mediageek

Month: July 2002

  • CNet reports that “Enthusiasts of

    CNet reports that “Enthusiasts of free software disrupted a Commerce Department meeting Wednesday, insisting on their right to debate the entertainment industry over anti-copying technologies.” Why, this is a Democracy! That’s why we had a diverse group of 20 industry heads represented at the table. What, someone besides industry should be afforded a place? But…

  • Does Technological Romanticism Blind Us to Real Threats To Our Freedom?

    Does Technological Romanticism Blind Us to Real Threats To Our Freedom? In MIT’s Technology Review, Richard A. Muller argues that Orwell’s 1984 prediction that technology would ultimately be used by a totalitarian state to utterly constrain our freedom did not come true because not even governments can completely control technology. As evidence, he cites the…

  • Slashdot has a nice rundown

    Slashdot has a nice rundown of the 2600 sponsored H2K2 conference in NYC this past weekend. Hacking and independent media go hand and hand, it’s just a matter of what you’re hacking.

  • Small-market TV — the Squeeze Is On.

    Small-market TV — the Squeeze Is On.USA Today reports that some smaller TV station owners, especially in smaller markets, are getting hosed from the cost of upgrading to digital. This isn’t surprising since smaller and independent owners have almost no voice in communications policy making, including being largely marginalized within the broadcast lobby and the…

  • Will You Be a Consumer or Creator?

    Virtual communitarian Howard Rheingold pens an essay on the ‘Smart Mobs’ — the ad hoc networks of individuals using technology to coordinate their actions, be it by cell phone, text messaging, Internet. He correctly identifies the source of ongoing technology struggles and the conflict between people’s desire to use technology to create and build and…

  • Believe it or not, the

    Believe it or not, the July 12 edition of the mediageek radio show is already on-line, with a feature on unconventional indy media. Both mp3 and ogg vorbis format files are available.

  • Legislators Continue to Bend Over for Culture Industry — Are We Surprised?

    Legislators Continue to Bend Over for Culture Industry — Are We Surprised? Declan McCullagh offers up another well-researched article on a new bill to be introduced into Congress that would provide some protection to webcasters while butchering current Fair Use rights. The Berman-Coble bill would make it illegal to swap a digital copy of any…

  • The Memory Hole aims to

    The Memory Hole aims to archive data that might otherwise be lost, destroyed, forgotten. Seems like a nice complement to Cryptome.

  • mediageek status report

    mediageek status report I don’t think I’ve done one of these before, so this is the first. Two items of business to cover: First, I am going to be changing hosting of mediageek in the next few weeks. I’m moving to a locally based community web-hosting server. This is a nascent service that the Urbana…

  • Have a blog?

    Have a blog? Then you should meet up with other bloggers in your area. I think I’ll meet with the local (Champaign-Urbana, IL) bloggers — there’s three of us so far — just as long as the meeting doesn’t happen at Applebee’s, which is one of the three locations available to vote on. So, if…