Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

3 Reasons Not to Get Worked Up Over Super PACs

Nick Gillespie has produced a short video outlinging three reasons not to get worked up about Super PACs:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Act Breaks the Internet

This video does a good job explaining what is wrong with the PROTECT IPA / SOPA Act:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

 

Media Release from the Greens: Wikipedia strikes back – where is the Australian Government?

Media Release: Senator Scott Ludlam, Wednesday January 18th, 2011
 
As Wikipedia goes on strike to protest the proposed ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ (SOPA) currently before the US Congress, the Greens have called on the Australian Government to take a stand in defence of Australian internet users and protect the viability of the medium.
 
Australian Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam pointed to the global blackout of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia as an example of the depth of the campaign to prevent the bill from becoming law.
 
“Has the Australian Government made any representation whatsoever to the US Government on this issue? Do they recognise that there will be little purpose in investing tens of billions of dollars in the NBN if the US copyright industry cripples the medium itself?
 
“As an example of breathtaking overreach by US copyright interests, the SOPA proposal and its cousin PIPA are hard to beat. The bills will institutionalise far-reaching, unaccountable censorship in order to protect the commercial interests of a handful of powerful media companies. The bills risk the broad-scale criminalisation of filesharing, the decimation of the open source community and tactical use of financial blockades against commercial competitors or non-commercial sites.
 
“SOPA would block entire non-US websites in the United States as a response to select infringing material. This includes Australian sites, and the online operations of Australian businesses.
 
“Under SOPA, US courts could bar online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with allegedly infringing websites, bar search engines from linking to such sites, and require internet service providers to block access to such sites.”
 
Senator Ludlam said the bill would introduce extreme penalties for the unauthorised streaming copyrighted content.
 
“The bill makes unauthorised streaming of copyrighted content a criminal offence, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months.”
 
Media Contact: Giovanni Torre - 0417 174 302

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week:

Weekly_Wrap_9_January_2012.mp3 Listen on Posterous

 

Video on the Rule of Law

The US Bill of Rights Institute has created a short, engaging video for Bill of Rights Day on the constitutional principle of the rule of law.

The Drum 13 December 2011

Tonight I was on The Drum on ABC News 24 discussing the news of the day, including the Cabinet reshuffle, the latest book by climate sceptic geologist Ian Plimer, the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the US Republican race:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Image via Wikipedia

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week. 

This week we discussed whether Facebook is making us miserable, the possible regulation of social media in Australian politics, the Republican primary content in America, and federal politics, including possible constitutional recognition of Aboringal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples:

America in Primetime

In the US, PBS will be showing shortly a documentary series called America in Primetime that will talk about the best shows created since the invention of television:

America in Primetime is structured around the most com-pelling shows on television today, unfolding over four hours and weaving between past and present. Each episode focuses on one character archetype that has remained a staple of primetime through the generations - the Independent Woman, the Man of the House, the Misfit, and the Crusader -- capturing both the continuity of the character, and the evolution. The finest television today has as its foundation the best television of yesterday.

The series has been getting great reviews - check out this one from NPR here.

Here's an eight-minute video introduction to the show:

I can't wait to watch this series.

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed federal politics, pokies and tax reform, some US politics, Syria and Facebook (among other things):

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed 9/11, At Home with Julia, Australian politics and sport:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed Libya, American Presidential politics, federal politics, State politics, Steve Jobs and choppergate:

(And my apologies for the bad audio.  Please contact me if you have any ideas as to how I can better capture the audio each week.)

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the federal politics, the global economy, the Census, the tablet patent wars and the Brisbane Writers Festival:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the carbon tax, the News of the World controversy, Queensland state politics and the Dalai Lama:

Mark Halperin's "dick" slur and the unrealistic standards for public figures in the digital age

For The Daily Beast Michelle Goldberg writes about Mark Halperin's misguided "dick" slur against Obama and makes a good point upon the unrealistic standards we are holding public figures to in the digital age:

"Besides, we have to get beyond constantly banishing people over small public slips, whether we’re talking about Nir Rosen, Octavia Nasr, or Rick Sanchez. The more we live in public, and the more news is replaced with facile banter, the more opportunities journalists and politicians have to inadvertently reveal sides of themselves that should remain hidden. We have to find a way to deal with this without destroying careers over inevitable momentary lapses."

 

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed a few new website - The Talks, Everything is a Remix and Turntable.fm, the week in federal politics, internet filtering and some developments in the US and why they matter here, in particular Obama's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and gay marriage in New York:

"Hot Coffee" documentary

I'm looking forward to when this documentary airs in Australia:

Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts? Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the week in federal politics, American politics (including Anthony Weiner), a controversial drug website, and the convicted rapist who was snubbed for a flood hero award, before a quick rant about the cricket selectors and a chat about the end of the bookstore:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the week in federal politics, morality, HIV infection rates, Syria and the Middle East and the Brisbane Winter Festival:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the death of Osama bin Laden, the week in federal politcs, SlutWalking, and I endorsed two new podcasts, The Digital Munch and Manners in the Digital Age:

Forum: Do we trust the internet?

Technology and politics is more interwoven than ever before.

We’ve seen sensitive government information being revealed on Wikileaks, and mobilisation of communities across the Middle East using social media resulting in regime change in Tunisia, Egypt and unrest in Libya and Bahrain.

The first social media election in the UK saw an incoming Conservative Coalition government, overturning 13 years of Labor rule. David Cameron’s Conservative party trumped other parties in social media campaigning.

The Australian Government has its own – Declaration of Open Government, a central recommendation of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. The declaration promotes “greater participation in Australia’s democracy, and is committed to open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of technology.”

This and much more will be discussed when UK’s leading political blogger – Iain Dale, will be addressing Microsoft’s 3rd Politics and Technology Forum: Openness and Transparency in Politics. The Forum is supported by Open Forum.

Iain Dale will then participate in a panel discussion of distinguished speakers including Senator Kate Lundy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister; Joe Hockey MP, Shadow Treasurer; Stilgherrian; and Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro. The event MC is Mark Pesce.

via blogs.msdn.com

I have attened the first two Politics and Technology Forums put on by Microsoft (and was a speaker at the first), and am hopeful that I will get to Canberra for this forum on 1 June.

An idea for a new blog ... Australians blogging about US politics

During the Australian federal election last year, I had a lot of fun maintaining a group blog called Election Blackout that was dedicated to the politics and policy of the campaign.  I think I managed to get a diverse group of bloggers together, who were not just the usual voices, and as a result it made a unique contribution to the Australian blogosphere leading up to that election.  When the election was over, I wondered what the future of the blog would be, but as I quietly expected would be the case, it has simply been left to die the slow death that so many blogs before it have also undergone.

However, I am nonetheless interested in starting up another group blog.  This blog wouldn't be about Australian politics at all, but it would be Australians blogging about American politics in the lead up to the 2012 Presidential election.  Judging by my Twitter feed, there are many Australians (like me), who find American politics to be far more compelling and provocative than Australian politics, and so I would be keen to get a group of Australian bloggers together to contribute a blog on American politics.

So I would be interested in getting your feedback about this idea.  Would you read such a blog?  Would you contribute to such a blog?  (If so, let me know!)  Also, what should the blog be called?

(Photo: Flags by Mugofevil CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 from Flickr)

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed Channel Ten's news revamp (including the hire of Andrew Bolt), how the US Government shutdown was avoided, and the week in federal politics:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This morning we discussed the unfolding events in Libya and the Middle East, the week in federal politics, the disaster in Japan and the Brisbane Roar's epic win at Suncorp Stadium:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This morning we discussed the week in federal politics, including the carbon tax, US politics and the beginning of the 2012 Presidential race, gay marriage and two enthralling documentaries, Catfish and Exit Through The Gift Shop.  Once again our apologies for the poor audio quality of the segment:

Technology and the way it frames our world

Every Tuesday morning I have a regular weekly segment on Breakfast with Spencer Howson on 612 ABC Brisbane talking about technology and how it frames our world.  In the segment this week we talked about accidentally sending a text message to the wrong person (like Graham Quirk did last week) and a new app that tries to address that problem, courts and Twitter, one bank's sneaky tweet and punked another bank, and a new app in Boston to fix potholes: 

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed federal Parliament resuming this week, some issues in online media (including the launch of The Daily and the advertising boycott of some leading Australian blogs), and the ongoing protests in Egypt:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the unofficial beginning of the 2012 US Presidential campaign, the release of the 1980 Cabinet papers, the Queensland floods, some new laws that came into effect on 1 January 2011, end of year lists, and the Ashes:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed where things stand at the end of the year for the Gillard and Bligh governments, internet policy in Australia (the NBN) and the US (internet neutrality), online media in Australia to get a new entrant with The Conversation, The Ashes, 2010's most searched words as well as a list of beautiful words.  I also gave some summer plugs to a book (the Law of Politics by Professor Graeme Orr), a website (betalist), an exhibition (GOMA "21st Century: Art in the First Decade") and a podcast (Nova's Summer Lovin'):

10 best legal shows in TV history

The Criminal Justice Degrees Program has posted its 10 Best Legal Shows in TV History, along with YouTube clips from each show.  Here are my favourites from the list:

1. Law & Order: Law & Order is the longest-running crime drama on American television since it premiered on NBC in 1990 and finished its 20th season on May 24, 2010. Law & Order is also tied with Gunsmoke as the longest-running American drama series of all time. The wildly popular criminal-legal series was set and filmed in New York City and many of the story lines were based on real cases that made headlines. Every episode begins with a criminal investigation and suspect arrest by NYPDs and the last half hour focuses on the prosecution of the defendant by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. The show was praised and awarded for its talented cast, including Sam Waterston, Chris Noth, S. Epatha Merkerson and the late Jerry Orbach.

2. Boston Legal: Boston Legal was a popular legal drama-comedy that premiered in 2004 and came to an end in 2008. The show was a spinoff of the creator David E. Kelley’s other legal television series, The Practice, in which it followed former cast character Alan Shore, as he joins the firm Crane, Poole & Schmidt. Boston Legal had a star-studded cast, including Candice Bergen and funny guys William Shatner and James Spader. This award-winning show brought a great deal of humor and fun to the courtroom, while handling many serious cases.

...

6. Ally McBeal: The comedy-drama series, Ally McBeal, was quite the hit from 1997 to 2002. People loved tuning in to watch Ally McBeal, played by Calista Flockhart, a young, lovable attorney who worked at a Boston law firm, called Cage Fish with other young and eccentric lawyers like herself. Much of the show focused on romance, relationships and the personal lives of Ally and her fellow attorneys, but always maintained its lightheartedness with slapstick humor and surreal images like the dancing baby.

Read the full list here.

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed US politics, WikiLeaks, the Christmas Island tragedy and asylum seeker policy, Time's Person of the Year, and some cricket:

The Drum 15 December 2010

On Wednesday night I was on The Drum again on ABC News 24 for a special episode focusing on Twitter and social media in 2010:

The Drum 15 December 2010 from Peter Black on Vimeo.

 

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed WikiLeaks, banking reform, riots in the UK, the google Zeitgeist 2010 and the Ashes cricket:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed WikiLeaks, The Ashes, Tron: Legacy, the proposed R18+ rating for video games and change at the 7:30 Report:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed federal politics, the Victorian election, The Ashes, defamation on Twitter and WikiLeaks:

Technology and the way it frames our world 30 November 2010

Every Tuesday morning I have a regular weekly segment on Breakfast with Spencer Howson on 612 ABC Brisbane talking about technology and how it frames our world.  In the segment this week we talked about WikiLeaks, a corrupted file causing trouble for NAB, @theashes, Facebook photo faux pas and texting as the new doodling:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed this week's midterm elections in the US, Hillary Clinton's visit to Australia, the Brisbane International Film Festival, banking reform and Longreads:

Larry Lessig calls for WIPO to lead radical overhaul of copyright law

On 4 November, Professor Larry Lessig Lessig gave the keynote address at the WIPO Global Meeting on Emerging Copyright Licensing Modalities – Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age, where he called overhaul of the copyright system which will "never work on the internet":

Intellectual Property Watch offered this summary of Lessig's address:

Influential copyright scholar Larry Lessig yesterday issued a call for the World Intellectual Property Organization to lead an overhaul of the copyright system which he says does not and never will make sense in the digital environment.

A functioning copyright system must provide the incentives needed for creative professionals, but must also protect the freedoms necessary for scientific research and amateur creativity flourish.

In the digital environment, copyright has failed at both, said Lessig.

“And its failure is not an accident,” he said. “It’s implicit in the architecture of copyright as we inherited it. It does not make sense in a digital environment.”

The copyright system will “never work on the internet. It’ll either cause people to stop creating or it’ll cause a revolution,” said Lessig, citing a growing system of copyright “abolitionism” online in response to a worrying tendency to criminalise the younger generation.

“If and only if WIPO [the World Intellectual Property Organization] leads in this debate will we have a chance” at fixing the copyright system, he said.

Lessig also spoke on video with Intellectual Property Watch after his speech:

Larry Lessig: WIPO Must Lead Overhaul of Copyright System from Intellectual Property Watch on Vimeo.

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed this week's midterm elections in the US, bank reform and the proposed merger of the Australian and Singaporean Stock Exchange, the new New Matilda, and the Brisbane International Film Festival:

Discussing Limewire on the Televised Revolution Podcast

Earlier this week a US judge issued an injunction forcing the file-sharing application LimeWire to disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality" of its software.  This ruling marked another victory for the entertainnment industry in its ongoing battle against copyright piracy.

To discuss what this may mean for the television industry and viewers like, yesterday I was interviewed about this ruling by Dan Barrett and Simon Band for the Televised Revolution podcast.  You can listen and/or download this podcast here.

So you want to be a lawyer ...

This should be a "must watch" for anyone considering law school:

It could be new favourite law YouTube video, replacing "Law School Musical":

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This week we discussed the week in Australian politics, the upcoming mid term elections in the US, Mary MacKilop and faith in Australia, as well as my Analog Sunday:

Tim Wu's "The Master Switch"

Tim Wu, a professor of law at Columbia University and author of Who Controls the Internet?  Illusions of a Borderless World, has a new book out, The Master Switch:

A secret history of the industrial wars behind the rise and fall of the twentieth century's great information empires--Hollywood, the broadcast networks, and AT&T--asking one big question: Could history repeat itself, with one giant entity taking control of American information?

Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom in communications and culture. But as Tim Wu shows, each major new medium, from telephone to cable, arrived on a similar wave of idealistic optimism only to become the object of industrial consolidation profoundly affecting how Americans communicate. Every once free and open technology was in time centralized and closed, a huge corporate power taking control of the "master switch." Today, as a similar struggle looms over the internet, increasingly the pipeline of all other media, the stakes have never been higher. To be decided: who gets heard, and what kind of country we live in.

Part industrial exposé, part meditation on the nature of freedom of expression, part battle cry to save the Internet’s best features, The Master Switch brings to light a crucial drama—rife with indelible characters and stories—heretofore played out over decades in the shadows of our national life.

You can read an excerpt here:

The Master Switch (excerpt) by Tim Wu

Blawg Review #285

This is the sixth time I have hosted Blawg Review from Australia (I previously hosted Blawg Review #85, #136, #178, #196 and #266). For those who don't know, the Blawg Review is a weekly round-up of posts from around the blawgosphere, and I am once again honoured to be able to host Blawg Review from the the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, where I am a senior lecturer in law. 

Every other time I've hosted Blawg Review, I've usually begun with a self-serving little summary of me and my blog, but I figure that as I've done this a few times now, I can skip that and instead launch into my whip around the blawgosphere this week.  Besides, the theme of this Blawg Review is also a little more personal for me and does not fall into my usual areas of teaching, writing or blogging.  This is because today is not just Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day in Canada, it is also National Coming Out Day:

 

As someone who understands how difficult it is for many in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community to come out, I wanted to focus on this day, as well as other GLBT issues, in this Blawg Review.

National Coming Out Day was founded by Robert Eichberg, a founder of The Experience workshop, and National Gay Rights Advocates head Jean O'Leary during a 1988 meeting of LGBT activists as a day to celebrate coming out. The date of October 11 was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which had taken place four months earlier.  National Coming Out Day is marked by events all over America, as well as in many other countries around the world, any countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Croatia, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.  You can learn all about National Coming Out Day here, and can show your support for this cause with the Coming Out Day Facebook app and by tweeting your support with the hashtag #NCOD.  Indeed, the internet has been buzzing in soliditary all day.

If you are thinking of Coming Out, there are a range of resources online, as well as hundreds of inspirational videos, such as this one from Davey Wavey:

 

Even though Coming Out can be hard, and it is very much a personal journey, rest assured that even if there is no-one else, there is a vibrant online GLBT community that can support you no matter what you are going through.  One of the most amazing and enriching things about the internet that I have observed are the extraordinary connections and friendships that can develop online.  These connections and friendships, from likeminded people all over the world, can be from people that have never have necessarily met or will even ever meet, but they can still be there for you when you need them most, with a generosity of spirit and a sense of compassion and humour that is genuinely moving.  I know in my own journey that some of the people I met through Twitter have helped me more than some of my oldest and dearest friends.  It is easy to make fun of the web and the myriad of social networks that exist online but it can also be a source of strength and support when people need it the most.  And remember this simple message: it gets better.

 

The "It's Gets Better" message received quite a bit of attention last week (including this speech from Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett) because of a series of tragic suicides from young GLBT youth.  The most prominent of which was that of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student, who jumped to his death after his college roommate used a hidden webcam to stream a sexual encounter between Clementi and another man online.  In a podcast at the May It Please The Court Weblog, J Craig Williams and guests discusses who is responsible for Clementi's death.  Simple Justice also discussed this sensitive topic in a detailed post on cyberbullying.  Elie Mystal, Scott Greenfield, Daniel Solove, Mike Cernovich and Colin Samuels also made thoughtful contributions to the discussion of this issue.

GLBT issues canvassed in the blogosphere this week include gay adoption (Adoption Approved for Gay Man in Florida), discrimination (Lawsuit of the Day: Gay Skydiving Instructor Sues Over Firing) and gay marriage (Gay Marriage).

 

(Be warned, this video is not safe for work.)

Before I go, I thought I should highlight a few excellent GLBT blawgs that post far more frequently and eloquently on this topic than I ever could:

• Gender & Sexuality Law Blog;
• Gay Rights;
• Old Gay Lawyer Ramblings;
• Sexual Orientation and the Law Blog;
• Transgender Workplace Diversity;
• buggery.org; and
• Australian Gay and Lesbian Law Blog.

And that is a wrap for Blawg Review #285.  My apologies for the abbreviated nature of Blawg Review this week but my teaching and marking commitments at the moment are extensive.  Nonetheless, I still wanted to make a small contribution to National Coming Out Day, and so I appreciate your patience. 

Finally, it has been a pleasure to host Blawg Review again for National Coming Out Day.  While we may not have reached this happy utopia yet, I am confident that our message of tolerance and understanding is spreading. 

Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Stephen Colbert testifies before Congress

In one of the more bizarre pieces of political theatre you will ever see, Stephen Colbert last week testified in character before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security.  Colbert was part of a United Farm Workers campaign calling on unemployed Americans to take jobs in the agriculture sector.  As part of the program he spent a day laboring at a vegetable farm in New York in August 2010.  You can watch his opening statement below:

My weekly chat with Andrew Bartlett on 4ZzZ

Every Monday morning I appear on Andrew Bartlett's 4ZzZ breakfast radio show to discuss some of the current public and political issues of the week.  This morning we talked about the formation of a new government (finally!), media bias, September 11 and Junior Masterchef:

hitRECord.org

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has an interesting new website and production company called hitRECord:

RegularJOE here. The old media tends to call me Joseph Gordon-Levitt, that being my name and all. Here in the new media, I hit that round red REC button on a regular basis.

HITRECORD.ORG is a project I started almost five years ago now, and in 2010, we've evolved into a professional open collaborative production company. We create and develop art and media collaboratively here on our site. Even this introductory video is the remixed result of a great many contributions. So rather than just exhibiting and admiring each other's work as individuals, we gather here to collectively work on projects together. Videos, writing, photography, music, anything -- we call them all RECords.

Now and then, when I think something we've made has come out especially well, I approach the traditional entertainment industry to turn our work into money-making productions; and then we share any profits with the contributing artists.

Thanks for coming by. Hope you join us, I'd love to work with you. Are you RECording?

He describes the project in this video:

And here is a short film this project, entitled "Morgan and Destiny’s Eleventeeth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo":

"American" from "The $trip"

I love this song.  Alan Cumming sings Lance Horne's "American" from "The $trip", with visuals by Ned Stresen-Reuter:

 

 

Alan Cumming/Lance Horne/Ned Stresen-Reuter - American from on Vimeo.

Wikileaks: radical transparency AND total anonymity?

In a thought provoking piece for Slate, Farhad Manjoo looks at the paradox at the heart of Wikileaks:

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, doesn't know who leaked the thousands of Afghanistan war documents that his site posted this week. That's not unusual—it's how WikiLeaks works. To get a scoop to WikiLeaks, a would-be whistle-blower clicks the Submit Documents button on the site's home page, then uploads a file through a form that encrypts every interaction between the source and the site. WikiLeaks keeps no logs of the submission, and the site says that it is legally bound, under Sweden's press secrecy laws, never to cooperate with any investigation into the identity of the source. The site takes several additional measures to scrub submitted documents of any information that could compromise the leaker, removing any ID trails left by word processing software, for instance. The site also constantly feeds fake submissions through its network in order to fool potential attackers. "We have never lost a source," Assange declares in his pitch to whistle-blowers around the world. "None of our sources has been exposed or come to harm."

At the same time, WikiLeaks says its founding mission is radical transparency. Assange argues that "increased scrutiny"—of governments, corporations, and institutions like the Church of Scientology—can be a powerful force for good, reducing corruption and oppression. "Principled leaking has changed the course of history for the better; it can alter the course of history in the present; it can lead us to a better future," WikiLeaks says.

This is the paradox of WikiLeaks' methods. Is radical transparency compatible with total anonymity? If we don't know who the leaker is, why he's leaking, and how he came upon his information, can we really know the full story the document tells? More importantly, how can we know that the information is authentic? Look deeply into WikiLeaks' efforts at radical transparency and you find complete opacity; WikiLeaks wants to shine a light on the world, but only by keeping itself shrouded in secrecy.

Read more here.

"The Web Means the End of Forgetting"

In the New York Times Magazine, Professor Jeffrey Rosen has a thought provoking essay on privacy on the internet, "The Web Means the End of Forgetting":

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.

When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact. Examples are proliferating daily: there was the 16-year-old British girl who was fired from her office job for complaining on Facebook, “I’m so totally bored!!”; there was the 66-year-old Canadian psychotherapist who tried to enter the United States but was turned away at the border — and barred permanently from visiting the country — after a border guard’s Internet search found that the therapist had written an article in a philosophy journal describing his experiments 30 years ago with L.S.D.

According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants — including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of information found online, like photos and discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.

Technological advances, of course, have often presented new threats to privacy. In 1890, in perhaps the most famous article on privacy ever written, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis complained that because of new technology — like the Kodak camera and the tabloid press — “gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious but has become a trade.” But the mild society gossip of the Gilded Age pales before the volume of revelations contained in the photos, video and chatter on social-media sites and elsewhere across the Internet. Facebook, which surpassed MySpace in 2008 as the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content a month. There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users, and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring — and permanently storing — the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006.

In Brandeis’s day — and until recently, in ours — you had to be a celebrity to be gossiped about in public: today all of us are learning to expect the scrutiny that used to be reserved for the famous and the infamous. A 26-year-old Manhattan woman told The New York Times that she was afraid of being tagged in online photos because it might reveal that she wears only two outfits when out on the town — a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt or a basic black dress. “You have movie-star issues,” she said, “and you’re just a person.”

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

Read the rest here.

Judges unable to agree on a font

Eugene Volokh amusingly observes that Seventh Circuit Judges can’t even agree on the font to use in their opinions:

Compare River of Life Kingdom Ministries v. Village of Hazel Crest (PalatinoLinotype, F.) with United States v. Blagojevich (HoeflerText, F.). I side with PalatinoLinotype, which seems thinner and less busy — and avoids the unfortunate capital Q of HoeflerText, see the top of p. 7 of Blagojevich.