Archive for May, 2005

May 25 2005 02:49:00 PM EDT

Hollywood to Compatibility: Drop Dead!

The Progress and Freedom Foundation was kind enough to invite me to participate in a panel discussion on Capitol Hill concerning the implications of our victory in the broadcast-flag challenge. I’d expected to get into a debate with some of the other panelists who represented the pro-broadcast-flag contingent, but the news coverage of the […]

May 23 2005 10:38:00 AM EDT

Sith Happens

We went to see “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” on Friday night, and I have to say that, given how good the advance word on the film had been, at least in the American press, I found it disappointing. Sure, the special effects were great — if sometimes almost a little […]

May 19 2005 04:44:00 PM EDT

Land O’ Gorshin

The UK newspaper The Guardian’s newsblog has a nice appreciation of Frank Gorshin, the impressionist and comic actor who played the Riddler (or at least the first one) on the “Batman” TV show in the 1960s. Here’s a more straightforward obit for Gorshin, who died earlier this week.
Even as a kid I could tell that […]

May 14 2005 06:41:00 AM EDT

Unflagging Energy

Andrew Kantor quotes me in his USA Today column Friday, wherein he celebrates the DC Circuit’s striking down of the broadcast-flag regulation. This link will probably perish after a while — if anyone knows how to link more permanently to USA Today pieces, drop me an e-mail.
I’m also make a small appearance in the Progress […]

May 09 2005 12:08:00 PM EDT

Will the Broadcast Flag Rise Again?

A story in today’s New York Times suggests that content companies, dismayed at having the broadcast-flag regulation roundly struck down by the D.C. Circuit last week, are ready once again to threaten to withhold digital-television content from broadcasting. The idea is that by threatening to do so, the content companies and broadcasters will force Congress […]

May 06 2005 12:25:00 PM EDT

The Broadcast Flag Has Been Lowered

We won the broadcast-flag case today in a 3-0 decision. You can read it here
.
The regulation has been struck down.
Lots of Google News coverage already here. (Warning! That link won’t work well forever.) A few more permanent links:

Reuters
Wired News
MarketWatch
The broadcast-flag challenge was a case that Public Knowledge organized
and financed. We’re still looking for help […]

May 05 2005 01:14:00 PM EDT

Douglas Adams: Interview at the End of the Universe

Back in 1982, just a few months after I found myself drawn down to The Daily Texan to do journalism, I had the chance to interview Douglas Adams, then on the American book tour for the second volume of what later became the five-book Hitchhiker’s Guide “trilogy.” I came across a clipping of that recently […]

May 04 2005 12:00:00 PM EDT

Trek: The Series on the Edge of Forever

As just about every scifi fan in the world knows by now, the UPN series “Star Trek: Enterprise” has been cancelled, which means that for the first time since 1986 there will soon be a season with no Star Trek franchise show on the air. For some people, like veteran scifi writer Orson Scott […]

May 02 2005 09:43:00 AM EDT

Victory at The Daily Texan … For Now

The issue that’s been haunting my days over the last six weeks or so — saving the elected editor-in-chief position at The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of my alma mater — has come to a conclusion. That is to say, we won! The newspaper itself has a somewhat slanted account of these developments […]