Mediacology

.cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url(‘http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png’) !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title a{color:#868686;text-decoration:none;}.cc_links a:hover{color:#67bee2;text-decoration:underline;}

The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at ChristmasColbert Christmas DVD
Green ScreenBill O’Reilly Interview

I just started reading Lessig’s Remix, perhaps the most accessible of his books. He makes a great comparison between “read only” versus “read/write” culture. Colbert does a great job of playing devil’s advocate. [...]

James Boyle has a written an important book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, which you can also download for free from his site. He has the following intriguing proposition:
In the tradition of the environmental movement, which first invented and then sought to protect something called “the environment,” Boyle hopes that [...]

If nature evolves based on open source and networked architecture, then it makes sense that our media should do so as well. The following article makes the argument more acute: climate change media should be open for all educational purposes. I couldn’t agree more. (I recommend clicking through and reading the whole article.)

P2P Foundation » [...]

I suggest you go and read the full post from Palms Out who are claiming that Google is removing posts from Blogger (which it owns) that contain copyright violations in the form of song files. Scary.

Palms Out Sounds:

For all of you who are wondering what has happened with Remix Sunday, let me offer a brief [...]

Link:
A little documentary about Johannes Kreidler’s “Product Placements” performance: 72,000 samples in 33 seconds. He’s doing the artistic equivalent of a denial of service attack on Germany’s copyright agency, GEMA.
Here is a video of the performance:

I think this video does a better job of explaining the Pirate’s Dilemma than the book. The material lends itself to an audiovisual medium, and can spread more rapidly via the net. I’m for the ideas in the book, but I found it a little too superficial and lacking in some good, wholesome theory. But [...]

Update: Apparently Dan Rather was here, and not Lessig. I fixed it. Please watch this. It’s really amazing.
If there is one talk from NCMR 2008, it’s this one by Lessig who tackles the source of media consolidation.

FYI, you can view the whole video channel here.

Old media always goes to war with the new. So the following news is hardly surprising. Too bad for AP. They have no idea what they will be missing, which is a ringside seat to the next media revolution.

AP vs Bloggers: The Mainstream Media Declares War on Blogs:

But lets look a little deeper here, because [...]

When a copy infringement falls in the Web forest, does it make a sound? Now it does, thanks to YouTomb, which tracks YouTube take-downs, kinda like an info control zeitgeist reader. There’s even a stats page to monitor the biggest control freaks.

YouTomb:

YouTomb is a research project of MIT Free Culture. The purpose of the project [...]

Looks like a great doc and book on copyright, Freedom of Expression.

Zappa pixelated
In Germany the Zappa estate is suing the Arf Society– producers of Zappanale, a three day tribute festival that features cover bands and “Zappa-esque rock”– for trademark infringement. Spiegel Online sums up the paradox:
Mother of Intervention: Zappa Festival Defends Itself from … Zappa – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News:
In the end, it all [...]

OK, let’s get one thing straight, the RIAA represents the true counterculture. They have their heads so far up their paradigmatic arse that they are now promoting shrill profiling that equates music piracy sd being a gateway to terrorism. With this kind of logic, half the population will end up in Guantanamo Bay. See the [...]

I stumbled upon this nice little documentary on Creative Commons and Lawrence Lessig. Watch it before the next corporate take down!

To paraphrase Charlie Brown: “AAAAAUUUUUUUGH!”
Publishers Join Case Against YouTube – The Huffington Post:
A group of music publishing companies said Monday it is joining a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google Inc.’s video-sharing site YouTube.
The National Music Publishers’ Association said it was joining the lawsuit out of concern that many songwriters weren’t receiving proper compensation when their [...]

As mashups become the dominant aesthetics of our time (people act like this is such a new thing, but punks and hip hoppers, please pat yourselves on the back, were doing it long before YouTube, not to mention Dada), it is ironic that corporate “take-downs” are beginning to proliferate the Web. Ultimately this will bite [...]

Watch out! A comic super hero who battles copyright.
CSPD Comics:
A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? “Eyes on the Prize,” the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation [...]

You may have seen the above video which cleverly uses Disney clips to describe the complexities of fair use law, a tool that enables media critics and audiences to quote and comment upon existing copyrighted material. The article below describes a new technology being developed in partnership between Disney, Time Warner and YouTube/Google to embed [...]

A hacker manifesto:
Science Addiction » 95 Theses of Geek Activism:
1. Reclaim the term ‘hacker’. If you tinker with electronics, you are a hacker. If you use things in more ways than intended by the manufacturer, you are a hacker. If you build things out of strange, unexpected parts, you are a hacker. Reclaim the term.
2. [...]