shouting loudly

Using a very creative interpretation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Media Rights Technologies (MRT) has issued a cease-and-decist notice to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and RealNetworks.
Their alleged violation of the law? Failing to use MRT’s digital rights management technology as a means of retarding copyright infringement. (Note that each of these companies actively deploys [...]

NYT has an interesting story on musicians’ use of blogs to reach niche audiences.
Props to Tina for the link.

In light of the first-person shooter-style massacre at Virginia Tech, Slate columnist Amanda Schaffer cribs from the academic literature to argue that video games really do contribute to violent behavior. The point about video game violence is important, so I write about it first. After that, I’ll spar with Schaffer for apparently summarizing somebody else’s [...]

Congress has heard our cries to save internet radio.
Along with 50 bipartisan cosponsors, Reps Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) have introduced HR 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act. Instead of the outrageously high royalties set by the Copyright Royalty Board, commercial stations could choose to pay either .33 cents per hour per listener, [...]

In perhaps the most systematic study to date of The O’Reilly Factor, journalism scholars from the University of Indiana concluded that O’Reilly systematically deploys a broad array of disreputable propaganda techniques.
On many counts, the researchers concluded O’Reilly uses underhanded propaganda techniques over 50% more often (12.9 times per minute) than the infamous 1930’s radio host [...]

In my last post about the Digg/HD-DVD hack story, I fretted that the take-away lesson from the Digg story would be that Web 2.0 is just too hot to handle. The mainstream media is generally framing it this way, but the tech news world is mostly framing it as a small victory for free speech [...]

After attempting to stifle repeated postings of a crack for the DRM on HD-DVDs, the user-edited site Digg.com has caved to a user revolt, allowing users to post the information, exposing the site to substantial legal liability.
The Lede (a Times blog about the news) has an excellent summary of the story’s very recent history. Perhaps [...]