John Borland reviews latest privacy schemes for P2P users on the Internet: most peer-to-peer systems require some degree of openness to work at all. In order to download a song from another computer online, a file swapper’s computer must make some kind of connection to it. That leaves a digital …

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers an opt-in plan for legal file sharing. This is a very helpful step down an inevitable path: The current battles surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing are a losing proposition for everyone. The record labels continue to face lackluster sales, while the tens of millions of American …

Mel Gibson’s highly controversial film on the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus opens today, Ash Wednesday. Reaction to the film is about as varied and passionate as such things get – we have reviews, news and thoughts collected here: Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: A …

My absolute favorite AND the most important reissue of 2003? The Harder They Come soundtrack, deluxe edition, which includes a second disc, the complete Crucial Reggae 1968-72 collection, in addition to the glorious soundtrack. Together they ably cover the most beguiling and artistically important period in reggae history, the very …

Recorded live in her native Athens, Terra Nostra, by lovely Greek diva (in the best sense) Savina Yannatou and her Primavera en Salonico ensemble, romps in a wildly entertaining manner across an international traditional music landscape over twenty songs and 74-minutes, from the lightest Enya-like levitation to ululating Mediterranean passion, …

Wow, you don’t often see reviews this passionately disparate and disparately passionate, and the line – I guess predictably – seems to be drawn between believers and nonbelievers: “One of the cruelest movies in the history of cinema,” says the New Yorker’s David Denby in a negative review that also …

Ooh, the staff isn’t going to like this: A report commissioned by Britain’s opposition Conservative Party calls for the British Broadcasting Corp. to be broken up and gradually weaned away from dependence on license fees paid by television viewers. The BBC’s charter expires at the end of 2006, and the …

I am not a fan of the reject episodes of American Idol, being that they trade on cruelty, delusion, excrementitious talent, confrontation, and more cruelty. I think the reaction William Hung has received is due to his enthusiastic guilelessness in the face of rudely dismissive criticism from the AI judges, …

Our pals at the Specious Report are publishing a compendium of election satire links daily through the November Presidential election, “and inevitable re-count.” Here’s today’s list – click over for the links: Monday, February 23, 2004 252 Days until Tuesday, November 2, 2004 Republican Party to Endorse Ralph Nader as …

The NY Times is collectively pondering mightily the meaning of the million-selling success of Norah Jones’s new album Feels Like Home. First, in an unsigned editorial published yesterday, they spend most of their words trying to get around damning sweet Norah with faint praise: Norah Jones is a lovely young …