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Copyright industry congressional nipple-biters are SHOCKED by prevalence of P2P: Three members of the House of Representatives are creating a new congressional caucus devoted to combating piracy and promoting stronger intellectual property laws. A letter sent to some members of Congress on Friday by Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., warned of …

“Literary wastrels” he calls them: The explanation for the mystery was right there, on either side of block-long Jack Kerouac Street in North Beach. At 6 a.m. Sunday, Vesuvio Cafe was open and serving liquor, as it is every day, while City Lights Bookstore wouldn’t open until 10 a.m. City …

Eminem and Mariah Carey have been playing a dangerous game of nookyular brinkmanship, as I am very excited to discuss in my first MSNBC commentary: They’re well-armed belligerents firing musical salvos at each other, nasty cluster munitions packed with “hoe” bombs and “tears-of-a-clown” gas. Tensions escalated between them – two …

The headline of Dan Ackman’s consideration of The Matrix Reloaded in Forbes screams, “How The Matrix Ruined Movies.” As far as I can tell, he hasn’t seen it yet – that’s backlash, after only four days: The Matrix Reloaded generated $93.3 million at U.S. box offices over the weekend. That’s …

Our hero, reluctant Ben Affleck look-alike Matt Welch, tells his mythic tale of Google, insidious blogger influence upon mass culture, and the relentless march of Reality TV (Idol finals this week – woo hoo!) through the ranks of the willing and otherwise: I — who have watched just three hours …

Recent conferences find that old-fashioned religious anti-Semitism, as exemplified by Islamic radicals, has joined with an “intellectual” Euro-leftist anti-Semitism, based in post-modern anti-nationalism: At the YIVO conference, Mark Lilla, who teaches European intellectual history at the University of Chicago, argued that in the past outbursts of anti-Semitism had often been …

Like with China, Islamic civilization’s decline and eventual implosion was caused by a severe lack of curiosity with the outside world, especially Europe, according to Bernard Lewis in a provocative article in the Atlantic: Christian Europeans from the start had to learn foreign languages in order to read their scriptures …

New rental program where DVDs will self-destruct after 48 hours and don’t have to be returned: Disney home video unit Buena Vista Home Entertainment will launch a pilot movie “rental” program in August that uses the self-destruction technology, the company said on Friday. The discs stop working when a process …

Neo news – we have become Matrix Reloaded headquarters with multiple reviews and news of the new film covering a bewilderingly wide range of opinion and angle of observation listed here in reverse chronological order, to whit: The MILFtrix Re-boner’d – by Jim Treacher Warning: Spoilers for, and scatterbrained whining …

I love the Putumayo World Music label – now ten years young – everything from their wildly eclectic, lovingly curated collections like Arabic Groove, World Lounge, Samba Bossa Nova, and African Groove, to their colorful, iconic cover art by Nicola Heindl, to their “it’s a small world after all” optimism. …