When Elephants Dance

March 24, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via Scripting News ] Michael Fraase on big media’s contempt for anyone, well, who isn’t them:
Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. That’s all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The [...]

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Hollywood’s latest outrage

March 21, 2002 – 12:00 am

I’m still too angry to speak on it myself. So I’ll just point you at Cory Doctorow of the EFF’s comments:
If Senator Fritz has his way, no new technologies will be brought to market without a one-year review. Open Source will be dead, since there will be no way to ensure that your users don’t [...]

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Has Selig Gone Too Far This Time?

March 20, 2002 – 12:00 am

[ via RC3.org ] Opening day’s a few days away, so it’s time to throw brickbats at the Comissioner everyone loves to hate:
Think about that for a minute. In a multi-billion-dollar industry whose largest investors include Disney, News Corp., AOL Time Warner, and the Tribune Company, a car dealer from Milwaukee not only dictates labor [...]

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Notes from Larry Lessig’s Talk at Stanford

February 20, 2002 – 12:00 am

Lawrence Lessig gave a talk on IP and the Commons today at Stanford. I’ve put my notes from the talk on my other website. I missed the first part of the talk because I had to get a Filemaker server back up… grr.

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Court finds against G_D in antitrust suit

February 1, 2002 – 12:00 am

And when you thought Pullman was hard on religion, how about the DOJ’s Antitrust division?
The suit, brought against G[_]d by the Justice Department on behalf of a coalition of “lesser deities” and polytheistic mortals, alleged that He violated antitrust laws by claiming in the Holy Bible that He was the sole creator of the universe, [...]

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More on the Entertainment-Industrial Complex

December 20, 2001 – 12:00 am

The Nation’s doing another issue on concentration in the entertainment and media business. They have charts and graphs.

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Clear Channel sanitizes station playlists

September 18, 2001 – 12:00 am

When most of the commerical radio stations in the US are owned by a small number of firms, who needs government censorship? Clear Channel, one of the oligopolists, banned 200 songs from their stations after the bombings. You won’t hear “New York, New York”, or “Imagine” on a Clear Channel station, and that’s probably half [...]

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Moglen on the US Surrender to Microsoft

September 16, 2001 – 12:00 am

Eben Moglen thinks the surrender to MS has to do with campaign money, Hollywood’s quest to prevent copying, and PC makers wanting to sell new hardware.

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Courtney Love takes on the Industry Cartel

February 28, 2001 – 12:00 am

[ via Girl Geek ] Courtney Love is suing one of Universal’s labels over the long term contracts which dominate the industry. This is worth watching, because it may break the industry cartels.

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Sharecroppers, Pirates and Cartels

June 14, 2000 – 12:00 am

[ via RC3 ] Courtney Love speaks out on piracy and the major label cartel. This is an impressive, thought out essay. [ 15JUN2000: I've pointed at the primary source now, which is on the site for Courtney Love's band, Hole. Tip of the hat to Laurence Lee ]

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Five arguments against WAP

June 1, 2000 – 12:00 am

It’s a scheme, it’s developed outside standards groups, inconsistently implemented, and too closely tied to its parent. However, millions of people are using it. Java? No, WAP.

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Tulipomania DOT COM

May 24, 2000 – 12:00 am

[ via Red Rock Eater ] Here’s a conference on the new economy from a critical perspective where they promise to be neither dogmatic about the glories of the Internet economy, nor behave like a bunch of anarchists from Eugene.

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Wireless architecture makes the carrier a kingmaker

May 17, 2000 – 12:00 am

According to a Phone.com VP, most people don’t bother typing in URLs on their WAP phone, because it’s a pain, and depend on the the bookmarks their carriers provide. That gives the wireless provider (AT&T, Sprint) power to decide winners and losers in the Wireless Internet. Imagine how limited the Web would be if Netscape, [...]

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Let us get Old Testament on MS

May 2, 2000 – 12:00 am

[ via Ward Willats ] And you think I’m a firebrand? David Manchester thinks a breakup of Microsoft is letting them off easy.
“Jail, and fine the individuals responsible for this behavior. Prosecute Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, William Neukom, Mike Maples, Joachim Kempin, Paul Maritz, Bernard Verignes, Jeff Lum, Juergen Huels, and the other individuals in [...]

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Web Standards smites Microsoft over IE5.5 DOM

April 10, 2000 – 12:00 am

The Web Standards Project has issued a scathing letter upbraiding the upcoming version of Internet Explorer which uses a non-standard DOM. Just play it safe. Don’t let browsers touch the DOM. Do it all on the server until MS decides to play nice.

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