Makes You Smarter." I've excerpted the conclusion, below, but upon further reflection, I suspect that this excerpt might not have been the best one for me to choose: it encapsulates the point of the article (which is part of a larger project from his upcoming book), but perhaps doesn't capture the fun tone and concrete examples of the article as a whole. But I'm feeling too lazy to choose a juicier quote, so you'll just have to read the article for yourself...

In pointing out some of the ways that popular culture has improved our minds, I am not arguing that parents should stop paying attention to the way their children amuse themselves. What I am arguing for is a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing. Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind. Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch ''Survivor'' over ''Fear Factor.'' If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage ''24'' over ''Law and Order.'' If they want to play a violent game, encourage Grand Theft Auto over Quake. Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as its classification scheme for the world of mass culture.

Old vs. New Media

2005-04-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

Old media trumped new media for me today in alerting me to the selection of the new Pope. I learned the news not from the Internet or even television or radio. Rather, it was the bells that kept ringing outside that alerted me to the development.. I live quite near more than half a dozen churches, so hearing bells isn't altogether uncommon. So the chimes of the bells this morning didn't initially makemuch of an impression. But the bells primarily toll on Saturdays, after the weddings that seem to constantly take place around here. So, when the bells kept ringing and ringing on this Tuesday morning, I started to wonder and it finally dawned on me what it might mean.

Of course, I did have to go online or to the television to find out who in particular was elected. But the bells as initial source of the news for me brought a little smile to my face (the further news of the identity of the new Pope, however, certainly brought no such smile.)

Annotation

2005-04-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

Another cool tool: The Annotated New York Times, a subset of blogrunner, compiles discussions and commentary from across the blogosphere that cite particular NYT articles. It looks like a helpful way to chart buzz on a particular topic/article/op-ed piece. Meme-orandum works similarly, with more papers (e.g. Washington Post and Boston Globe) but (I think) a much narrower set of blogs (and a less slick look)

(via A Blog Doesn't Need a Clever Name, via Micropersuasion)

(Hmm, this also brings to mind Paul Boutin's Slate piece, from last month, on a different form of annotating the news: Newsmashing)

Cool? Creepy? Both, I guess

2005-04-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

The latest addition to GoogleMaps is its integration with satellite photos. As with so many technologies of this sort, I'm torn between being drawn into its coolness factor and creeped out by the surveillance implications [or at least creeped out by the reminder of the extent of surveillance out there). Of course I couldn't resist going immediately to look for the satellite view of my apartment.

Rank and file

2005-04-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

The U.S. News and World Reports annual graduate school rankings are out now and UCSB's sociology department fared quite well in two categories: We're number 6 in culture and number 2 in sex & gender. Our culture program has been ranked right around this number for a while now, but it is the first year that the magazine has included a sex & gender ranking. The methodology used is not without its problems, but it's still pretty nice to see.

Regarding the sex & gender list, Jeremy Freese made the interesting observation that of all of the sociology subfields ranked, and all but one other of any of the 25 social science subfields ranked, sex & gender is the only one to have a complete lack of Ivy League schools.

Happy Peeps Day

2005-03-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

Happy Peeps Day

Hot Peep-on-Peep Action: Peeps Porn

Lord of the Peeps: Fellowship of the Peeps

Peeps, It's What's for Dinner: Peeps Waldorf Salad Recipe

Finally, there is my personal favorite: Peeps Experiments at PeepResearch.org, in which the scientific method is rigorously applied to questions about the effects of extreme temperature on peeps, peeps and alcohol/drug use, and the viability of Peeps colonization of space.

UPDATE: Okay, I couldn't resist adding one more peeps link: Peep-o-matic: Make your own peeps

Grokster madness

2005-03-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

Once again, I didn't know whether to laugh or grimace when I read this in this Mediapost article that Fox-- one of the plaintiffs suing Grokster in the upcoming and very important MGM vs. Grokster case-- is apparently using the service for advertising. One of the key issues in this case, which could significantly transform the relationship between content ownership, copyright, and innovation in light of the old Sony/Betamax case, is whether or not there are substantial non-infringing uses for a technology. The studios say that's not a factor with Grokster, but this (among many other examples) seems to show something quite to the contrary:

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP., currently suing Grokster and Morpheus for alleged copyright violations enabled by their peer-to-peer technology, apparently advertises through software bundled with Grokster, according to adware researcher Eric Howes. Howes reported Thursday afternoon that he was served a full-screen trailer for the DVD of the 20th Century Fox movie "Fat Albert," after downloading all of the software bundled with Grokster--eight separate adware programs.

There are just a few short days before this goes to the Supreme Court and its hard to keep up with all of the buzz in the blogosphere and other media. Tech Law Advisor's Induce Act blog has been aggregating some of the coverage, here. If you want to get up to speed on this issue quickly, taking a look over there might be a good place to start.

It's been interesting to see how different groups have come down on this issue (to cast it simply as Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley is to gravely oversimplify the matter, but it's intriguing on this front, among others.) EFF has links to all of the briefs filed in the case. For example, 22 media scholars, many of them rather prominent filed this brief (pdf) in support of Grokster et al

Anyway, it's hard to overstate the potential importance of this case for copyright and copyfight issues, for media control and media democracy, for fair use and beyond.

UPDATE: Illustrating nicely a non-infringing use of P2P technology, outragedmoderates.org have posted this BitTorrent link to all of the briefs filed in the case. (via Lessig Blog)

UPDATE 2: IPTAblog has a really great round-up of the MGM vs. Grokster coverage in the immediate days before the Supreme Court case.

Free Culture Books

2005-03-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

3 texts on free culture, intellectual property, remix culture, media democracy-- Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, Dan Gillmor's We Media, and Kembrew McLeod's Freedom of Expression-- are all available through Creative Commons licenses, which allows them to be shared. These books are worth purchasing, but being able to have them on your computer or PDA to read also is a great bonus. Off the shelf has posted nice Palm versions of these. I've only skimmed the recently-released McLeod book so far-- but it looks great. It was already high on my to read pile, but having it with me on my PDA will probably help get it read even more quickly than its place on my queue would have otherwise dictated.

I read Lessig's back when it came out last year (in actual bookform), and downloaded a different PDA version of it at the time as well. But, if you never read Free Culture, please do so NOW! (whether in digital-- be it PDA or PDF-- or paper format). Seriously, do it.

(via Copyfight)

Conspiracy Theory Rock

2005-03-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

The new blog for Stay Free! magazine has a link to an old (1998) Robert Smigel SNL animation, "Conspiracy Theory Rock." Done in the style of School House Rock, it takes on the relationship between NBC and CBS and their corporate parents GE and Westinghouse. It's not the most brilliant or hilarious critique I've ever seen, but it's pretty wild that it actually made it onto the air (only once, though . . . you won't be seeing this on Comedy Central, or wherever it is old SNL episodes go to die these days.)

Cool tool: Faster Acrobat/PDFs

2005-03-04T14:51:00.000-08:00

I love how many articles are available online these days-- I'll go to great lengths to avoid actually schlepping over to the library. But, I'm often driven batty by Adobe Acrobat: it's so poky! So, I was psyched to read about this little program: Adobe Reader Speedup, which disables some of the unused plug-ins that delay the program's startup time. I just downloaded and installed it and I can already see the difference (if I'm not imagining things, which I suppose is always possible.) Check it out (of course I make no guarantees that it won't totally screw up Acrobat, but it the whole process is apparently reversible, so I'm not too worried.)

(via Pub Sociology)

UPDATE: Bob points out in the comments that Adobe Reader 7.0 is much speedier than 6.0 (which I'd been using)-- so I guess this nifty little program isn't necessary afterall. Instead, consider this post a reminder to update your version of Reader if you, like me, haven't gotten around to it. (Now that I have I'm happy. Ah, the simple things...)

Sociology Conversations?

2005-03-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

One of the sources of audio files that I've most appreciated as a podcast listener has been Doug Kaye's IT Conversations. There's a variety of material over there-- from interviews with science fiction authors, bloggers, or IT CEOs to recordings of conferences such as BloggerCon, O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference (ETCON), or PopTech. While some of the material over there is too oriented to specific business interests or computer programmers' issues, I've found many of the recordings to be educational or enjoyable (and, of course, in many instances: both!)

I mentioned in my previous post on podcasting that I wish there was something like this in sociology-- Sociology Conversations, if you will. It would be great if there was some sort of repository for recordings of conferences, papers, discussions, etc. from around sociology. This could be a great way for people to give exposure to their work, get access to conferences that they're not able to attend.

Also, by making more sociology available to more people (or at least making it available in different ways), it seems in line with the mission of expanding "Public Sociology," as featured in the most recent ASA meetings. (Speaking of which, the one and only thing from a soc conference that I have listened to on my computer or iPod was Arundati Roy's talk from the ASA. They played it (or large portions of it) on Democracy Now!-- and since I had to leave SF (just) prior to her talk it was great to still be able to hear it.

A couple of people have since asked me: what's stopping *me* from working on this, from getting a Sociology Conversations started? Well . . . aside from the obvious answers (i.e., either laziness or a rational need not to continue to overextend myself), I'm also not quite sure how one would go about this. And that's where I'm looking for ideas.

First, I'm wondering what is out there already. Is there already such a creature? Or, at the very least, are there recordings being made and put up on a piecemeal basis from one conference to another? I'm sure there are-- but where are they?

At the very least, I think I can start a blog that will compile links to such materials-- though getting things set up to with actual syndication/enclosures/podcasting capabilities might be further off..

Second, are there ways to expand the amount of material that is being recorded? Does anyone think there are people (and technical resources) out there available to make this happen?

Now, while I've been saying "Sociology Conversations," I don't necessarily mean to limit this only to sociology. Indeed, my own research interests are rarely limited just to my discipline. I probably spend at least as much time reading/engaging with materials from elsewhere (from interdisciplinary fields like cultural studies, media studies, women's studies to traditional disciplines of anthropology, political science, etc.)

But for now, I'll just post a link to my new and totally naked blog. SociologyConversations.blogspot.com. There's absolutely nothing there now, but if there's interest, maybe we can change that.

One more Broadcast Flag link

2005-03-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

EFF's Annalee Newitz has a new article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian on the broadcast flag and particularly on EFF's HDTV "Build In" The article is very readable/engaging and the criticism is pretty brutal:

The Broadcast Flag will create a cartel similar to the CCA, only this time the government will be directly involved. Instead of the CCA launching a civil suit against somebody for making a noncompliant device, under the Broadcast Flag the government will be able to fine that person or stop him or her from selling the product. This will allow big media companies like MGM, Sony, and Paramount to get what they want – total control of how you watch television – without having to get their hands dirty.

Daily Blog

2005-02-22T20:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is about a week late and has been blogged just about everywhere, but just in case you're like me and didn't get around to watching this yet: The Daily Show on blogging.

Washing Machines (more on the broadcast flag)

2005-02-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

I just started scanning through things to see what happened today-- no time for actual thought/reflection/commentary, yet, but: For good roundups of posts/articles on today's oral arguments in the broadcast flag lawsuit, see IPTA and EEJD.

There's a great quote from today's oral arguments in the broadcast flag lawsuit (via Declan McCullagh at CNET):

"You're out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?" asked Judge Harry Edwards. Quipped Judge David Sentelle: "You can't regulate washing machines. You can't rule the world."

Also, check out the blogging of today's arguments from Luminous Void.

Broadcast Flag Courtcase nears

2005-02-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

A key development in one of the cases I'm studying for my dissertation is almost upon us: February 22 will bring opening arguments for the court case over the broadcast flag. Susan Crawford, who has done some of the best writing on this topic (both in her blog and in more formal, legal writing) highlights some of what's at stake here:

Like the Grokster case, the flag situation raises this question: can one industry force another to constrain new general purpose technologies in the name of copyright protection? Like the CALEA dispute (prompted by the demands of another great industry -- law enforcement), the flag represents an attempt to have high-tech innovators ask permission before innovating.

UPDATE: In "No Mandate for Broadcast Flag Tech Mandate" Donna Wentworth at Copyfight points to a number of good, recent pieces in anticipation of tomorrow's oral arguments: an NYT article, "Struggle over digital-tv control" (which does a decent, though uncritical, job of highlighting the major positions in the case) and two responses to the article. One, from Mike Godwin, BitTrickling Into the Times (clarifying his quotes in the article), and a more critical post by Ed Felten, "Broadcast Flag in Court", questioning the logic of the official MPAA explanation of the need for the flag. For example:

"Even ignoring the Flag's many technical loopholes, the best it could possibly offer is the same level of protection that cable content gets today. The evidence is overwhelming that that level is insufficient to keep programs off the P2P networks. Remember Huff? The real story here, for an enterprising reporter, lies in how the MPAA convinced the FCC to mandate the Broadcast Flag despite offering only these weak arguments in the public proceeding."

Meanwhile, Dan Gillmor, in "A Biased Headline Twists a Story" demonstrates the power of titles. While the version of the NYT article that Donna pointed to (linked via the International Herald Tribune) had the relatively neutral title "Struggle over digital-tv controls heads to the courts" the headline actually found on the NYT site is, "Federal Effort to Head Off TV Piracy is Challenged," which as he points out has quite a different connotation:

The story itself isn't bad. As the reporter discusses (though not in much depth), there are many good reasons why this anti-copying system, called the "Broadcast Flag," is a travesty -- including its attack on fair use, for scholarship and creating new art, not to mention the peculiar notion that technology companies now need permission to innovate.

But the headline is poison. By defining the debate in terms of preventing piracy -- when the story could have as easily, and accurately, been headlined as "Hollywood Move to Block Technological Innovation is Challenged" -- it sets a tone that even a fair article has trouble balancing back to an honest discussion.

Inside Higher Ed

2005-02-18T14:48:00.000-08:00

A new-ish website, Inside Higher Ed, is up now (in beta.) It's akin to the Chronicle of Higher Education (from which IHE's founders formerly hailed). But, unlike the chronicle (which locks most of its articles behind a (rather expensive) paid subscriber wall), Inside Higher Ed's articles are all free to access. It looks to be an interesting mix of columns/opinion pieces and news from around the academy, as well as links to the same from around the net.

For instance, on the front page right now, there are links to the transcript of Harvard President Lawrence Sumner's controversial comments about innate sex differences in math/science ability; blogging from the MLA; and a column about the vagaries of affiliation for adjunct professors. They also advertise a not-yet-released job search service, with the amusing description that "together, we're transforming the tedious, time-consuming and expensive process of applying for academic jobs into something almost enjoyable."

The site is still in its infancy (hence the beta description) but it looks like it could be of interest/use. (If they'd get an RSS feed up and running it would be even more useful.)

Internet Radio- but where's the podcasting?

2005-02-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

When I saw the article "Internet Radio Poised for a Tune Around" in this morning's LA Times, I initially assumed would feature podcasting. I was quite surprised, then, to find not only was this not the focus of the article (which centered instead on whether corporate media may be wading back into the internet radio domain) but there was no mention of podcasting at all.

(Doing a search at latimes.com to see if they'd previously written about podcasting revealed no articles, but 3 podcasting related ads/sponsored links.)

Podcasting has spread like wildfire around the blogosphere in its short history. The term itself is less than a year old, and the original ipodder software made its debut only six months ago. I've seen estimates that there are close to a thousand regular podcasts now, and some of the most prominent podcasts receive thousands of downloads a day. Now, in the grand scheme of things "thousands" may not seem like a huge number-- and, yes, this is still quite an isolated phenomenon at this point-- but think about the scale of blogs initially-- and today some estimate that there are more than 6 million blogs out there now.

While some news outlets like Wired covered the phenomenon fairly early on, it's been receiving increased attention in the general media quite recently (e.g., I heard stories about podcasting on two different NPR shows in a single day, last week. Incidentally, I listened to these stories on my computer, but I digress . . . .)

Wikipedia defines podcasting in this way:

The term "podcasting" is a portmanteau of the words iPod and broadcasting. Although an iPod is currently the playback device of choice for many early adopters of podcasting, a portable music player is not required to take advantage of this method of content distribution. Podcasting is functionally similar to the use of timeshift-capable digital video recorders (DVRs), such as TiVo, which let users record and store TV programs for later viewing.

A podcast is much like an audio magazine subscription: a subscriber receives regular audio programs delivered via the internet, and she or he can listen to them at their leisure.

Podcasts differ from traditional internet audio in two important ways. In the past, listeners have had to either tune in to web radio on a schedule, or they have had to actively download individual files from webpages. Podcasts are more flexible and much easier to get. They can be listened to at any time because a copy is on the listener's computer or portable music player, and they are automatically delivered to subscribers, so no active downloading is required.

This definition seems fairly helpful in explaining the technology, however one thing is fundamentally missing here-- the way podcasting (like text blogging before it) has been about expanding access not just to consuming but also creating media.

However, I've got to love Wikipedia, in that in going over there to write this blogpost, I find a link to this AP article, published today, which does seem fairly clued in. Indeed, it's very title--" 'Podcasting' Lets Masses Do Radio Shows "-- emphasizes what I see as the more significant aspect of podcasting-- not just how it potentially transforms the distribution of content, but how it has further opened up avenues for the creation of content, from new, previously unheard, everyday people-- not just a different way for us to listen to "radio," but new opportunities to make our own radio. Less interesting to me in the stats I mentioned above are the thousands of people downloading Daily Source Code each morning compared to the growing numbers of people making their own-- more and more new podcasts are coming out each day.

And it is this issue that makes the omission of podcasting from the discussion of internet radio found in the LA Times, today, more significant. Instead we get:

Major media companies, including broadcast giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s MTV, jumped into the game. The only problems: no workable business model and no way to reach listeners away from their computers. That made Internet radio, for the most part, a commercial flop.

But now there are signs of a turnaround. Ratings services are beginning to take Internet radio seriously as an advertising medium, entertainment companies are investing in it again, and new technologies are promising to let it reach people whether they are in the car or on the jogging trail.

Now, maybe I shouldn't expect more from an article in the Business Section-- but the visions presented here seem so limited, solely imagining people still as passive audiences-- albeit audiences with new, high tech ways to listen to radio content. The content, and perhaps more significantly the one-to-many broadcasting model, remains remarkably unchanged. (Or, changed to more targeted niche markets, maybe, but still niches who solely consume rather than produce their own media.)

Now, podcasting certainly doesn't belie Sturgeon's Law. Indeed, to estimate that 90% of podcasts are crap may be slightly generous, at this point. And I do think that some of the hype may be more than a little overblown. And (while this may simply reveal my own reading vs. listening bias), I do think there are factors about the listening experience, multitasking, browsing, and attention that may keep podcasts from having quite the same scale/expansiveness that blogs have already achieved. (Okay, and while I'm at it, I guess I'll thrown in my frustrations with the term "podcasting"-- it being so tethered as a phrase to the iPod is a problem, I think-- and I'm certainly not alone, in this frustration.)

Yet, at the same time, I think there is something significant going on out there, that we shouldn't ignore.

[But I also have a confession to make: most of what I listen to on my iPod walks to work, jogs, etc. are not the amateur productions I find so intriguing in concept, but rather are shows like Democracy Now or On the Media, i.e., those public radio shows that have posted their shows not just in streaming but in MP3 or AAC formats, or the talks hosted at IT Conversations, (which fall somewhere in between those two poles, I guess)]

Speaking of IT Conversations-- where's our "Sociology Conversations"? I'd love it if there was a similar bank of signficant talks from our conferences online for me to download and listen to.)-- But now that I've completely digressed into free associate here, I think it's time for me to end this post. The above seemingly contradictory comments from me obviously indicate that I have some ambivalence here and my thoughts are rather inchoate at this point-- but I hope to come back to this issue (and update this post) soon-- when I'm feeling slightly less braindead!

Eyes on the Prize

2005-01-28T13:54:00.000-08:00

Last month, Wired.com published a distressing story charting the disappearance of the civil rights history documentary, "Eyes on the Prize." This important, multi-volume documentary first aired on PBS in the 1980s and has been used in numerous schools and classrooms in the ensuing years as a powerful educational tool. I have distinct memories of watching parts of the documentary and can recall how much the footage in the film humanized and put a face on a history that at times could have seemed distant and remote.

However, the film is increasingly difficult to access, for reasons that are incredibly frustrating. From Katie Dean's Wired article:

The 14-part series highlights key events in black Americans' struggle for equality and is considered an essential resource by educators and historians, but the filmmakers no longer have clearance rights to much of the archival footage used in the documentary. It cannot be rebroadcast on PBS (where it originally aired) or any other channels, and cannot be released on DVD until the rights are cleared again and paid for.

This is not a problem unique to "Eyes on the Prize," but one faced by all sorts of filmmakers, particularly independent and documentary filmmakers. As discussed in a Washington Post article on the controversy:

In November, the Center for Social Media at American University released a report highlighting the problems that documentary filmmakers have as they try to clear rights to images. The report, which recommends finding ways to lower costs for obtaining rights, says current interpretations of copyright law "leads to a creative stranglehold."

"Filmmakers must pay a license to use a pop song that may play in the background [of footage shot] in a pizza parlor, an image or sequence from a movie, or from archival footage owned by someone else," the report says. "They may need to pay not only songwriters but performers, not only movie studios but actors. There is no central place to find out who owns what. There is no rule of thumb for pricing. No one has to agree to license. And it doesn't matter if you didn't intend to quote it. Did somebody sing 'Happy Birthday' in your documentary? Too bad -- you owe Time Warner a small fortune.

In the past month or so the fate of "Eyes" has received increasing attention across the blogosphere and within some activist communities. Currently spearheading action and activism in response to this is Downhill Battle. They're organizing a two-pronged activist response: (1) downloading unauthorized digital copies of the documentary; and (2) organizing screenings of Eyes on the Prize across the country, to be held on February 8 during Black History Month.

As with their previous activism, DB frames their efforts in the language of civil disobedience. This rhetoric is echoed by Lawrence Guyot, former leader of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party (quoted in the WP article):

"I would call upon everyone who has access to 'Eyes on the Prize' to openly violate any and all laws regarding its showing."

Downhill Battle emerged last year in response to the music industry crackdowns against filesharing, and its webpage describes its mission as, "a non-profit organization working to end the major label monopoly and build a better, fairer music industry." Their tactics have ranged from sending lumps of coal to the RIAA and MPAA (in exchange for donations to EFF, iPAC, or Public Knowledge) to stickering projects (distributing warning labels for CDs such as: "Warning: This record label pays radio stations to keep independent labels off the air") to their establishment of a P2P legal defense fund. Most notable was their spearheading of "Grey Tuesday":

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z's the Black Album and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z's record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise from music fans and major media outlets like Rolling Stone ("an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time") and the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album.

Danger Mouse?s album is one of the most "respectful" and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI have shown zero flexibility and not a glimmer of interest in the artistic significance of this work . . .

The Grey Tuesday protest was simply amazing. On February 24, 2004 approximately 170 websites hosted a full copy of the Grey Album, in spite of the fact that many of those sites received a cease and desist letter from EMI's lawyers (read Downhill Battle's response to EMI). Right now, thanks to everyone who participated in this protest, tens of thousands of people in the US and around the world are listening to DJ Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album". Because the attempt to censor this record is one of the most clear-cut examples of what's wrong with current sampling rules, everyone who participated in the Grey Tuesday protest has sent a strong message in support of common-sense changes to copyright law. Grey Tuesday was organized by Downhill Battle, a music activism project . . . .

I'm intrigued and heartened by Downhill Battle's role in the "Eyes on the Prize" activism and their broadening of their efforts beyond the music arena. It will be interesting to see what responses to this action are-- both in terms of activist participation and in terms of legal responses. I'm particularly interested in the way this issue may be connecting seemingly disparate activist and creative groups and this opportunity to broaden the copyfight issue beyond the confines of the music/P2P issue that some mistakenly limit it to. While some may dismiss the latter issue as trivial as the whining of music "thieves," the "Eyes on the Prize" controversy nicely illustrates some of the more fundamental questions at stake.

Much more is at stake in the current struggles over copyright, intellectual property, creativity, and access to a commons than from where and whether we can download popular songs. This isn't to say that I don't think that access to music is itself a signficant issue. But, trends in the mediascape such as the unprecedented extension of copyright, the narrowing of the public domain (e.g., via technical means such as Digital Rights Management (DRM) backed up by legal power such as in the DMCA), and the connected issue of corporate consolidation of media ownership, have the potential to radically transform (and curtail) our abilities as users, creators, and researchers of media, culture, and knowledge in ways that go far beyond the music domain.

UPDATE: Well, one question is answered already: From the downhill battle webpage for their "Eyes on the Screen" action:

We have taken down the torrent links to these videos at the request of lawyers for Blackside, Inc. This sucks!

UPDATE: From Downhill Battle

February 1, 2005 - 5:49pm The teacher who was planning a February 8th screening of Eyes on the Prize in Vienna, VA for students and community members has been forced to cancel after a threat of lawsuit from the "licensee level". . . . (read more)

Searching . . .

2005-01-25T20:29:00.000-08:00

Google released today (in beta) a new service: Google Video. Basically, what they've done is indexed closed-captioning text from recent television programming. Then you can do searches for programs on which those words appeared (assuming that the closed-captioner spelled them correctly-- not always a safe assumption to make!). Google isn't offering actual video clips (yet), however-- it just reports when the program aired, provides still images, and the closed-caption transcripts.

Yahoo, apparently, also has a new program, Yahoo Video Search, which is not quite the same in that it does offer video clips found from across the web (and soon to include BBC and Bloomberg news clips)

These are both in their infancies and it's not clear what sort of and what degree of content will eventually be available through these searches, and what sort of DRM will be slapped on them. But, it's yet another interesting development in the convergences, collusions, and collisions between television and the internet. I'm curious to see how and where these develop. If you find yourself using either of these tools, let me know what and why you're using them.

Link: "Yahoo, Google Expand Searches" (LA Times; reg. req.)

Another search-related story also caught my eye this week. The Pew Internet Project has released yet another interesting report. Over the past few years , they've released a plethora of survey results, documenting Internet usage (and nonusage) patterns as they are developing in the U.S. While some of the results simply give firm numbers to back up general impressions, a number of their results have surprised me somewhat. This newest study, looking at people's attitudes about web searches, was no exception. The tag line of the report reads, "Internet searchers are confident, satisfied, and trusting-- but they are also unaware and naive."

Only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or ?sponsored? results and unpaid results. And only one in six say they can always tell which results are paid or sponsored and which are not. This finding is ironic, since nearly half of all users say they would stop using search engines if they thought engines were not being clear about how they presented paid results.

As someone who's only half- joking when she says that she can't imagine life without googling, this just served as a good reminder to me not to overestimate the web-savvy of most people. (Though apparently 92% of respondents said they feel confident in their searching abilities.)

And speaking of life without google:

But about one third of internet searchers, 32%, say they can?t live without search engines. They are a different breed of searcher?a more high-powered group who work the engines harder and more seriously. They are more likely to be: male, young, better educated, of higher income, and to have been online for more years than others. Compared with other users, they search more often and they search for more information that they consider important to them. They consider themselves more successful and more confident at searching. They also know more about the workings of search engines: they have heard about the distinction between paid and unpaid results and they are more likely to be able to distinguish between the two types.

Such trends will be increasingly important to follow. For, digital divides, such as they are today, may become less and less about divisions in simple access to the internet and more and more about knowledge of how to get things from and through it (or, I suppose, make contributions to it.) (Eszter Hargittai has published a couple of relevant studies, in this vein: One conceptualizing the digital divide broadly, "Digital Divide: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use" and the other looking specifically at web searching, "Do You Google?: Understanding Search Engine Use Beyond the Hype")

Link: Pew Report: Search Engine Users (pdf)

Bye bye Michael . . . (Changes at the FCC)

2005-01-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

It's official: Michael Powell is resigning from his position as head of the FCC. This comes as no surprise; speculation about his departure has been steady for quite a while now. What's not entirely clear, however, is what his departure (and his replacement) will mean. (There's all sorts of guessing going on out there about who will replace Powell-- but I really have any way of judging the accuracy of any of those musings.)

The most famous acts of the FCC during Powell's tenure have undoubtedly been the decisions regarding censorship, indecency, and fines. To the degree that he has any widespread name recognition, it probably comes from the battles with Howard Stern et al. (Not to downplay the seriousness of that issue, but his spars with Howard Stern were pure entertainment. If you never heard the on-air radio fight between them, you really should taken a list to the MP3.)

While I have found the moral panic around television "indecency" (or, worse yet, "profanity") quite frustrating, and while I am certainly no fan of Powell, I never really got the impression that this issue was his baby, so to speak. His part in the indecency crackdown seemed to me more to a response to caving under pressure than a crusade he was specifically invested in. Granted, this doesn't make it any better. Indeed, if his response seemed genuinely grounded in the idea that the broadcast airwaves are a public property and public trust, which therefore requires public oversight and regulation, I would have some sympathy. But instead he continually eschewed such a notion in the relentless drive to deregulate the broadcast media, to treat them as the private fiefdoms of corporate America, particularly around media ownership rules.

Powell's lasting, negative legacy will be the media ownership deregulation that he oversaw and extended and the ensuing consolidation and conglomeration that it engendered. The only bright spots that have occurred on this front during his reign have been exclusively in spite of rather than because of him-- i.e., in those important moments when his attempts at deregulation have failed or been stalled by the courts or Congress.

Will his successor be any better on this issue, I wonder?

On the one hand, Bush is hardly likely to nominate someone with a substantially different approach to issues of corporate control of the media, regulation, ownership, etc. (Not that this is really a red-state/blue-state issue. Indeed, it is Clinton who first appointed Powell to the FCC and it was under Clinton that the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed in the first place. Sadly, I'm not sure that we'd be terribly better off in this area had we had a Kerry rather than a Bush inauguration this week.)

On the other hand, these will be the first confirmation hearings for this position since the surge of unprecedented activism around issues of media ownership and consolidation became so visible in recent years-- activism to which Congress at least briefly responded. So, maybe there is a little hope for at least some dialogue around this issue? However, I worry that the indecency issue will continue to overshadow things, supplanting the more fundamental issues of media control in the sorts of things that a nominee is grilled over, in terms of broadcast media.

Of course, while the indecency rulings and media ownership (de)regulations are probably Powell's most visible legacy, these are hardly the only important issues at stake in the FCC these days.

For one thing, there are a multitude of issues relating to my own research interests-- the digital television transition, the broadcast flag rules, new television technologies (will the new Commissioner share Powell's enthusiasm for TiVo, I wonder?) (But, I'm not quite ready to blog about these issues. Why is it that I'm so much more comfortable spouting off about the implications for the issues I know less about than the ones I actually study? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?)

In an essay in last month's Wired, Lawrence Lessig provocatively pointed out two areas of positive contributions from Powell: his commitment to experimenting with the wireless spectrum as a commons rather than as private property to be auctioned off, and a tendency toward supporting the idea of access neutrality to the internet.

Regardless, I'm not sorry to see him go. But in terms of what the next years will bring us from the FCC, I hope that in retrospect we won't have to see this as a "be careful what you wish for" moment.

Santa Barbara is number one . . .

2005-01-21T20:21:00.000-08:00

. . . in unafforadable housing.

Can sushi be worth $350?

2005-01-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

In Santa Barbara, one of my favorite sushi places is Edomasa. The sushi is not quite as cheap as getting it half-priced at Kyoto nor quite as delectable as that at Arigato, and the restaurant is totally lacking in the ambiance-department. The 'masa nevertheless serves up some pretty mean sushi rolls (the Santa Barbara roll is my personal favorite) and the simple tuna nigiri never fails to satisfy.

I was recently reading, though, about a whole other type of sushi experience at a different Masa, in New York. There the cost of a prix-fixe meal is $350. Per person. Plus tax. Plus tip. Plus alcohol. $350!

Now, to say that the reviews of this place are superlative would be an understatement: The NYT's food critic, Frank Bruni, described eating there as "Discrete moments of pure elation." It's garnered incredibly rare 4-star ratings and other highest honors.

But still: $350? Could it be worth it? I asked a few of my fellow sushi-lovers and responses were mixed. Sara responded that nothing could be worth $350, while Samara (whose rhapsodic description of her first encounter with sushi is truly inspirational) argued that if she won the lottery she'd do it and it would be money well spent. It was the lottery-test that I was thinking of too. Obviously none of us are going to be going there on our grad student budgets. (However, Anthony Bourdain claims that's no excuse: "Even if you make $300 dollars a week as a rookie prep cook, I urge you to go," Bourdain wrote. "Go! (Forget) Con Ed. Let 'em shut off the cable. Who cares if Junior needs bail money? The landlord can wait. Go. Now.") But, if I won the lottery? Well, I probably agree with Sara, that the price is absurd and it ultimately wouldn't be "worth it"-- yet, I think I'd want to try it nevertheless, just to satisfy my curiosity.

Of course, none of the three of us play the lottery. (Though we have been known to waste more than a few quarters on the progressive-slots in Vegas, for which the odds are just as stupidly against us. Speaking of which, when's the next trip to Vegas, baby?). So, regular-old SB Edomasa will have to do. But given the yumminess of the Santa Barbara rolls, maybe that's no so bad . . .

Link: Sushi steals critic's stars

The Triple Evils of Racism, Poverty, and Militarism

2005-01-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

Today, you'll likely hear many excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s familiar "I have a dream" speech, in commemoration of his birthday. It was interesting to hear from another of his speeches, this morning on Democracy Now!, however. They spent the majority of today's show simply playing the speech, which he delivered April 4, 1967, a year (to the day) before his assassination.

Though I was familiar in a broad sense with the radicalism of the connections King made between economic injustice, racism, and war (and the need to fight these simultaneously), I'm not sure that I'd ever heard this in his own words, at least not in this extended form. Many of his comments in this speech, which denounced the Viet Nam war and U.S. foreign policy, have a great deal of resonance today, with the current situation in Iraq and U.S. foreign policy more generally. If, as was the case with me, these words of King's are less familiar to you, you might want to listen to today's show.

In addition to being played on the radio (locally: on kpfk in the mornings and on kcsb afternoons at 4 p.m.) and on cable access (also at 4 p.m., in Santa Barbara), you can watch or listen to a streaming version of it online, or download it as an MP3 file. (Incidentally, the MP3 files are hosted by the Internet Archive, discussed in yesterday's post.) The MP3 download is the main way that I access Democracy Now! these days-- it gives me something to listen to on the walk to and from the bus stop, etc. (a fact that may answer the question, why does Molly, perhaps the least musically oriented person she knows, have an iPod mini? The answer to the question, why did Molly suddenly start speaking about herself in the third person remains unanswered, however.) (This all reminds me that I've been meaning to blog something about Podcasting for ages now, but I'll leave that for another day.)

Democracy Now! | Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968

Google, libraries, and copyright

2005-01-16T21:33:00.000-08:00

When late last year google and a number of major universities announced google print their ambitious plans to digitize huge portions of their libraries and make these available online, I was pretty excited. The potential embodied in this sort of expansion of access to books well beyond their physical, restricted homes is rather phenomenal. The press releases at the time stressed that they would be obeying copyright regulations; only out of copyright books would be posted in full. For books still in copyright, only snippets would be made available. (Something akin to the Amazon search inside the book feature, I guess.) Of course, grump that I am, my mind immediately went to the sorts of things that are in copyright but are almost totally inaccessible, out of print, and not making money for anyone anymore, but that would be neverthless locked behind the copyright restrictions. In a recent op-ed piece in the L.A. Times, Lawrence Lessig brings further attention to this issue, pointing to the importance of requiring active rather than automatic copyright renewal as a potential solution to this problem:

The vast majority of creative work published in 1930, therefore, is in the public domain. But it is extremely costly to know which works in particular are in that category. And for those works that remain under copyright, unless new editions containing the latest copyright information become available — a reprint of an old book, say, or a DVD of an old movie — tracking down the current owners can require hours of detective work that may come up empty.

The solution is obvious enough: Clean up the copyright system. As with every other federal intellectual property regime, all copyrights should be registered.

Another issue, not discussed in Lessig's op-ed, is the question of what it means that this is being done by google-- a for-profit corporation. Now, I still love google. I can't stop raving about how much google desktop has simplified finding things on my computer. [If only they'd start indexing firefox pages too.] And, like google print, google scholar (beyond the access this could open up, there's just the ability to use googly-smart searching for looking for academic texts; the search capabilities on most of the databases UCSB library uses, at least, are beyond frustratingly limited.) And of course just plain old google still manages to make me happy on a daily basis. And it's not that I think that their "don't be evil" motto is disingenuous. I do think that there may be some genuinely noble motives behind some of this plan. And I certainly respect how many millions of dollars are going to be necessary to bring something like this massive scale of digitization into fruition. But-- does all or any of this mean that we should be satisfied with leaving this important project to a for-profit corporation that does not have any direct responsibility to the public? It seems like this is a project with such important potential contributions for the public good that a publicly funded, large-scale project is very much called for (but incredibly unlikely, sadly.) In the absence of this, it at least points to the need to keep on supporting nonprofit endeavors like Internet Archive, which in addition to its quite helpful caches of the internet of days and years past, in its wayback machine, is embarking of just such a project:

Today, a number of International libraries have committed to putting their digitized books in open-access archives, starting with one at the Internet Archive. This approach will ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage. Anyone with an Internet connection will have access to these collections and the growing set of tools to make use of them. In this way we are getting closer to the goal of Universal Access to All Knowledge.

By working with libraries from 5 countries, and working to expand this number, we are bringing a broad range of materials to every interested individual. This growing commitment to open access through public archives marks a significant commitment to broad, public, and free access. While still early in its evolution, works in dozens of languages are already stored in the Internet Archive's Open-Access Text Archive offering a breadth of materials to everyone.

Over one million books have been committed to the Text Archive. Currently over twenty-seven thousand are available and an additional fifty thousand are expected in the first quarter of 2005. Advanced processing of these multilingual books will offer unprecedented access.

This doesn't mean that I don't still find the google print project exciting. And none of this negates the points Lessig makes about the need for copyright reform. Check out the piece, before it gets trapped behind the L.A. Times copyright wall . . .
Lessig: Let a Thousand Googles Bloom

Gotta Get My Stuff Done

2005-01-04T09:39:00.000-08:00

Of course, I never, ever procrastinate. But if you occasionally do, you might enjoy this short animation. Especially if you, like me, (er, I mean, like this person I know) are an expert at using supposedly productive tasks as a rationalization. What the fact that I'm (hopefully) back to blogging after a long hiatus says about my commitment to getting stuff done in 2005 (is blogging a source or an object of procrastination?), I'll leave to the reader. Gotta Get My Stuff Done

TiVo and the Broadcast Flag: update

2004-08-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

Some have had to endure me babbling on about my dissertation research, including the broadcast flag and digital video recorders, like TiVo. Today's news brings these two topics together. The FCC has released its ruling on the acceptability of TiVo's plans to allow limited sharing of content over the web. Somewhat surprisingly (to me anyway) they've approved the TiVos. No time to babble right now (just wait!) but here's a link to an LAT newsblurb about the ruling: Los Angeles Times: FCC Approves Limited Video Web Sharing

Two great tastes that taste great together: Office Space Wars

2004-06-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

One of the funniest mashups I've seen: key scenes from the movie "Office Space" (a movie that I mistakenly refused to see when it was at the theaters because I thought it looked inane, but have grown to love since then-- it's quite funny and has a pretty penetrating critique of corporate culture) reshot as in the Star Wars universe, trailer-style.

Perhaps there are more important things I should be blogging about right now (e.g., the scary INDUCE Act , the Senate passing the PIRATE act, or, on a cheerier note, the recent court ruling striking down some of the FCC's attempts to raise broadcast ownership limits). But then again-- it's things like the ability to creatively manipulate and rework our common cultural materials-- resulting in gems like this mashup-- that are precisely what is at stake in the current trends of increasing control over media culture (via ownership, via overreaching of copyright law, via the fusing of DRM and law, etc.) in which the above legal issues are implicated..
Office Space Wars (WMV) Link

WIPO broadcast treaty

2004-06-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

A few good links:
Cory Doctorow, Wendy Selzer, and David Tannenbaum did some important blogging of the recent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meeting at which the proposed broadcast treaty was being debated.

Over the past three days, the Standing Committee has been meeting to consider a treaty to protect broadcasters' rights. Thanks to Jamie Love, of the Consumer Project on Technology, an unprecedented number of public-interest oriented non-governmental organizations -- including CPTech, EFF, UPD, IP Justice, Public Knowledge, and EDRi -- attended and intervened at the meeting to raise concerns about preserving the public's rights in the face of expanded "broadcast protection."

The following is an impressionistic transcript by Cory Doctorow (cory@eff.org), Wendy Seltzer (wendy@eff.org) and David Tannenbaum (davidt@public-domain.org).

Blogging the WIPO meeting (There are three days worth of meetings blogged in total).

I've just had time to skim it so far, but am already grateful to them for making available this account of what is too often completely shut off from public scrutiny. I'm looking forward to seeing some kind of a wrap up from them as well.

Also, John Naughton has an article out in yesterday's Observer highlighting the treaty-- and what makes it so alarming.

If enacted, this treaty would require countries to change their laws to grant broadcasters astonishing freedoms. These include: 'the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the fixation [copying/recording] of their broadcasts'; 'the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the direct or indirect reproduction, in any manner or form, of fixations of their broadcasts'; 'the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the retransmission, by wire or wireless means, whether simultaneous or based on fixations, of their broadcasts'; and other rights, including control of exhibition and distribution of recordings of broadcasts.

In addition, signatories would be required 'to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures' that are used by broadcasting organisations to secure their new rights. Most scandalous of all, the draft proposes that these new rights should apply for 50 years.

This treaty would undermine many of the public's rights under the copyright laws of most countries. It would, for example, eliminate my right to record off-air without the permission of a broad caster, or to copy a recording from one medium to another (eg from tape to DVD).

Link: A law unto themselves (via James Love's Random-bits)

Finding Digital Resources for Research and Teaching

2004-05-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

A project based out of U of Michigan works to "harvest" publically accessible (but often hidden or hard to find) digital resources for research from across the Internet. I haven't had time to play with it much yet, but it looks like a great resource (and not just for academics). OAIster Project Description:

"The University of Michigan Library service establishes a broad, generic, information retrieval resource for information about publicly available digital library resources provided by the research library community. This service is built through a collaboration that relies on the University of Illinois's metadata harvester.
The two primary criteria for inclusion in the University of Michigan service are that the information resources the metadata describe are:
publicly accessible and have no access restrictions, and
have a corresponding web-based digital representation (e.g., this would not include the metadata records for slides when the slides cannot be accessed through the web).
The service also encompasses as broad a collection of resources as possible (i.e., with no subject parameters). The service is accessible to the entire Internet community, without bounds. We hope to finally begin to reveal these 'hidden web' digital library resources in a way that they are not now revealed. "

(via cultstud-l)

Liberal Media?

2004-05-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

FAIR has a new study out examining the sources used/interviewed on NPR. They analyze an overwhelming reliance on official/elite sources (as well as corporate media journalists as common sources), gender trends in sourcing (approximately 80% male), and take on the assumption that NPR has a definite liberal bias.

"Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR, and FAIR’s latest study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources—including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants—Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent). A majority of Republican sources when the GOP controls the White House and Congress may not be surprising, but Republicans held a similar though slightly smaller edge (57 percent to 42 percent) in 1993, when Clinton was president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. And a lively race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to heat up at the time of the 2003 study.

Partisans from outside the two major parties were almost nowhere to be seen, with the exception of four Libertarian Party representatives who appeared in a single story (Morning Edition, 6/26/03).

Republicans not only had a substantial partisan edge, individual Republicans were NPR’s most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance."

Link: How Public is Public Radio?

2004-05-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Picturing radio spectrum allocation

Okay, spectrum policy does not sound like the material for comics-- but don't let that stop you from reading the New America Foundation's The Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy" (576 KB)". It's really quite illuminating and clear. (via Crooked Timber)

2004-05-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

Good news on the free culture front
How often do we get to post good news on this issue. All too rarely, for sure. But, according to Fred von Lohmann at EFF DMCA reform is looking like a real possibility. I've been swamped with work lately and am feeling totally out of the loop on things right now-- millions of unread posts are piling up for me in Newsgator right now-- so I have no idea what kind of coverage this is getting out there or more details, but hope to dive into it soon.

But I'd say the majority of the subcommittee just wasn't buying the "sky will fall" stories being told by Big Content. Members repeatedly asked why it should be illegal to make a single back-up copy of a DVD. They asked why it should be illegal to edit a DVD you own to remove "smut." They asked whether this impasse was the product of the entertainment industry's failure to deploy new business models. And Rep. Davis went so far as to ask Larry Lessig whether we should be thinking about alternative systems that would compensate rightsholders without insisting on digital lockdown or mass prosecutions.

Today was a good day for fair use, for consumers, and for our nation's tradition of balance in copyright law. Stay tuned for more.

EFF: Deep LinksL H.R. 107 Comes to Life

Update Seth Finkelstein has more commentary on today's hearings as well as a number of links to others' posts here: Infothought: DMCRA hearing impressions. Nothing I've read in my quick skimming thus far is quite as ebullient as the first post I discuss above-- but still a glimmer of hope is better than none.

2004-05-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

MS/DRM
Great rant/analysis at The Register on the announcement of MS's new WIndows Media DRM plan-- specifically on the way that this is presented as providing a wonderful solution for consumers while the "problems" it solves are those defined by the content distributors and on how this further contributes to the demise of actually owning cultural materials rather than subscribing to or renting it (and a restricted version of "it" at that).

You may have spotted that, as it's already perfectly feasible to rip all of your CDs to MP3s, shove them onto your portable music player and stream them around the home, this might not entirely be a solution to your digital entertainment problems. But granted, if from your perspective it's a good deal to pay a monthly fee in order to be able to listen to a big pile of music, then having the ability to listen to it on a portable player might be helpful. Otherwise, in the secure DRMed future you'll do well to keep questioning who exactly it is that 'your' hardware is working for.

Here's locking down you, kid - MS hawks vision of DRM future [printer-friendly] | The Register (via JD Lasica

2004-05-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

Indecency, censorship, and the news
I've been pretty flippant about this whole indecency/FCC/fines fervor thus far. This doesn't mean that I haven't been disturbed by it, but some of the uproar has struck me as downright comical. I just have such a hard time getting my head around the idea of "fuck" as inherently profane, for instance, that I have had a difficult time taking all of this seriously. Yet the results of all of this are quite serious. The effects on censoring entertainment culture are important-- but perhaps the effects on news media make the stakes more clear:

CBS affiliates are telling the Federal Communications Commission that unless it changes its ruling about profanities on-air, many will have to stop doing news outside of the 10 p.m.-6 a.m. safe harbor for indecent speech.

Noncommercial stations, meanwhile, argued that the decision has caused them to significantly self-censor for the first time.

The CBS stations move would mean an end to many morning, afternoon and newscasts, which are ironically just the sort of local service the FCC otherwise encourages.

Free Press News : Some CBS affiliates could drop newscasts

2004-05-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

Commodore 64!
Here's a toy I must have when it comes out this summer. It's basically Commodore 64 (or actually a c64 game console) crammed into a joystick. It comes with 30 games-- including one of my favorites from childhood: Summer Games. If M.U.L.E. is on there I'd be a happy camper indeed. The first computer my family owned was a Vic-20, followed not long after by the C64. My sister and I-- as well as a bunch of neighborhood kids-- spent many an hour playing games on that thing. And printing random signs with Print-Shop. But mainly playing games. Other favorite games included Below the Root and Alice in Wonderland as well as various arcade style games like Jumpman and Ms. Pacman. Okay, I'm babbling now, but reading about this little gadget just brought back a flood of memories. The C64 Direct-to-TV - Engadget - www.engadget.com

2004-04-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

Hubba Hubble
The Hubble telescope has been up there for fourteen years now-- sadly (infuriatingly) its days may be numbered. It's what it contributes to science and our understanding of the universe, its origins, etc. that makes the Hubble so important of course. But it's also made an aesthetic contribution. I was really amazed by the true beauty of the pictures displayed in this wired.com article, commemorating the telescope's anniversary. They're incredibly eerie, yet breathtaking. Wired News: Hubble's Anniversary Ring

2004-04-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Valenti interview
There's a very illuminating interview with Jack Valenti at "The Tech" (an MIT student newspaper) discussing the broadcast flag and the DMCA (specifically the ability or not to play DVDs on Linux). What's illuminating, but not surprising, about what Valenti's responses demonstrate about the profound failure of communication between opposing camps on these issues.

Although I suppose it's not just a communication problem-- it goes to mindsets as well. The concept of non-corporate producers of either content or hardware just doesn't seem to exist in the worldview represented here; "regular people" are only figured as consumers-- and of course consumers who are supposed to act in a particular way. Other roles seem to not even make sense.

TT: I’ll tell you, because I’m an engineer, I’m an engineering student, and this year I built a high-definition television, from scratch. But because of the broadcast flag, if I wanted to do that again after July 2005, that would be illegal.

JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?

TT: Well, I’m talking about engineers.

JV: Let’s say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can’t have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can’t do it that way.

TT: Okay, let’s take a different example. Four years ago, you said that people who use Linux, which is about a million to two million people, who want to play DVDs, should get licensed DVD players and that those would be on the market soon.

JV: And we have those now.

TT: But today, you still cannot on the market actually buy a licensed DVD player for Linux.

JV: I didn’t know that.

TT: So the question is, do you think people who go to Blockbuster, they rent a movie, they bring it home, and they play it on Linux by circumventing the access control, are those people committing a moral transgression?

JV: I do not believe that you have the right to override an encryption. Because if you have the right to do it, everybody can do it. For whatever benign reason you have, somebody else has got one even more benign. But once you let one person deal in a digital copy -- and I don’t have to tell you; you know far better than I that, unlike in analog, the ten thousandth copy is as pure as the original -- it is a big problem. So once you let the barriers down for your perfectly sensible reason, you gotta let it down for everybody.

Link: Real Dialogue: The Tech interviews Jack Valenti (via p2p.net)

2004-04-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

E-books
This isn't new-- but I hadn't read it all until now and thought I'd send out a pointer in case you too missed it earlier . . . It's Cory Doctorow's speech from this year's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. He talks about e-books-- what they can offer readers, writers, publishers and he effectively demonstrates some real blindspots in the limited ways we tend to think about e-books-- as objects and practices-- (and, blindspots about regular old books and publishing too). The talk ranges from his love of books, to his outrage over the Harlan Ellison AOL/Usenet lawsuit, to his experience releasing Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom online, to general copyright issues.

Now, as much as I love books, I love computers, too. Computers
are fundamentally different from modern books in the same way
that printed books are different from monastic Bibles: they are
malleable. . . .

And as a nice sidenote (which itself is illustrative of some of the points of the speech), he released the text of the speech with a creative commons license-- and someone has not only translated it into Spanish, but annotated and enriched it as well.

2004-04-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

Shelving sociology
Kieran Healey, at Crooked Timber, has a funny piece about what we can learn about our disciplines based on what's shelved in their sections at Borders or Barnes & Noble.

Sociology: Dominated in the 1990s by research on the O.J. Simpson trial, sociologists have recently turned their attention to Frank McCourt's early adulthood and life in the year 2000.

Crooked Timber: Shelf Life

2004-04-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

WIPO and Broadcast "Protection"
For those following the broadcast flag issue-- or really anyone concerned about copy protection, public domain, DMCA, access to content, etc., this looks to be something that really needs some serious attention. Ernest Miller has pulled out some of the more disturbing passages of this proposed treaty-- which basically looks like the current Broadcast Flag proposals on steroids and with teeth. (I have only skimmed the treaty document thus far, though). Read Miller's analysis here: The Importance of...: The Broadcast Flag Treaty or read the treaty itself (PDF) here: Consolidated Text for a Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations

2004-04-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

Controversy Surrounding Nielsen Ratings

There's been a lot of interesting material out there, lately, on the Nielsen TV ratings plans to implement a new personal people meter measuring system in its ratings.

Mark Frauenfelder really captures the creepiness of the whole venture in terms of extending the reach of surveillance ever further.

I once read a creepy science fiction story about a world where people clipped a pager-sized electronic device to their belts each morning upon arising. This device, called a "Portable People Meter," was able to pick up specially encoded signals coming from televisions and radios. The signals had been "psychoacoustically masked" to render them inaudible to the human ear, and contained the name of the program that the PPM wearer was watching or listening to. The meter kept a perfect record of all the broadcast media the wearer consumed, making a note of the date, time, and duration of consumption.

The device also had a motion detector built into it, so it "knew" when it was being worn. Wearing the device was strictly voluntary, but people who enlisted to wear it were rewarded with a cash payment. The more they wore the device throughout the day, the more money they got paid.

At night, when the wearers were finished watching television for the night, and were ready to go to sleep, they'd unclip their meters and place them in special cradles on their bed tables. The cradles were connected to a central computer, which analyzed all the data it collected from the meter wearers. The company that made the PPM then sold this information to large corporations who wanted to monitor media consumption.

Bikini Insanity vs. Meet the Press

The reason I didn't tell you the name of this story is because there really isn't a science fiction story about a Portable People Meter. The Portable People Meter is a real device, manufactured by the Arbitron corporation, and it works exactly like I explained above. People in 15 countries are wearing Portable People Meters at this moment, and media companies are analyzing this information to figure out ways to get you to consume more media and buy more stuff.

Meanwhile, there have been protests regarding the roll out of this new system because it is said to systematically undercount minority viewers, as reported in this New York Times article, and elsehwere:

"Similarly, large declines were seen in the ratings for top Spanish-language networks," Mrs. Clinton's letter continued. "Without a thorough investigation into these statistical aberrations, I think it is fair to say that Nielsen would be remiss in pushing forward with its rollout plan."

In a separate letter to Ms. Whiting, Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, expressed similar concerns, saying Nielsen's plans could imperil the "future of programming aimed specifically at African-American and Latino audiences."

The comments by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Mfume echo criticism that has been leveled for weeks by other prominent lawmakers, most of them Democrats who represent black and Hispanic communities. Among them are John D. Dingell of Michigan, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Hilda L. Solis of California.

Over at freepress.net, though, there's an excellent short essay on the dangers of rallying behind fixing the accuracy of these ratings as some way of empowering minority (or any) viewers.

The fact of the matter is that arguing over how Nielsen counts folks is a bright red herring. This is not an argument about how minority voices are counted in the media; this is an argument about how minority voices are counted in regards to providing demographic information for advertisers. The argument that "ratings give minorities a voice in their media" — and thus shape programming to reflect their views — is completely disingenuous.

Programmers and advertisers love to trumpet that Nielsen ratings represent the desires of the audience; if one show has better ratings, then it must be serving the public better, right? Hogwash.

A further interesting wrinkle is that one of the major agitators against the PPMs has been Fox/Newscorp, some of the reasons for which are explicated (or at least surmised about) here.

That's when the whole thing started to finally make sense. Fox and its parent News Corp. have been big opponents of Nielsen's rollout of local people meters and have recently begun playing the race card to delay the New York rollout, which News Corp. Deputy COO Lachlan Murdoch recently claimed Nielsen's local people meters "under-count" viewing to Hispanics and African Americans.

If that were the end of this tale, it would be no different than the scores of other corporate fronts that have been mounted against Nielsen over the years. But this one has taken on decidedly political overtones that appear to have crossed some ironic party lines. And the Riff wouldn't be surprised if Fox News' Ailes has been pulling many of those strings.

So, today, Nielsen announced that it has temporarily delayed the roll out of the PPMs.

It's definitely a case I want to follow and hope to delve further into soon.

2004-04-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

Go Sean, part two
Another article about my brother's band, Colic, this time in the Oakland Press. The Oakland Press: Oakland Life: Colic

2004-04-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I saw the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night and liked it quite a bit. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. The movie was less funny and more somber than the other Charlie Kaufman films (which I've also quite enjoyed)-- although all of his movies have a certain loneliness to them. The film was still clever, but was also quite moving and really worked as a love story, I found. We had to giggle, though, upon hearing a fellow moviegoer ask her friend at the end: "They can't really do that, can they?"

Update: Just after posting this I read an article by Steven Johnson on the science of eternal sunshine and he gives them more props for accuracy in the depiction of the operation of memory than I would have expected. It was still a funny comment, though (especially given the goofiness of the contraptions/procedures in the film).

2004-04-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

Censorship, academic freedom, speech

The SF Chronicle, this morning, recounts the expulsion of a student from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for writing a story with gratuitous, graphic violence. Furthermore, his (adjunct) professor's contract has not been renewed, possibly in part for assigning an "inappropriate" story by David Foster Wallace (the school did not cite a reason for her dismissal).

Several of Richman's former students and colleagues say that both she and the student have been treated unfairly by the university and that the incident has fueled a climate of fear and repression that seems especially out of place at an art school, particularly one in San Francisco.

When I first read about this, I assumed that this was a high school, but these are adult students at a University. (Not that it being a high school obviates the problems here, but I would find it less surprising at least)
A work of art or a harbinger of violence? / Grisly short story gets student expelled from S.F. academy -- and costs teacher her job (via boing boing)

2004-04-02T19:37:00.000-08:00

Crawford on Copyright
Susan Crawford has another good piece up on her blog: the text of her speech today to the copyright office. She succinctly gets at some of the core problems posed by the DMCA, the Broadcast Flag and other related topics.

Copyright policy is being taken away from you. And you may never get it back; and if you're told that you're in charge of it, as you assist with international negotiations, you're not being told the truth. Where is copyright policy for the internet age being made? . . .

Susan Crawford blog :: Copyright Office talk (via EFF's new & improved deep links)

2004-03-31T19:50:00.000-08:00

Oh Canada!
The Canadian courts dealt quite a blow today to CRIA's (Canada's RIAA) lawsuits/subpoenas against (alleged) filesharers. From Wendy Selzer: "The court "cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service." The court also held that the CRIA had delayed its requests too long, presented too little evidence of methods for tracking users, and would have to reimburse ISPs if it were ever permitted discovery." Lots of excited postings around blogland about this today, although Ernest Miller has a less upbeat interpretation of the ruling.

2004-03-31T07:31:00.000-08:00

Sociologist imprisoned over "ideology"
According to the LA Times, this morning:

A sociologist was handed a seven-year prison sentence Tuesday on charges of spreading North Korean ideology, in a case that many here have criticized as an anachronism harking back to the Cold War period.

The article describes Song as a mentee of Jurgen Habermas. And there are allegations of espionage as well. Does anyone know anything else about this?

South Korean Sentenced Over 'Ideology' (free reg. required)

2004-03-29T21:54:00.000-08:00

Fox: Verbs? Bad!
New York Times article. Fox News: Fast news good. Verbs slowing. Slow bad.

Shepard Smith! Explaining to a reporter, why not the verbs?

"We don't communicate in full sentences anyway," Mr. Smith said as he continued working through his script. "We don't need all those words. And it allows us to go faster."

Mr. Smith is all about speed. He typically blasts through 80 or so items of news during his hourlong broadcast, which, with its zooming cameras, swooshing sound effects and Mr. Smith's jokey, frat-boy delivery, acquired while he was a student at Ole Miss, resembles a broadcast of ESPN's "SportsCenter" more closely than it does "NBC Nightly News." He seldom does interviews on his program, fearful that slow-talking guests might gum up the works . . ."

News Reports for Ultra-Short Attentions (via lost remote)

2004-03-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

Patently absurd?
So, the LA Times this morning has an editorial about Donald Trump's absurd attempt to trademark the expression "You're Fired!" Except the editorial is entitled "All Fired Up Over a Patent" and throughout the essay goes back and forth between referring to it as a patent filing and an unregistered trademark. The editorial itself isn't really about trademarking or patenting or anything having to do with intellectual property, but rather about the blurring between entertainment, publicity, and news. But still the total collapsing of the two terms, "patent" and "trademark" by them is a bit odd. And it's not just the LA Times who can't keep these things straight-- Donna at Copyfight pointed out that the New York Times made a similar mistake, referring to it as an attempt to copyright. Now, I'll be the first to admit that keeping these different forms of intellectual property straight can be confusing for us non-lawyers, but you'd think that such illustrious professional producers of IP could at least tell these apart in the broadest sense. In the LA Times case, I partially suspect that the motivation for calling it a patent is so they could include the goofy double use of patent in the final sentence of the editorial:

It was no gamble to predict that a pioneer of patent patent publicity ploys would be what's-his-name on that what's-it-called NBC show.

All Fired Up Over a Patent

2004-03-25T20:47:00.000-08:00

Free Culture as free culture
Lessig's Free Culture is now released. I can't wait to read it. I have to wait a few days, though, before my copy arrives in the mail. Or, I can start reading it online, as it's been made available for free downloading with a Creative Commons license. I'm still buying the hardcopy and that's likely how I will read it, but am pretty jazzed that I'll have a searchable copy of it on my computer as well.

== Free Culture / Excerpts ==

2004-03-22T13:28:00.000-08:00

More on The Grey Album, Mashups, etc.
Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times had a nice piece in Sunday's calendar section chronicling the whole Grey Album controversy that ensued after EMI tried to shut down Dangermouse's mashup of The Beatles' "The White Album" and Jay-Z's "The Black Album." Obviously this issue has been almots blogged to death at this point (see www.greytuesday.org for a plethora of key links). But I'm highlighting Healey's article as quick and fairly balanced primer on the topic that does some pretty decent contextualization for a newspaper article of this sort; it includes a quick rundown of the history of the legal status of sampling, quotes from a variety of musicians (from Offspring to David Bowie) and legal experts (including Lessig) on both sides of the major divide here. I could imagine this article being nice to toss into a course reader to spark discussion in a relevant class.

EMI's move against Danger Mouse was a spectacular backfire in the war over what's fair when the muse runs afoul of copyright law in the Digital Age. Technology is making it easier than ever to sample and rework recordings, and to the chagrin of entertainment companies and some artists who hold copyrights, the public is showing little sympathy for their efforts to control original works.

Fred E. Goldring, a Beverly Hills-based music-industry lawyer, likened EMI's response to "The Grey Album" to the major labels' earlier mishandling of the Napster file-sharing service. "By creating a controversy and trying to shut it down, they actually attracted more interest in it," Goldring says. "They created their own hell." He adds, "It became probably the most widely downloaded, underground indie record, without radio or TV coverage, ever. I think it's a watershed event."

Unfortunately, the LA Times has locked up all of its calendar articles behind a paid subscribers wall (as opposed to the free registration wall of its regular news articles) so the link may be of little use to you.

When copyright law meets the 'mash-up'

2004-03-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

Janet Jackson, Democracy, and the Broadcast Flag
Lauren Gelman has written an excellent essay, at FindLaw, looking at the implications of the broadcast flag for innovation and for democracy. She uses the example of the Janet Jackson superbowl brouhaha. After the infamous wardrobe malfunction, many people uploaded the image to the Internet, blogs, etc., and this likely played a role in generating much of the controversy and debate over the incident. This debate then, in turn, led to a broader national debate on broadcasting and decency, which then has led to policy changes. In other words, democracy in action (even if it's not quite around the issue of media reform that she or I would personally have rallied behind). With a sufficiently strong broadcast flag regulation, in a few years time this might not be possible.

I really appreciate Gelman's essay for clearly and concisely laying out much of what is at stake here.

I'm no fan of increased regulation of speech, but the controversy had at least a small silver lining: It served as a demonstration of the power of innovation to promote the democratic process. In this case, the innovators were the entrepreneurial companies that harnessed the open nature of the Internet to enable users to easily capture, transfer, upload, post, and search for the TV clip.

Even those who missed the game could, because of these companies, easily watch and talk about the incident that was about to be a catalyst for major policy changes at the FCC. Their technologies thus enlarged the marketplace of ideas and influenced public debate.

Shouldn't government be doing all it can to support technologies and companies that enhance democracy like this? I believe the answer is yes.

But to the contrary, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is currently considering new technology regulations that would halt innovation in technologies that capture, manipulate and transfer digital television.

FindLaw's Writ - Gelman: The Silver Lining of the Janet Jackson Incident

2004-03-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

On the power of cable
Farhad Manjoo (whose written a number of good articles over the past few years examining media culture industries, particularly digital media technologies) has a new article up at salon.com that examines the growing power of cable companies/cable modem, particularly number 1 cable provider Comcast. The article highlights the growing moves towards the erosion of the neutral network and the dangers of so much power in so few hands-- which of course would only be exacerbated if Comcast acquires Disney.

The traditional reasons to worry about a Comcast-Disney merger -- it may raise your cable bill, and it could give Disney's content an advantage in your lineup of channels -- are compelling enough. But tech-savvy media critics these days are talking about a more theoretical, even scarier, proposition: If Comcast buys Disney, they wonder, will we get a Mickey Mouse Internet? Comcast has already demonstrated a willingness to circumscribe what customers do online. It has not only attacked high-use customers but, in the past, has also curbed virtual private networks (a popular way for corporations to integrate telecommuters into the company intranet) and, according to some customers, has limited traffic on Usenet, the oldest (and most unregulated) of all the Net's discussion forums. The company's terms of service also prohibit users from running file-sharing applications (among other things), and it has a less-than-clear policy on whether running a Wi-Fi network in your house is OK.

Such restrictions have prompted people to wonder what the company might do when it owns a vast stash of content. Will Disney's content -- its Web sites, its streaming movies and music and TV shows -- get pushed through at quicker rates to Comcast's broadband customers? Will other content, whether from a rival media giant or from your friends and family, get pushed through at all? And will the underlying architecture of the Internet subtly shift, over time, to accommodate the kinds of applications that media giants like Comcast want us to use, rather than the ones that come from the bubbling innovation of the Internet itself -- like the Web, or e-mail, or peer-to-peer file trading?

One cable company to rule them all

2004-03-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

Lego Theory!
Theory.org.uk Lego Theorists - Butler, Giddens, McRobbie & Foucault in Lego

2004-03-15T08:29:00.000-08:00

MPAA ghostwriting for the government?
Xeni Jardin at Wired News is reporting that a strongly worded anti-P2P letter, written ("written") by Bill Lockyer (CA's Attorney General) reveals evidence of having been written in part by a senior VP of the MPAA. (Yes, it's the track changes feature in Word that's gotten someone in trouble once again).

However, the metadata associated with the Microsoft Word document indicates it was either drafted or reviewed by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America. According to this metadata (automatically generated by the Word application), the document's author or editor is "stevensonv." (The metadata of a document is viewable through the File menu under Properties.)

Sources tell Wired News that the draft letter's authorship is attributed to Vans Stevenson, the MPAA's senior vice president for state legislative affairs. MPAA representatives have issued similar criticisms of P2P technology in the past. Mr. Stevenson could not be reached by press time for comment.

The document proposes an unprecedented legal theory with regard to peer-to-peer file-sharing services. If P2P software can be used to violate law, the argument goes, its makers should be obligated to incorporate a warning on the product or face liability for deceptive trade practices.

Wired News: Who's Teaming Up Against P2P?

2004-03-13T22:35:00.000-08:00

Media Regulation, Decency, and Conglomeration/Consolidation

I've made a few snarky comments about the recent furor in Washington over broadcast indecency. I've been a bit disgusted by all of the moaning and groaning about and swift action against Bono's fuck and Janet's breast, in contrast to the general dismantlement of any notion of public responsibilities on the part of broadcasters over the public airwaves in other ways and in the allowance of increasing (and increasingly scary) integration, consolidation, and conglomeration in media ownership. It's a little heartening to see, though, that some in D.C. are connecting these issues-- tying the indecency bill and the television ownerhsip cap together, as described in this L.A. Times article: Lawmakers Review Media Ownership Caps, This Time in Name of Decency

In a demonstration that reruns are inevitable not just on TV but in politics as well, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is seizing on the popularity of anti-indecency legislation to try to undo media ownership rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission last year.

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would sharply increase the penalty for radio and TV stations and on-air entertainers who violate federal indecency rules. Fines per broadcaster would rise from $27,500 to a maximum of $500,000 per violation. The Senate is expected to take up a similar measure soon.

But the bill as approved by the Senate Commerce Committee would do something else too: It would delay for one year some of the new rules relaxing the limits on how many broadcast outlets a single company may own. The measure is designed to give Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, time to study whether there is a relationship between media consolidation and the rise in complaints about broadcast indecency.

2004-03-13T22:26:00.000-08:00

Water, Mars, and Science Fiction
Kim Stanley Robinson has a nice essay in the New York Times Book Review outlining the history of science fictional engagements with Mars (including his own), and specifically the role that the possible presence or absence of water has played in it.

Mars and science fiction came of age together in the 1890's, and ever since they have had a tight relationship, a feedback loop that has made both famous . . .

Essay: A Red Planet Forever in the Orbit of Science and Dreams (via boingboing)

2004-03-12T21:59:00.000-08:00

Profanity
The actual text of the bill HR 3687:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by inserting `(a)' before `Whoever'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

`(b) As used in this section, the term `profane', used with respect to language, includes the words `shit', `piss', `fuck', `cunt', `asshole', and the phrases `cock sucker', `mother fucker', and `ass hole', compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).'.

This is the media reform I've been hoping for, definitely.
(via Lost Remote

2004-03-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

EFF Collective Licensing Plan
Over the past week or so there's been a plethora of interesting discussion and debate about EFF's white paper that suggested voluntary collective licensing as a solution to the filesharing dilemma. Over at The Importance Of . . . Ernest Miller has helpfully brought many of the key posts from various authors together. If you're still trying to make sense of this issue (like me) this is the place to start.
Link: More Thoughts on EFF's Filesharing Plan (via Copyfight)

2004-03-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

Ads in Space
A new patent was granted recently to facilitate placing ads in (outer) space that are visible from Earth.

The Russian news agency Interfax reported this week that a Russian investor has patented a concept for advertisements in outer space. The inventor, Alexander Lavryonov, is a little vague regarding how it would work, other than it would require a number of satellites equipped with mirrors to reflect sunlight, spelling out words or forming logos that would be visible to people on the Earth. While the article treats this as a novel concept, the concept of orbiting billboards is nothing new. Over a decade ago Georgia-based Space Marketing proposed placing what essentially would have been a giant Mylar balloon in orbit that, on Earth, would appear to be the size and brightness of the full Moon

It doesn't sound like we'll be seeing these any day now or anything, but it does seem pretty symptomatic of where things are heading. Closer to coming to fruition, and just as disturbing, is this plan to place advertisements on children's schoolbuses.
Link: Technology Review: The Final (Advertising) Frontier?

2004-03-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

"This is really more of a comment than a question, but . . . "

Michael Berube on Q&A's at academic conferences. Too funny.

One of these days I want to put together an academic conference that addresses the phenomenon of academic conferences. It will be called "The Longer Version," and will be distinguished by three features: one, every paper will have a respondent who, instead of waiting for the paper to end, will simply snort, harrumph, and blurt "I think not!" at random moments during the paper. Two, questioners will be required to begin all questions by saying, "this is really more of a comment than a question-- I wonder if you could say more about X," on the condition that X was either unmentioned in or tangential to the paper itself. (Questions must be at least three minutes long.) And three, every speaker will be required to answer these questions by saying, "I actually address this question in the longer version of this paper," regardless of whether there is a longer version or not.

Link: Conference Final (via Electrolite)

2004-03-11T17:11:00.000-08:00

Chabon on Pullman
Michael Chabon has written a compelling review of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. It helpfully situates the book within the epic fantasy tradition (in this case tracing its roots more to Milton than to Tolkien) and Chabon nicely identifies what makes the series so special.

I found myself really enchanted by the books when I finally read them last year (although I agree with Chabon that the series started to come apart in the third volume). They weren't at all what I was expecting; they're not at all children's/YA books, in my opinion (especially thet last book) (and I don't mean that as a knock against adults reading YA books; I love Harry Potter as much as the next person . . .). If you haven't read the books yet, they're worth picking up. (And if you haven't read Chabon yet I command you to immediately get The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which was definitely my favorite book of last year (via Crooked Timber)

2004-03-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

Wasting Time
I don't know why this goofy game has amused me so much, but it has. It's no Guess the Dictator or Sit-com Character of year's past, but there's still something oddly addicting about it. Thank goodness I found it because I've definitely been in need of more ways to frivolously whitter time away on the internet. And hey, I'm not really wasting time, I'm helping to index images on the Internet. It's my civic duty, really!
(via Freedom to Tinker: A Spoonful of Sugar)

2004-03-09T21:25:00.000-08:00

Broadcast Flag going to court?
EFF, Public Knowledge, the American Library Association, Consumer Federation, and Consumers Union are suing the FCC over the broadcast flag. Definitely an interesting development!
EFF: FCC Faces Suit on Regulation of Digital Broadcast Television (via boingboing)

2004-03-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

Firefly Movie
According to Variety they are definitely making a film spin-off of Joss Whedon's shortlived television show "Firefly." Although it took me a little while to completely warm to it, I grew to really love that show during its short life . It was really starting to blossom into something special right about when Fox cancelled it. (I must admit, though, that I can see why it had a hard time finding an audience; it was a quite singular series in many ways). I'm not sure what the movie will be like; the strength and promise of the series, to me, was rooted primarily in character development issues-- the most prominent feature for which television can far outshine film, because of the luxury of time. But, still, this is happy news-- especially since the airwaves will soon be Joss-free, because of the WB's recent cancellation of Angel
FIREFLYFANS.NET: It's Official

2004-03-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

Go Sean!
My brother's band, Colic, was written up in today's Detroit Free Press. I'm just beaming with sisterly pride!
Colic plays melodic hard rock You can also check out his music at the band's website www.colictheband.com

2004-03-03T07:19:00.000-08:00

Garfinkel on the Broadcast Flag
Simson Garfinkel has a good piece at the Technology Review hlighting potential dangers in the broadcast flag regulations.

In the future, the Motion Picture Association of America will control your television set. Every TV sold in the United States will come equipped with an electronic circuit that will search incoming TV programs for a tiny electronic “flag.” The MPAA’s members will control this flag, putting it into broadcast movies and television shows as they see fit. If the flag is present, your TV will go into a special high-security mode and lock down its high-quality digital outputs. If you want to record a flagged program, you’ll have to do so on analog tape or on a special low-resolution DVD. Any recording will be limited to analog-quality sound. This security measure is not designed to protect the television from viruses or computer hackers—it’s designed to protect TV programs from you.

Losing Control of Your TV

2004-03-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

More on Mars
Oliver Morton has a nice succinct discussion about what this announcement about the evidence of water on Mars does and doesn't mean. I hadn't seen his blog before, but it looks like a great source for explanation and commentary on Mars.

So it was a big announcement - but not a terribly surprising or incredibly dramatic one. Indeed you might argue that it was pretty close to being the smallest discovery that would still merit a big press conference at headquarters. Doesn't mean the news wasn't important or exciting. Just means -- and this is no surprise -- that speculation can outstrip the science pretty easily.

MainlyMartian: "Drenched" (via Electrolite)

2004-03-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

Cool Mars stuff
If you haven't seen it already check out the picture of the blue Martian sunset; it's pretty nifty. More significantly, though, check out the evidence of water on Mars!

Scientists have concluded the part of Mars that NASA's Opportunity rover is exploring was soaking wet in the past.

Evidence the rover found in a rock outcrop led scientists to the conclusion. Clues from the rocks' composition, such as the presence of sulfates, and the rocks' physical appearance, such as niches where crystals grew, helped make the case for a watery history.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Press Releases

2004-03-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

Broadcast Flag update

Hewlett-Packard and Philips have announced that they'll be building the Broadcast Flag into all of thier new sets. More on this later.
HP, Philips Develop DRM for Digital Broadcasts, PC World

2004-03-01T22:27:00.000-08:00

Tougher Copyright Laws Bad for Business?
So suggests a recent report from the Committe for Economic Development, summarized in this NYT article. I haven't had a chance to read the report itself, yet, though (one more thing in the to read queue!)

The entertainment industry's pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released today by the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has its roots in the business world.

Record companies and movie and television studios have fought copyright infringement on many fronts, hoping to find ways to prevent their products from being distributed free on the Internet. But critics warn that many of the new restrictions that the entertainment industry proposes - like enforcing technological requirements for digital television programming that would prevent it from being transmitted online - would upset the balance between the rights of the content creators and the rights of the public.

NYT article: Report raises questions about fighting online piracy (via mediareform.net) PDF of the full report

2004-03-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

The hypocrisy of the indecency backlash

Michael Hiltzick has a nice piece (surprisingly biting) in this morning's LA Times highlighting the utter hypocrisy in Clear Channel's dropping of Howard Stern (from their feigned surprise at the questionable material on the show to the fact that since Viacom and not CC are the main airers of the show they have little to lose by cutting him loose) as well as that of Michael Powell (who actively subverts regulation of the truly indecent mega-conglomeration of media companies and who won't acknowledge the relationship between this issue and the issue of standards, etc. in broadcast media).

"Still, Clear Channel's two-step is nothing compared with the fake piety exhibited by the man who probably bears the most responsibility for setting broadcast tastelessness loose on the public: FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell. A commissioner since 1997 and chairman since 2001, Powell was fast off the mark after the Super Bowl, complaining the very next day about the outrage perpetrated upon him when, "like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration."

Leaving aside the question of what Powell thought he was celebrating by viewing the single most overhyped and commercialized event in American entertainment — The U.S. snack food industry? The principle of monopoly control of sports leagues? The decline of pop music? — the trends that have launched a thousand fulminating press releases are largely the result of his own agency's servile regulation of the ever more concentrated broadcasting industry."

Link: After Janet Jackson's Prank, the Truly Indecent Behavior (free registration required)

2004-03-01T19:29:00.000-08:00

Internet Users as Creators and Producers
The Pew Internet Project has released another report chronicling the activities of internet users, finding that a full 44% of internet users are actively producing and sharing content of some sort.

44% of Internet users have created content for the online world through building or posting to Web sites, creating blogs, and sharing files

"In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online. Some 44% of the nation’s adult Internet users (those 18 and over) have done at least one of the following:

21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites.
20% say they have allowed others to download music or video files from their computers.
17% have posted written material on Web sites.
13% maintain their own Web sites.
10% have posted comments to an online newsgroup. A small fraction of them have posted files to a newsgroup such as video, audio, or photo files.
8% have contributed material to Web sites run by their businesses.
7% have contributed material to Web sites run by organizations to which they belong such as church or professional groups.
7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.
6% have posted artwork on Web sites.
5% have contributed audio files to Web sites.
4% have contributed material to Web sites created for their families.
3% have contributed video files to Web sites.
2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have posted material to the blog."

Link: Content Creation Online

2004-02-24T23:00:00.000-08:00

New EFF Whitepaper on Filesharing: Voluntary Collective Licensing
EFF just published a new whitepaper recommending voluntary collective licensing as a solution to the filesharing issue; they recommend a flat $5 a month fee with money distributed to aritsts in a way somewhat similar to what ASCAP, etc. does with radio. The paper is clear, cogent, and convincing (to me, anyway). I doubt that the RIAA will listen, but maybe someone will.

The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to "get legit" in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway -- share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer -- without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rights-holders based on the popularity of their music.

In exchange, file-sharing music fans will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in applications, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom to fans to publish what they care about, the deeper the catalog.

EFF: A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing (via Derek Slater )

2004-02-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

Stephenson, Foucault, Quicksilver and Geneaology

Timothy Burke has an interesting entry looking at Neal Stephenson's latest book Quicksilver as an exemplar of Focauldian Genealogy. I'm not quite as inclined against pomo as Burke is nor was I quite as thrilled with Quicksilver as he seems to be, but I find his read of the book to be rather compelling.

I've had mixed feelings about Quicksilver. Stephenson is one of my very favorite authors, so to say that it's not my favorite of his books is not exactly strong criticism. Previously, though, I'd rank his books (in terms of my preference) in ascending chronological order (Big U being definitely the worst and Cryptonomicon definitely my favorite-- Snowcrash and Diamond Age I waffle on which I prefer; both I like quite a bit). So, the fact that Quicksilver didn't continue this trend was disappointing, but not necessarily the fairest criterion for judging the book overall.

There were many parts of the book that I loved, certainly some of Stephenson's trademark humor was still there (though less effective for me than in some previous books) and some of his wild digressions and rambling historical excursions were wonderful. But I just completely bogged down in the book, taking forever to read it-- (yes, it's long, but that hasn't been a problem in the past).

While I'm not one to necessarily demand overly plot-dominated writing, I did want something more active to guide me through the random adventures of the three protagonists. I'm sure they will all connect up more in the longrun-- but we may have to wait through 2 more books for it to tie together. Perhaps I'm just not patient enough. Like so many other novels I've read recently it's not a complete book-- it ends abrubtly with the other two parts due to be published quite soon. I'm not sure that I'll get them in hardcover, however. (6 months ago I wouldn't have believed that Stephenson could possibly drop from my automatically get in hardcover immediately list).

Oh, I guess I'm in a rambly mood right now. This is all just to say that Burke's blog entry has made me think some more about the book and helped me to appreciate it more-- a mark of good criticism.

Quicksilver and Foucault (via Crooked Timber)

2004-02-16T21:14:00.000-08:00

"Protecting" the deaf from evil TV

Apparently, the Dept. of Education (or rather, a secret, anonymous committee within) has slashed funding to television closed-captioning, specifically targetting "inappropriate" shows. The choice of shows being targetted is absurd (worries about the witchcraft references on Bewitched, for example); more absurd than the specific, odd choices, though, is the underlying paternalism of the whole project.

"The government is refusing to caption Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, apparently fearing that the deaf would fall prey to witchcraft if they viewed the classic sitcoms.
Your government also believes that Law & Order is too intense for the hard-of-hearing. So is Power Rangers. You can rest easy knowing that your federal tax dollars aren't being spent to promote Sanford and Son, Judge Wapner's Animal Court and The Loretta Young Show within the deaf community. "

Censor 'Scooby-Doo'? Words fail (via boingboing)

2004-02-11T20:32:00.000-08:00

Media Integration/Consolidation Cable giant Comcast is in the process of trying to purchase Disney (which brings along with it ABC, Lifetime, ESPN, Touchstone, Miramax, etc.). It's not clear whether or not Disney will accept the offer (though my guess is that ultimately they will). So, the mega-media companies continue getting fewer and bigger. Nothing surprising here, of course, but its predictability makes it no less worrisome.

Meanwhile regulatory fervor is all getting aimed at this indecency/obscenity issue. I find the ever-narrowing mediascape and ever-expanding vertical and horizontal integration far more indecent than Janet Jackson's breast, personally. Comcast Makes $66-Billion Bid for Disney

2004-02-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

Fan fiction
Henry Jenkins has a nice column in the latest Technology Review on fan fiction, kids, and participatory media cultures-- specifically looking at Harry Potter fan fiction and the positive role it's playing in developing some kids' writing skills and literacy. Jenkins's separate writings on kids' media cultures and on fandoms are important and helpful, so having them combined here is especially nice. It's worth checking out. Why Heather Can Write (via boingboing

2003-11-12T16:43:00.000-08:00

Gramscian devils

Truly amazing site on the evils of the Gramscian hegemony-- meaning the nefarious hegemony of Gramscians over Americans! Exegesis: America's profound need to resist Gramsci

"Gramscians are now running America's political parties, banking system, movies, television and other media. Moreover, as they possess enormous financial and political strength, they are also able to oversee the appropriate distribution of subtle anti-Christian, anti-American, Marxist propaganda in political institutions, high schools, universities and even churches.

As a result of such efforts over the past forty years, America, blissfully brainwashed into ignorance, now stands perilously close to a Marxist, totalitarian state. This descent has been accelerated since September 11th, which paved the way for the Gramscians to intrude further into private lives via the Patriot Act and immense government spending on wars conducted solely for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. Indeed, we have become so comfortable living alongside Gramsci's modern disciples like Hillary Clinton, the ACLU, the network TV presenters and their rulers in the New World Order that we do little more than quietly squirm when they appear before us."

I don't even know where to begin with this, so I won't bother. It really made my day, though. (Thanks Joe!)

2003-11-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

The Broadcast Flag decision
So, the FCC has mandated the adoption of the broadcast flag. Even Copps and Adelstein, though partially dissenting, went along with it. A great victory for the MPAA, but for the rest of us . . .? Ernest Miller has some helpful comments examining the Comissioners' press releases about the decision, The Importance Of: FCC Mandates Broadcast Flag. This Washington Post entry,. Waving the Flag for Hollywood, has a good collection of links to the various press statements that have been released today and some basic news articles.

There's still one more round of public comments before this becomes completely official. But I can't say I'm very optimistic at this moment.

2003-10-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

Broadcast Flag
Over at Salon.com, Farhad Manjoo has a nice, short piece on the broadcast flag issue that's worth checking out. Hollywood to the computer industry: We don't need no stinking Napsters!

2003-10-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Why I love google
Or, rather, just 1 of the many reasons: Pigeon Rank!. I saw this a while ago, but was recently reminded of it by Making Light (where there have been a number of great posts and discussions lately, by the way-- par for the course with that blog, certainly)-- see for example On Writing Genre Fantasy.

Okay, and I'll admit a love of Amazon too
The new ability to search through the pages of 120,000 books at Amazon is quite exciting. I haven't had a chance to really play with it much yet. But I have no doubt whatsoever that it's going to come in handy quite often. I know there are many reasons why I shouldn't love Amazon. But they keep on doing things like this . . .

Oh, and hello!
So, it's been an absurd amount of time since I last posted. I'm hopefully getting back in the habit now.