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 …

Chinese government censors chat and persecutes anti-government chatters: The extent of Chinese Government censorship of what its people say in online chat rooms has been exposed by Reporters Without Borders. Messages critical of the Chinese Government either never appear or are purged from popular chat rooms, a study by the …

Michael Page beat the RIAA because he was able to spoonfeed the judge the distinction between centralized and decentralized P2P service: Late last month, however, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson in Los Angeles ruled that Grokster and Streamcast Networks Inc., which distributes Morpheus file-sharing software, didn’t violate the studios’ …

Metal and Barney used to break Iraqi holdouts: U.S. military units have been breaking Saddam supporters with long sessions in which they’re forced to listen to heavy-metal and children’s songs. “Trust me, it works,” says one U.S. operative. The idea, says Sgt. Mark Hadsell, is to break a subject’s resistance …

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 …

Media and Entertainment Law Online News: Interesting monthly publication for those concerned with legal aspects of media and entertainment (duh) – this month’s issue has features on Assembling an Entertainment Industry Team, the legal status of the RIAA vs. P2P, and the question of Who Controls the Right to Make …

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 …

Roxio is close to buying Pressplay: Roxio Inc., a maker of CD-burning software, is close to a deal to buy music subscription service Pressplay for about $30 million in cash and stock, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. Pressplay, a joint venture between Sony Corp.’s …

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 …

Apparently on break from writing new IP laws for Iraq (actually, no confirmation on that one yet), RIAA chairman Hilary Rosen tosses out a nice little propaganda pie to the readers of Business 2.0: As head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), I’ve been the public face for …