Category: Business

Our favorite loon, Dave Winer, is on the soapbox again seeking support from politicians for his media-hating jihad:

Over the weekend I sent a simple idea to Cameron Barrett, who works for the Clark campaign, and to Jim Moore who works for Dean. The message: I would love to see their candidates make an impassioned plea to keep the Internet free of interference from the entertainment industry…I would happily give money to candidates for ads that warn that the media industry is trying to rob us of our future, and explains how important it is to protect the independence of the Internet.

Winer’s political sophistication is less than remarkable; his analysis holds that any organization he can describe as “big” is necessarily a force for oppression and probably out to get him personally, and he’s even invented a word (BigCos) to express this profound view. So he naturally takes it as given that Big Media Cos are out to destroy the Internet because it’s his livelihood, and for no other reason.

So we need only ask for the evidence that media companies are out to destroy the Internet to put this silly complaint to bed, sure in the knowledge that Winer can’t produce, just as Lessig can’t support his claim that the Original Internet was a free-for all, first-come first-served, random access network. These myths are extremely popular these days, but there’s not much to them.

See also Doc Searls and Jeff Jarvis.

Gallup Poll Analyses – Are the News Media Too Liberal?

PRINCETON, NJ — Forty-five percent of Americans believe the news media in this country are too liberal, while only 14% say the news media are too conservative. These perceptions of liberal inclination have not changed over the last three years. A majority of Americans who describe their political views as conservative perceive liberal leanings in the media, while only about a third of self-described liberals perceive conservative leanings

A reader points out that the Davis recall was opposed by virtually all the print media in the state, yet the people passed it overwhelmingly. Are the media out of touch with the people?

You could say so.

Check out the Sunday funnies at Begging to Differ, on Sunday. Here’s the announcement:

We are pleased to announce that this Sunday, September 14, Begging to Differ will present our first-ever Sunday Comics feature. Several of the funniest and most provocative online comics will be presented in this space.

The selection includes, but is not limited to: Day By Day, Achewood, and Squaresville.

The RIAA has finally started suing major music thieves, starting with a few hundred people who’d each “shared” over a thousand tunes. One file thief’s reaction was typical:

Another defendant, Lisa Schamis of New York, said her Internet provider warned her two months ago that record industry lawyers had asked for her name and address, but she said she had no idea she might be sued. She acknowledged downloading ?lots? of music over file-sharing networks.

?This is ridiculous,? said Schamis, 26. ?People like me who did this, I didn?t understand it was illegal.?

?I can understand why the music industry is upset about this, but the fact that we had access to this as the public, I don?t think gives them the right to sue us. It?s wrong on their part,? said Schamis, who added she is unemployed and would be unable to pay any large fine or settlement.

OK, perhaps she was genuinely in the dark and didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong. Perhaps those of us who know better can help those who don’t understand this behavior by calling it by its name. So from now on, instead of calling it “file sharing” let’s call it “song stealing” the better to educate the masses. It’s the responsible thing to do.

Here’s a statement from songwriter Hugh Prestwood on song stealing:
Continue reading “Song stealing suits commence”

Unless you’re sharing your meals with Osama in a Pakistani cave, you’ve read Matt Welch’s deal on blogs for CJR. My favorite part:

Are bloggers journalists? Will they soon replace newspapers?

The best answer to those two questions is: those are two really dumb questions; enough hot air has been expended in their name already.

A more productive, tangible line of inquiry is: Is journalism being produced by blogs, is it interesting, and how should journalists react to it? The answers, by my lights, are “yes,” “yes,” and “in many ways.”

The concluding graf is good too, but I don’t want to spoil your cave-dwelling fun.

I give Matt an “A” on this excellent composition.

The least surprising development in blog-trashing is Blah Blah Blog, a snarky piece of push-back from Maureen “Aren’t I Cute” Dowd:

In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean’s success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere — spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.

Inspired by the people who coined the term “Dowdify” for the practice of distorting quotations by dishonest elision, political blogs hold the establishment’s feet to the fire, and you can ask Trent Lott and Howell Raines how that works. And as far as I know, I invented the political blog in 1995 for the Coalition of Parent Support, a California grass-roots political organization. If the mighty MoDo doesn’t like this invention of mine, she should probably stop using the other things I invented or co-invented, such as UTP Ethernet and Wi-Fi. It simply wouldn’t be right for her to sully her alpha-girl cuteness with such vulgarity.

A fellow named Chris Lydon has been interviewing bloggers and posting mp3s of the interviews to a web site. The people he’s interviewed seem to think he’s a great interviewer, and I can’t see why. In the course of interviewing Reynolds, who he calls “the Warblogger” as if there’s only one, he asserts that the New York Times supported the war in Iraq, and offers as proof the columns of Tom Friedman and Bill Safire. This was so idiotic it made my head nearly explode, and Reynolds questioned it but was polite and let him get away with it. When Reynolds pointed out that the anti- side in the Iraq war debate wasn’t really about the war, but about such things as America’s place in the world (really was more about Bush’s legitimacy as president, to tell the truth) Lydon didn’t see any problem with that, and the fellow was all agush with the “democratic” nature of the blogosphere.

While everybody likes a good ass-kissing from time to time, it’s always seemed to me that it’s much less satisfying when done by a moron. Is that too harsh?

The movie Legally Blonde was written by a Stanford law student who didn’t enjoy her time there:

I was in my first week of law school, in 1993, and I saw this flyer for “The Women of Stanford Law,” so I was like, “I’ll go and meet some nice girls. Whatever.”

I went to the meeting, and these were not women. These were really angry people. The woman who was leading it spent three years at Stanford trying to change the name “semester” to “ovester.” I started laughing and I realized everyone in the room took it very seriously. So I didn’t make any friends there.

Sounds like the Stanford that’s produced so many of the winners I’ve worked with in the Valley of Despair.

Number 2 Pencil is alive and well and off blogspot.

Dean Esmay’s good works are sure to win him in place in Archive Heaven.

A Dog’s Life is now on MT and master of his own domain.