I know, I know. Your featherhead has been slagging in the blogging department lately. I’ve got a good excuse this time though, I swear. Shane & I have finally decided to - eeks! - buy a house. First the “wedding”, now this….I think this means I’m finally all grown up. Blecht. Banish the thought. Anyway, househunting has been consuming all my spare time, and this blog was the first to suffer. Sorry ’bout that. If you’re into animals or the environment, I still put a good day’s work in over at easyVegan.info. Which actually gets more traffic than this humble blog. So, you should check it out, is all I’m sayin.
The Sunlight Foundation, the Center for Media and Democracy’s partner in Congresspedia, has been doing some really interesting participatory journalism lately. Their current project is to get citizens to rate the websites of their members of Congress for transparency and accountability. So far 294 members have been rated and, in the wake of members like Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) posting their daily schedules online, the bar is getting higher for what citizens expect. The best part is that when the results are all in, we’re going to post them on every member’s Congresspedia profile so it can become part of their permanent record.
Though this week’s cuteness is of the veggie - rather than the animal - variety, I just couldn’t pass it up. How many veggies manage to pull off both creepiness and cuteness at the same time?
Filed under: Censorship — Kelly @ February 15, 2007 1:19 pm
Last week, PZ reported that an atheist You Tuber’s account had been suspended after he posted a video in which he “read some excerpts of violent passages from the Koran, with no commentary at all”. Apparently the heathen in question, one Nick Gisburne, is just the latest in a long line of heathens to face the awesomely soul-crushing wrath of You Tube. And atheists aren’t the only ones offending You Tube’s delicate sensibilities; last week, I favorited Anna Nicole Smith’s anti-fur ad (shot for PETA), only to find a few days later that the video had been removed and the user’s account suspended. Now, I highly doubt that PETA asked You Tube to remove the vid and ban the user - because they actually encourage people to download and post their stuff far and wide, from You Tube to MySpace to…well, whatever the yung’uns are into nowadays. Not to mention, the user’s profile gave the impression that s/he represented PETA, what with the distinctive moniker (PETATV) and the exclusively PETA video archive.
As an RIAA spokesperson famously put it when asked about the spectacle of file-sharing lawsuits against innocent grandparents, “when you go fishing with a driftnet, sometimes you catch a dolphin.”
Well, with its 100,000 DMCA takedown notices aimed at YouTube users, now it’s Viacom that is netting its share of dolphins. Among the 100,000 videos targeted for takedowns was a home movie shot in a BBQ joint, a film trailer by a documentarian, and a music video (previously here) about karaoke in Singapore. None of these contained anything owned by Viacom. For its part, Viacom has admitted to “no more than” 60 mistakes, so far. Yet each mistake impacts free speech, both of the author of the video and of the viewing public.
If they are making these kinds of blatant mistakes, who can tell how many fair uses of Viacom content they also targeted in their 100,000 takedowns? Hundreds? Thousands? If Viacom made a clear mistake and your clip contains no content from Viacom-owned copyrighted works, sending a simple DMCA counter-notice to YouTube may be enough to do the job. But if you’re attempting to make a fair use of Viacom’s works, it may make more sense to go to court to assert your rights. More information about your options is available at the Fair Use Network.
Has your video been removed from YouTube based on a bogus Viacom takedown? If so, contact information [at] eff.org — we may be able to help you directly or help find another lawyer who can. In this situation, as in so many others, EFF will work to make sure that copyright claims don’t squelch free speech.
Quite fittingly, the EFF recorded their call and uploaded it to You Tube:
With both houses of Congress in the hands of the Democrats, we have a chance this year to pass the Afghan Women Empowerment Act of 2007!
Introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and in the House by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the Afghan Women Empowerment Act of 2007 authorizes funding for the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and for Afghan women-led nonprofits providing direct services to Afghan women and girls.
Afghan women continue to lack basic services and are increasingly under attack by Taliban and other militia groups who are trying to prevent them from exercising their hard-won rights. Attacks and threats against girls’ schools are increasing. In fact, the United Nations estimates that every day a girls school is burned down or a teacher killed. More than 100,000 children in the four southern provinces are denied an education because of attacks on schools.
Afghan women are working hard to regain their roles as full participants in civil society, but they need critical resources to move forward. By supporting women-led nonprofits that are providing education, adult literacy and vocational training, and health care, we can help Afghan women achieve their goals to support themselves and their families and to share in the rebuilding of their society. Funding for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs will assist them in promoting and protecting women’s rights and human rights at this extremely critical time.
Considering how fully the AmTaliban fucked the women that it supposedly sought to “liberate”, it’s the least we can do. Literally.
A Kenyan secondary school has sent home 20 boys because they were not circumcised, saying it feared they would be bullied by other students.
Just how the other the buggers would find out about their classmates’ unmarred penises, the BBC does not divulge. Now, either that’s some seriously hands-on sex ed, or we’ve exported our “sex in teh skools” crisis to Africa, right along with our grossly ineffective (and totally lame) abstinence-only edumakation. Better get GW and the IWF right on that.
A little late in the season for an x-mas pic, but I’ve really been lovin’ on Kaylee lately. We’re finally at that point with the two newest canines where they still feel a little “new” but, at the same time, are starting to fit in with the rest of the family. We’re slowly picking up on their individual quirks and eccentricities: Kaylee, once she’s plopped down on the bed for the night, will not budge an inch until morning; Jayne loves frozen poo and is driven to fits an anxiety by closed doors, which she always seems to find herself on the wrong side of. Such sweet dogs - it’s hard to believe that, during their six-month stay at Friends of the Friendless, no one wanted them. Six friggin’ months.
Just look at how adorable that belly is!
Kaylee says, "I’ll show you my presents if you show me yours!"
