The New Freedom

(This part is a cross-post from the BU Free Culture blog.)
Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com, which provides custom radio stations based on user preferences is coming to speak on 2/27 at Morse Auditorium! Here’s the info from the facebook invite:

Name:
Pandora.com Founder Tim Westergren Talks about Digital Music
Tagline:
Radio, Access, Industry, Internet and Music!
Host:
BU Free Culture
Type:
Music/Arts - […]

What do China, Thailand and the United States all have in common? Government imposed censorship of the whiste-blower/investigative journalism website, Wikileaks.
The creation of Wikileaks was one of the first things I ever wrote about on this site, and since its creation just over a year ago it has been incredibly successful in exposing corruption and […]

I sent an email to Sam Bayard of the Citizen Media Law Project telling him about Paul’s RIAA woes. I asked him if linking was a crime and his verdict was no. Of course, this is still just one man’s opinion, but he is a very well informed man.
I’m assuming he’s not going to mind […]

Jello Biafra at HOPE
I’ve read about this but never seen it before. Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys moons the spooks at the HOPE conference. Anybody got the full video?
(tags: jellobiafra, HOPE, privacy)

House Rejects Telecom Immunity as FISA Clock Ticks Down
Well goddamn. This might turn into which is more important for the administration, immunity or […]

My friend and housemate Paul Sawaya is the author one of the better Facebook applications, Jukebox, which lets users add an MP3 player to their profiles with a nice user interface (and thankfully no autoplay). It’s a nice, quick way to recommend and play music for your friends, and it has ~30,000 users.
Yesterday, Paul received […]

Illegal downloaders ‘face UK ban’
Not sure if this will happen, but the fact that they’re considering it so thoroughly is proof of corruption.
(tags: p2p, uk, isp, internetban)

Senate Approves Surveillance Bill, Preserves Telecom Immunity
Government gets companies to break the law for them, then retroactively protects them to protect itself. Institutionalized corruption in effect.
(tags: corruption, telecom, politics)

Freedomain […]

Textbook Torrents - The Free Textbook Tracker
A torrent site for textbooks! Finally, I’m so glad somebody did this. It doesn’t have the same spirit as OCW programs which are ultimately better, but goddamn. Fuck spending five hundred dollars a semester on books.
(tags: textbooktorrents, p2p, bittorrent, books, education)

HR4137, a bill requiring colleges to implement network filtering passed the house. Learn more about it here on OpenCongress. Ars Technica has done the best write-up covering the story, so you should read about it here:Controversial college funding bill passed—P2P proviso intact.
I was interviewed for our college paper about this before it passed. That article […]