Years 2009-2012 Breningstall.com

Scam of the day: San Francisco apartment hunting

My wife and I are looking for an apartment in San Francisco and I received this email from one "Jodie Foster" ([email protected]). "Jodie" has apparently been making the rounds and has apartments all over California. +234 is of course the country code for Nigeria. Count the number of ways that this letter looks like a scam:

Iowa seeks to criminalize investigative journalism on farms

A proposed law HR 589 in Iowa is the latest effort by a state legislature aimed at preventing investigative journalists from reporting on farm practices. As Cody Carlson explains in The Atlantic, "HF 589 (PDF), better known as the "Ag Gag" law, criminalizes investigative journalists and animal protection advocates who take entry-level jobs at factory farms in order to document the rampant food safety and animal welfare abuses within. In recent years, these undercover videos have spurred changes in our food system by showing consumers the disturbing truth about where most of today's meat, eggs, and dairy is produced. Undercover investigations have directly led to America's largest meat recalls, as well as to the closure of several slaughterhouses that had egregiously cruel animal handling practices. Iowa's Ag Gag law -- along with similar bills pending in other states -- illustrates just how desperate these industries are to keep this information from getting out."

As a work-around to the obvious freedom of speech problems caused by censuring public scrutiny over agriculture, safety, and public health, this latest version of the legislation would make it illegal to make a false statement on a job application in the agricultural sector. Thus, if asked the question, "Are you a journalist?", undercover reporters would be legally obliged to say yes.

Corporations claim their political funding practices are 'not economically relevant' to shareholders. Full details.

Colbert Super PAC - John Paul Stevens interview

 

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Colbert Super PAC - John Paul Stevens Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens expounds on his dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

Media roundtable on release of Ai Weiwei and Hu Jia

Newsweek:

With an impending European visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Ai’s release served a strategic purpose and came after weeks of intense international pressure. Both Britain and Germany had lobbied vociferously on Ai’s behalf; on the façade of the Tate Modern museum in London, huge letters spelled out “Release Ai Weiwei,” and at the recent art fair in Basel, Switzerland, visitors perused avant-garde artwork, wearing paper masks of his face. “They just had to free him,” says a European ambassador to China, requesting anonymity. Otherwise, “this would have been a trip about Ai Weiwei and nothing else.

The Independent:

The first tightening came when Chinese security forces began to "tidy" the city in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and its thousands of international visitors. Among those tidied away was Hu Jia, an Aids activist who concluded that the authorities' lack of respect for Aids patients and orphans was rooted in a disregard of human rights. He was imprisoned for fear he might embarrass the authorities during the Games.

It was pretty minor stuff. Among others arrested were people protesting at being forced from their homes for Games redevelopment. Two elderly women were given "re-education" sentences merely for requesting permission to demonstrate. In the months that followed there was low-level harassment of lawyers who acted for such victims.

But it was with the award of the Nobel prize to Liu Xiaobo last October that things moved up a gear. Beijing reacted angrily, blocking all foreign news broadcasts into China.

I was relieved to read of Ai Weiwei's provisional release today. The dissident artist has spent three months in confinement for unspecified charges from Chinese authorities. Will post more about AWW later today.

RIP Twitpic: And let me give you a boot in the ass on your way out the door

The Twitpic copyright controversy blew up a few weeks ago and I was busy and didn't have time address it. I would now like to correct for that omission.

Twitpic's new terms of service fall into the category of what I would describe as copyright-grabs-that-aren't-labeled-copyright-grabs.

The New York Times reported last week:

World Entertainment News Network, a news and photo agency, announced this month that it had become the “exclusive photo agency partner” of Twitpic, a service with over 20 million registered users that allows people to upload images and link to them on Twitter. The deal allows the agency to sell images posted on Twitpic for publication, and to pursue legal action against those who use such images commercially without its permission, according to the agency.

“There has been much unauthorized use of Twitpic images which we shall be addressing without delay,” said Lloyd Beiny, the agency’s chief executive.

World Entertainment News, whose photo business revolves largely around shots of celebrities, says it is interested only in the photographs posted to the accounts of people like Britney Spears, Russell Brand and Demi Moore. But the scope of the deal is not clear, and professional photographers are worried that it could allow the agency to profit from any photo posted to Twitpic. Others say Twitpic’s move shows the tenuous control people have over what they post through Internet services...

The New York Times has the issue down in a nutshell.

Here's my take: Under the latest terms of service, "unauthorized use" is someone else publishing your Twitpic photos without Twitpic's permission. "Authorized use" is Twitpic selling your photos to whomever it wants for any reason whatsoever without your permission (later in this column I'll excerpt the relevant fine print).

Let me quickly backtrack through recent history.

This controversy arose a few weeks ago when users discovered that the terms of service posted on the Twitpic website had been covertly changed.

After finding itself embroiled in a fast PR fiasco (inconveniently followed by new rumors that Twitter might finally launch its own photo service), Twitpic tried to shuck and jive itself out of what had actually been going on (re: copyright grab).

Does French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy believe powerful men cannot be accused of sex crimes?

Update: The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn thus far has moved forward in an orderly way, with Strauss-Kahn being released from house arrest not because he is a man of distinction- as Bernard-Herni Lévy seemingly would have liked- but because multiple problems have arisen in the testimony of the accuser.

If Bernard-Henri Lévy's strident defense of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (recently accused of sexual assault and attempted rape on a hotel maid in New York) looks familiar, that may be because this is the same Lévy that so brashly defended Roman Polanski, circulating a petition that began

Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.

He risks extradition to the United States for an episode that happened years ago and whose principal plaintiff repeatedly and emphatically declares she has put it behind her and abandoned any wish for legal proceedings...

I'm curious to know where in Lévy's philosophical investigations he finds room to condone the raping of a 13-year-old girl. As for Strauss-Kahn, I'll leave it to the court to pass judgement on his guilt or innocence, but I will say I find it curious that certain French intellectuals offer so much sympathy for alleged perpetrators of sexual assault- and especially that their grounds for defending men accused of sex crimes rests so heavily on their place in the intellectual community, as if that alone frees that from all ordinary human responsibilities.