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Though the FCC loosening of media ownership restrictions looks like a done deal, that isn’t stopping strange bedfellows from fighting the good fight: The Federal Communications Commission’s likely action to relax major media ownership rules is forging some unexpected political alliances. For instance, for the first time a group known …

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 …