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MEDIA CURRENT: YOU SHOULD BE PARANOID

Sometimes paranoids are right to worry. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) recently exposed a common practice long hidden by wireless carriers: they track your every keystroke and movement through software known as Carrier IQ (CIQ). As Franken warned, “The average user of any device equipped with Carrier IQ software has no way of knowing that this software is running, what information it is getting, and who it is giving it to—and that’s a problem.” Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of VCs. Its software is installed on about 150 million […]
by David Rosen on Dec 22, 2011
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS, 12/4/11

I haven’t done one of these in a while — a roundup of a few things I’ve stored in my Instapaper for weekend readings. As the year goes on, Melancholia is emerging as my favorite film of 2011. Part of the reason, I think, is that the discourse about it is becoming more and more interesting. Whereas Von Trier’s Cannes comments dominated the dialogue following its opening, now not just critics but viewers are grappling with the film’s meanings. From the Occupied Territories Tumblr comes “Depression, Melancholia, and Me: Lars Von Trier’s Politics of Displeasure,” an extraordinary essay in which […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 4, 2011
MEDIA CURRENT: THE IP WARS

After the Thanksgiving recess, Congress is expected to vote on two bills that will influence the future of online Intellectual Property (IP). The Senate bill (S. 968) is dubbed the “PROTECT IP Act” (PIPA) which stands for the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act”; it was adopted by the Judiciary Committee in May. The House bill (H.R.3261) is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and is currently being deliberated. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the music industry and a handful of digital rights holders, including games companies Sony and Nintendo, are […]
by David Rosen on Nov 28, 2011
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS, 1/16/11

A quick, commentary-lite version… Joseph Conrad wrote a science-fiction novel. “Young and Restless Never Gets Old” — Dennis Lim in the Times on Gregg Araki. Big tech news this week: Google announces that it won’t support the H.264 codec and the HTML5 video tag in its Chrome browser in favor of its own WebM codec. It’s all very complicated and tech-y, but Google’s argument is that they’re supporting “open standards” by backing a codec without royalty issues. Problem is, Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s IE both use the H.264 format and the short-term victor is likely to be Adobe, whose Flash […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2011
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS

Here are a few articles, links and videos that caught my eye this week: The shape of documentaries to come may be revealed by Prison Valley, which won the second FRANCE24-Radio France International Web Documentary Award last week. From France 24’s article about the new media doc by David Dufresne and Philippe Brault: Created by David Dufresne and Philippe Brault, the striking multimedia production takes viewers to the heart of Canon City, “a distant place that is home to 36,000 souls and 13 prisons.” Produced by the French company Upian and distributed by Arte.tv, Prison Valley, is an interactive journey […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2010
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS

Here’s what piled up in my Instapaper this week: Director Armando Iannaccui on the proposed shutdown of the UK Film Council: An excerpt: Here’s what happens when you try to make a film. You have no money, but you have an idea. You need people, helpful, experienced people, to guide you to where the money is, fit you up with the best sort of financial backing, who understand the film you want to make, can nudge it in a direction that will see it gets the audience it merits. That’s what the UK Film Council built up 10 years of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 15, 2010
GOOGLE/VERIZON: “YOU CAN HAVE YOUR INTERNET!”

As a general net neutrality supporter, I find the “read between the lines” nature of this latest news from Google/Verizon fairly ominous. The story, in which the two companies discuss setting up extra-internet wireless services, just broke, though, so I’ll be looking forward to reading the ensuing commentary and details. From the New York Times about their proposal: The proposal also excludes other online services [from net neutrality regulations] that broadband providers might create in the future. These new online services could include services for entertainment or healthcare monitoring, the companies said. Google and Verizon said that such new online […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 9, 2010
STEVE JOBS ON THE TV INDUSTRY

From today’s D8 conference, a comment by Apple’s Steve Jobs that resonates with the recent conversation here on the blog about internet TV. Q: Hi, I’m from Hillcrest Labs… do you think it’s time to throw out the interface for TV? When will Apple do something there? Jobs: The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go to market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months. So all […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 2, 2010
THINKING ABOUT GOOGLE TV

At Google’s IO Conference this week, the search giant announced several new products and platforms, including the latest Android operating system, Froyo (named after “frozen yogurt”), and, perhaps most significantly for filmmakers, Google TV. At the heart of Google TV is a simple notion: right now we watch a lot of TV after it is broadcast on our computer simply because a) its creators have placed it there and b) it’s easy to find what we want to watch through internet search. But, if we could watch it on our TV screens? Wouldn’t we rather view it there? At his […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 22, 2010
GOOGLE GOGGLED

With Google’s stock dropping 27% in the last ten days and Barron’s devoting their cover to “In the Drink,” a merciless dissection of the company’s growth prospects, true value and stock price (readable gratis this week as Barron’s offers a trial freebie to its pay site), I’m going to pile on to the search giant with this link to Cory Doctorow’s piece up at Boing Boing titled “Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users?” In a great look at the digital rights management system Google has put in place to “secure” the downloadable media on its new […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 14, 2006

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