Month: September 2001

Wired News reports on a new copyright bill that would require copyright protection controls in almost every piece of electronic equipment and create new felony penalties with fines up to $500,000 for distributing content with altered or removed copyright controls. I don’t have time to comment on this except to say that it is evil.…

Mediachannel’s Danny Schechter asks: When Is A Journalist A Journalist? Schecter offers a nice overview and analysis of the ongoing collision between independent journalists–who take advantage of digital video, the web and other new technologies–and the mainstream establishment, including gov’t, mainstream media, and other institutions of power. A choice observation on the journalistic world: “Most…

The Village Voice provides us with “Telecomm for Dummies,” a tour of the Media Industrial Complex. It’s a helpful scorecard for keeping track of the big players in the telecomm world on both sides of the coin–the real money playas and the critics.

Do Indy Filmmakers Really Present a Challenge to Hollywood?This Wired News article quotes a “young filmmaker fresh from the George Lucas movie factory” who says that big-budget effects ruin films, and therefore Hollywood has much to fear from independent digital filmmakers. Case in point: Star Wars Episode 1 was not as good a film as…

DIY Audio Computer: this page details the “Scrap Computer Audio Source Project,” for using a cheap used PC to stream out mp3s. One application for this ‘puter is for an unlicensed micropower radio station. (via pirateradio@about.com) This project is interesting because it relies on DOS for cheapness and stability–though the author notes that some of…

More on @Home: Broadcasting & Cable reports that the broadband service is losing affiliates Comcast and Cox Communications, both of which operate cable TV systems. The short report also says that the @Home creditor demanding immediate payment of $50 million–a payment that threatened to shove the company right into bankruptcy–is now delaying its demand. Ay,…

I, Cringely has this incisive analysis of the problems facing Excite @Home cablemodem broadband Internet service, as the company stands perched on the brink of bankruptcy. After delving into some of the internal company politics that hampered the company, Cringely nonetheless reaches the conclusion that “Excite@Home failed mainly because broadband did not grow as quickly…

I posted the news reported on today’s edition of my radio program to the Urbana IMC site. Some of the news was already reported here–but has been edited and revised with more recent information for broadcast–so I won’t waste blog space with it. If you’re interested you can read it here.