Axis and Allies Jan 03, 2010

Allies

1. The Vatican - In likely to be their only inclusion on this list, The Vatican receive are praise for the playlist they released on MySpace earlier this week. The playlist, titled simply The Vatican’s Playlist, features a mix of classical, contemporary world music, and – the reason we include it – rock ‘n roll and hip-hop.

The most important inclusion is that of Tupac 1998 posthumous hit Changes. The list also features other more contemporary styles from groups like Fleet of Foxes, and Muse. Old institutions respecting a diverse mix of media is the kind of thing that keeps us optimistic at the Vanguard.




2. MrChiCity3 - An active user and content provider, MrChiCity3 , has also become a activist for a more free and fair You Tube. The video we are praising him for was posted in mid November, and has since some 600,000 views. Naturally it has caused some controversy, so we encourage you to watch the video and make your own assessments.

(See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0bGs-hhenI )

3. Jon Hart -In a 2007 lawsuit Hart cited Comcast for sending “hidden messages to computers that are running file sharing applications, [which] appear, to the computers, are coming from other computers with which it is sharing files, telling it to stop communicating.” Simply, he claimed Comcast was monitoring its customer’s bandwidth, and when they were downloading too much data from another machine (like using a torrent client) they would send a signal to shut it down.
Comcast replied at the time with the following statement “Comcast dose not, has not, and will not block any Web Site or online applications, including peer-to-peer services.”
The case was settled, and there are some retribution to certain P2P users who may have had their rights violated by Comcast. For more information on this case and the settlement please see the official site: http://www.p2pcongestionsettlement.com/

Axis

1. Comcast/NBC -If there is a central antagonist in the fight for media clarity it is the media conglomerates. These dangerous people (legally they are, if referring to them as people seems strange to you it should) control not only the cable we use for communication, but also much of the media content we observe; and a theme park.
According to anonymous sources within the Comcast Corp's camp the cable provider is preparing to seize control GE’s NBC faction. This venture would give Comcast control over 27 Local TV stations, the NBC network, and GE’s Theme parks.There is some resistance however from groups like Free Press, and the Obama regulatory committee has spoken out against media conglomerates in the past.
The Vanguard opposes corporate media consolidation above all us. There is nothing worse for Mankind’s original resource than for it to flow from only a few sources.

2.You Tube -Two blows in one week for You Tube’s parent company Google. You Tube could have easily made the Ally list the last few years, but as the site has grown in size it’s masters have changed in demeanor. Recently You Tube has been removing parody videos from its site, and banning or suspending the posters.
This issue has risen mostly from the new phenomenon: remixing. The new artful remixing is the evolution of collage in the digital revolution. The craft is a process of sampling the work of other films, music, etc and rendering it to form a new work of art. Sometimes this process is as simple as redubbing, reediting, and reworking an episode of a TV show, or using very short clips of several songs to create an original work. It can be compared to the work of early hip-hop MC’s.
You Tube is targeting mostly users who post remixed content. They are doing so because of pressure from the owners of the content remixed. There is however no real legal precedent regarding US copyright laws and remixing. So You Tube is pulling the videos as a forum of compliance with other corporations, as they would protected in any future remixing case even if they left them up. They would be protected because even in the verdict was remixing violated copyright, the Epos facto clause would protect their actions.

3. Google - Although the web giant has a fairly has a good report card, Google Inc makes the Axis list this week for its decision to allow web publishers to delist stories from Google News. The company claims it is doing this to give its publishers more control over their content. This action not 
only gives publishers the ability to delist their stories from Google news, but also control access to them threw means such as limiting views.
Many Paper-News organizations, such as Media News Group Inc, have supported this new system. Their reasoning is that Google is unfairly benefiting by the traffic their news stories generate. Although Google is complying to their complaints many in the Paper-News industry still think it isn’t doing enough to secure their interests.
We at the Vanguard understand the perspective of these Paper-News organizations; however any forum of delisting is fundamentally dangerous. The internet has become the bazaar of discourse and information for the industrialized world. Any action that removes information or discussion from that bazaar has implications not limited to the scope of the removed information. Google is wrong to allow the internet to fracture, even if their actions have some positive consequences.
PS: This is not a fact, but our assumption is that this move comes with pressure from News Corp in its attempt to usurp Google’s’ power.