Culture and Society

After a period of confusion where musicians mostly babbled about the war, now the actual SONGS are starting to flow fast and furious. Our James Russell has a nice roundup of anti-war songs here from the Beasties, Zach and DJ Shadow, John Mellonhead, the Billies: Bragg and Joe Armstrong. To …

ReplayTV digital video recorder maker seeks protection: The company … has been spending as much as $1 million a month in litigation expenses to defend a lawsuit brought by more than two dozen entertainment companies. The entertainment companies allege that ReplayTV owners are violating copyright law when they skip commercials. …

New technology enables reporters to broadcast solo on the (cheap) fly: Armed with $15,000 in satellite phones and computers, Preston Mendenhall calls himself a “one-man band” who writes stories, snaps photographs and shoots video in combat zones. The international editor for MSNBC.com spent most of February traveling alone in Syria, …

The Media Technology Research Group of Sweden has published a fascinating study on “Usability Factors in Digital Music Distribution Services and Their Relationships with Established and New Value Chains in the Music Industry.” The name is unwieldy, but the research is powerful: This report has evaluated the available digital music …

New company to stuff spam: On Monday, Phil Goldman, whose career as a software designer has included stints at Apple, General Magic, WebTV and Microsoft, will introduce a service that he says will permanently end e-mail spam for consumers who are being driven to distraction by unsolicited pitches for diet …

mi2g reports that criminal syndicates are using the cover of war to work the Internet: Thousands of eCommerce servers with credit card databases and customer addresses have been attacked by anti-war and pro-Islamic hackers since 19th March. This is proving to be a useful lever for criminal syndicates with a …

The war has sent people scrambling to the Internet for information, community, and expression. It is not a little ironic and troubling that the worst of times for the real world is the best of times for the media, including the new media of the Internet. News sites have been …

If you’ve been following the Dixie Chicks’ saga – and based upon the traffic and comments, in the days just before the war, few were concerned with much else – you know that after Natalie Maines slammed President Bush in London, she apologized the next day. Well, we have all …

The deviantART site has 225 visual interpretations on the theme “Iraq War 2003.” There is some thought-provoking imagery, deft workmanship, creativity, humor and passion. Of the works that take a discernable stand – many are appealingly vague – 95% are anti-war, and most are frankly rather glib and trite in …

Does this look familiar? A little pseudo-spam floating around the Internet – it’s pretty funny if a tad heavy-handed: IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED : HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH DEAR SIR / MADAM, I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE …