Dawnsinger

Stern, decency and freedom

BuzzMachine blog evangelist and media pundit Jeff Jarvis has the cover of the new edition of Nation magazine with his article "F*cked by the F*CC" and analysis of the uneven and unequal treatment of the FCC in the assault against Howard Stern and others.

Jarvis has been warning about this turn of events for a long time . . . not just the actions against Stern, but the ramifications for free speech in general. As a longtime columnist for TV Guide and the founder of Entertainment Weekly, he's in a good position to have the big picture.

Read today's roundup, including links to past comments . . .

Read The Nation article online . . .

'The Press' doesn't represent us

Well-known media critic and NYU Professor Jay Rosen has stirred a huge can of worms with a look at the changing treatment, role and perceptions of The Press:

"In our system, the press has the role of..." Generations of journalists spoke confident sentences like that. The press is a vital check on power. It's quasi-Constitutional. Bush, head of government, rejects this idea. That theory has gone down, he says. And you guys don't have that kind of muscle anymore.

- From Jay Rosen's PressThink

New media executive & "citizen media" evangelist Jeff Jarvis, goes a step further in his reaction to Rosen's piece.

There are many who claim to represent us, The Public. Winning presidents and political parties do. The press does. But they don't. Bush didn't win the majority of votes; he doesn't represent us. The same could be said of every President, since so many of us don't vote. Nobody elected the press; they elected themselves. And they certainly don't represent everyone since there are so many who don't pay attention to them.

- From Jeff Jarvis's BuzzMachine

The grand thinkers have had their say, and there's little to add on that level. But the topic is personal to me, so I'd like to share a bit of the historical view from the trenches of modern journalism.

How wrong is Christian 'piracy'?

This is an interesting story about online music piracy from the Dallas Morning News . . . ironic in that the music being pirated is Christian music.

Read the story . . .

To me, this raises a number of issues. First, just so the RIAA doesn't show up at my doorstep, I buy my music online at iTunes, and am very happy with such services. For many of people, the issue was never about stealing music, but about the music industry forcing us to buy overpriced albums for the one decent song we wanted to hear. Christian music, by the way, is vastly underrepresented in online sales services, so the more quickly that changes, the more quickly there will be a legal outlet for those who want to obtain music this way. It's not about money, it's about access. Nuff said.

But two main issues I'd raise about this story - the first dealing with the whole concept of intellectual property as it applies to today's youth . . . and the second dealing with the concept of intellectual property as it applies to the gospel.

Read on . . .

Waiting for WinJesus XP

Virtual Worship, for PC & Mac - The Pocket Chapel - Hot off the printer, a German firm has released a customizable chapel, allowing you to create your own virtual altar . . . and even has a memory stick module so you can carry your little place of worship along wherever you go. (Amen.class)

A little from the release (pardon the German accent):

PocketChapel is the first Christian software altar for your computer. This digital altar offers the same interactions like a real altar, which you can find inside churches or chapels and is usable for almost all Christian religous denominations.

The PocketChapel user has the possibility to change the look of his altar. He can change the holy picture or figure, he can choose fresh flowers, objects and furniture for his altar. And he can place candles with implemented wishes.

The current PocketChapel users can be subdivided into two parts. The first part are people who live a Christian life, and the second part are people who follow a kind of religious feeling and add the software altar to their lifestyle.

Demo software is available - only lasts 10 minutes before you need to shell out the $12 for the full version - on a site that also displays galleries of users' altars & their, ahem, testimonials:

"I ain't a guy who walks every sunday to church, but nevertheless I have these religious feelings. Your app is my way to work with them. Thx" - Pocket Chapel Parishioner Kevin Goodman / NYC USA

You can't make this stuff up stuff. I'm cringing at the thought of the RPG video game based on "The Passion."

Read the news release . . .

Download your demo . . .

Net nanny's G-spot

Lunacy du jour from Lawmakers With Nothing Better To Do . . . a California state senator who's proposing legislation to block the fledgling Google Mail service on the grounds that it is an "invasion of privacy."

G-mail is an in-progress free mail service - an in-your-face to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail - that comes with strings attached. A machine is going to read your e-mail and attach contextual ads. (See previous rant on this)

Plus side - searchability and organization of all your e-mail archives, aggressive spam filtering and gazillabytes of storage space. Downside - the aforementioned contextual screening, plus you can't delete mail.

I'm not rushing out to get G-mail anytime soon. I don't get the quantum leap in service over other free e-mail. And I'm not sure I want all my mail hanging around forever. But sheesh . . . it's my choice . . . or ought to be.

Somebody needs to tell Sen. Liz Figueroa that laws that control my own decisions about my right to privacy are an invasion of my privacy.

Read the story . . .

Outsourcing our woes

Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis picked up on this interesting post from Om Malik, on "The Dark Side of Outsourcing," a look at the descent of outsourced phone-bank workers on the outskirts of Delhi who are descending into drugs, sex & rock 'n' roll as they toil on the 24-hour treadmill exported from America.

Amid their sometimes drunken but polite arguments, you hear the cry for help. The constant pressure of trying to be someone else, faking accents and trying to deal with the abusive behavior of their customers, you find many are crumbling. The late nights, cooped up in cool but antiseptic halls, the call center workers are turning to drink, drugs and sex to find some meaning to their lives.

Hello Delhi . . . welcome to the Dark Side of the American Dream.

Read Om's essay, and follow-up comments . . .

AT&T "values" smackdown

A Christian man who was fired from AT&T Broadband because he refused to sign a diversity policy requiring him to "value" the beliefs of others, including homosexuals, has been awarded $150,000 in a religious discrimination suit.

Read the story . . .

Read another version . . .

Put me down as not "valuing" beliefs that contradict my own. I respect the right of people to have contradictory beliefs . . . am a proud veteran who served to protect those rights . . . but don't ask me to value them. To value them, by my dictionary, means to accept them as valid . . . and the last I checked, we still have the right to our own beliefs.

The law does limit how we act on those beliefs, but that's an entirely different topic. Mandating beliefs, as AT&T apparently was attempting to do, is pure discrimination.