The Blue and White newspaper at Columbia University has done a nice profile of Tim Wu, the pioneering communications scholar who championed the cause of Net Neutrality back when no one was talking about it. Now of course Tim is a minor celebrity in the net activist community. But four years ago, he was virtually…
Can’t Stop Serenity: Feminists and Scifi Geeks reunite in June!
Apparently last year’s benefit showing of the scifi flick "Serenity" was such a huge success that they are doing it again this June. This summer, in movie theaters around the country, there will be special showings of "Serenity" with all the proceeds going to the women’s empowerment group "Equality Now." Apparently "Serenity" director/writer Joss Whedon…
XM+Sirius: The monopoly you can feel good about?
The New Yorker has an interesting piece in their financial page on the planned merger of satellite radio firms XM and Sirius by James Surowiecki. From a consumer perspective, Surowiecki argues that in this case a monopoly might be good for us: It comes down to the question of what market XM and Sirius are in….
Cool new scifi novels by David Mack
At the New York Comic Con a couple of weeks ago, I ran into my friend David Alan Mack, who has a job that sounds much cooler than it probably is in real life — he writes Star Trek novels. David was there to promote a couple of his new books, which by no coincidence…
UN Millennium Campaign wants your ideas for games for the $100 laptop
I got a nice message from Amil regarding the UN Millennium Campaign’s effort to create games for the $100 laptop (aka OLPC) that would educate children about the Millennium Development Goals. The Campaign has set up a wiki where anyone can submit ideas for computer games suitable for children that could run on the tiny…
Free Press is hiring
I just got word that Free Press, an amazing nation-wide advocacy group focused on democratizing the media, are hiring for 11 exciting positions: Campaign Coordinator for SavetheInternet.com, Policy Coordinator, Campaign Coordinator (two positions), Communications Coordinator , Campaign Director (Public Media) , Development Director , Outreach Coordinator, Development Coordinator, Office Manager, and Finance Assistant . Most…
Virtual activism for real world change
I was contacted recently by a Joshua Levy (that’s his avatar on the right), a new resident who is interested in creating a documentary about progressive activism in SL. Joshua has created a blog to track his project and his journeys in-world. He asked me to respond to some of his concerns that he raised…
Registration open for YearlyKos in Second Life
It looks like plans are moving fast in preparation for the first multi-verse YearlyKos Convention taking place both in Chicago and in Second Life in August. YearlyKos is an annual convention gathering a thousand or so people from "the Netroots community," a non-partisan grassroots political action community that uses the Internet and blogs for political…
C-SPAN to make videos available online under Creative Commons-type license
This is quite exciting: C-SPAN has announced that they plan to making available on the web their video of congressional, White House and Federal events under a Creative Commons-type licensing structure. They are implementing a "liberalized copyright policy" which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution. I.e….
RIAA to levy new fees on net radio stations
The website that I help run, Yehoodi.com, has provided a free streaming radio show featuring the best swing jazz since 2001. So I was particularly alarmed to learn that the RIAA on Friday successfully got the US Copyright Office to accept a new set of exorbitant song royalty fees for netradio stations like ours (full…