Category: Uncategorized

Telecom giant WorldCom is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. Important communications infrastructure — Internet backbone, long distance, private data lines — hangs in the balance. Corporate malfeasance affects us all, whether we like it or not. What choice did you have in WorldCom taking over huge gobs of your necessary communications system? What vote…

Friday’s mediageek radio show featuring an interview with indie filmmaker and zinester Russ Forster is now on-line.

SJ Mercury News: “High-tech hangout turns amateurs into digital video pros”: “In the 10 weeks since it has opened, the space known as DV Dojo has attracted film students, video buffs and storytellers who squeeze into a narrow, brick and blond wood room for a weekend class, a five-week course or a film screening…” This…

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? 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 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.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…

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? 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 archive data that might otherwise be lost, destroyed, forgotten. Seems like a nice complement to Cryptome.