I have railed against musicians and celebrities being given undue access to the media to vent their opinions on politics and whatever just because they are celebrities. The most effective channel for artists to convey their perspectives is through their art. Jon Pareles tracks the anti-war movement in song: There …

As if we need any more indications that war is imminent, ABC’s political blog “The Note” is temporarily suspending operations with the following explanation: With the nation (and our network) preparing for the possibility of military action, we have decided to temporarily (and briefly) suspend publication of The Note. This …

We watched the president’s press conference on Iraq last week very carefully. Since I am in favor of regime change and think the only way to accomplish this is by military action, I was pleased by his focus on the matter. Okay “focus” is too soft a word: he seemed …

We are very pleased and honored to receive the Best Weblog About Music award from the 2003 Bloggies! Not to be sniffed at are the prizes of $20.03 cash American, courtesy of Matt Prescott, and the book Blogging through the good graces of Biz Stone (the flipping author, no less) …

My dad loves Tom Lehrer and played his records often when I was a kid. That old-fashioned patrician Northeastern accent is indelibly imprinted in my brain singing such pointed satiric fare as “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “Polution” and “We’ll All Go Together When We Go.” I was mildly surprised …

Thousands of companies are blocking employee access to at least some Internet sites - privacy advocates like that better than monitoring.

Profound essay on the nature of the Internet from Blogcritics Doc Searls and David Weinberger, with ramifications for those who seek to control it, especially the media industries we follow here on Blogcritics. Every government figure from the judiciary to Congress to regulatory bureaucrats, as well as every media executive, …

We are very excited to introduce Blogcritics Radio. We have a super cool new streaming audio player provided by Andromeda, and we are going to feature one outstanding indie artist at a time for an entire week. Just click here to bring up the player, then click on the green …

Another ruling against the federal online porn law: A federal appeals court has ruled that a law meant to safeguard children against Internet pornography is riddled with problems that make it “constitutionally infirm.” A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the Child Online …

Why the purchase? Steven Johnson theorizes thusly: But Google has not yet ventured into managing the information and surfing history of individual users. If Google went in this direction with the Blogger acquisition, it would hearken back to one of the seminal documents of the computing age: Vannevar Bush’s 1946 …