Lest you think I’m going to be giving the Democratic base a break while I bite the Republicans, this bit of fun has been going around various left-wing blogs. Liberal bloggers have collectively lambasted Obama for appearing on Fox News without a confrontation and undoing all their work to “delegitimize the network”.

Delegitimize the network. YA RLY.

Let’s look at this lofty goal. Why try to delegitimize a major news outlet? They cite a constant conservative bias in reporting and “repeatedly broadcasting some of the most specious of rumors about Obama”. According to the article, one DailyKos blogger even said “By going on Fox News, Obama made the right-wing press legitimate. Simply put, I cannot vote or support anyone who participates in this medium.”

So the issue is a partisan bias. Shall we look at the left-wing press then? As I recall, McCain’s most successful fundraising day to that point came the day after the New York Times broadcasted its own pretty specious rumor about him. The New York Times has not endorsed a Republican candidate since Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s - a pretty solid pattern. In fact, with the exception of radio, the Left has a far more pervasive grip on all sorts of media than does the Right. But when was the last time you heard of a group of conservatives conspiring together to delegitimize the New York Times?

Or is it the case that the Left has a right to media and the Right doesn’t? For all the bemoaning of the left about civil liberties lost under the Bush administration, this amounts to nothing less than grassroots speech control. Whether it comes from above or below, the effect is the same, and just as wrong. This stunt is patently ridiculous, blatantly hypocritical, and thankfully completely infeasible.

So to these bloggers: News is politics. The media is just as private as you and me and thus has just as much right to be partisan as you and me. Bias and partisanship are thus inevitable until the demand for unbiased news exceeds apathy or blindness to bias. But if you’re going to be part of that demand, if you’re going to criticize media bias, be fair and balanced yourself: take the plank first out of your own eyes.

More than logic, more than emotional appeal and more than fear of punishment, there’s nothing like ridicule to kill an idea. People fear looking stupid in many cases more than they fear consequences - after all, you could go down as a martyr. And where’s the fun in that for the status quo power? It looks like the RIAA has picked up on this concept with a new set of posters being put up in campus dorms claiming that copyright violations will make you look stupid (click on images for larger version).

And of course, if that doesn’t work, there’s always good old-fashioned scare tactics. Apparently the gallows await foolhardy filesharers.

Regarding the controversy over Don Imus’s recent comments about the Rutgers Womens basketball team being “nappy-headed hos”, I’d personally be much more offended at the fact that he called them hos than the fact that he called them nappy-headed. They are nappy headed after all; his comment wasn’t so much racist as just plain rude.

But, I guess it’s harder to stick someone with being rude than being racist.

Word on the streets is that the RIAA has finally sued the Russian Mediaservices that owns AllOfMP3.com in a New York court for $1.65 trillion. That’s right, a Russian company in a New York court for upwards of Russia’s entire GDP. Considering AllOfMP3 is in complete compliance with Russian copyright law (pay 15% royalties to the ROM - Russia’s RIAA - and you’re set), how the RIAA plans to make them pay by suing them in New York is beyond me. AllOfMP3 even left what’s effectively an O RLY? to the RIAA on their blog, calling the suit imprudent and saying that they plan to keep operating legally under Russian law.

If the RIAA somehow does manage to get $1.65 trillion [$150,000 per song downloaded over the past several months. As an aside, the maximum under US law is $150,000 per media - meaning CD or movie. Shock factor aside, the RIAA ought only be able to ask for about a twelfth of that, if any at all] from AllOfMP3.com, two things could happen. The first is that Russia will instantly implode as all the money in their coffers is wired to the RIAA. The dollar will tank because of the gigantic influx of money into the American economy, and Washington DC in particular will have to be abandoned because of the inevitable thousand dollar loaves of bread and million dollar canteloupes as the trillions make their rounds around the RIAA’s headquarters. Europe will sink into the ocean, China will be launched into space, and the US will get hit by ungodly gigantic tidal waves on both coasts as the greatest continental shift since Pangea’s dispersal occurs.

The second possibility is even more disturbing: The RIAA could offer to absolve the debt in exchange for Russia’s nuclear stockpile. You were worried about Osama getting hold of nukes? You haven’t seen anything yet: Download a song? BOOM!

The terror alert level will skyrocket into the ultraviolet spectrum as every home in America with an iPod is systematically obliterated in the pirate holocaust. Two nukes if you buy music from independent record labels, and a third if you have a Myspace. Say goodbye to China and most of South Asia because we all know that everyone there peddles pirated music and movies like a transsexual hooker peddles whatever organs (s)he happens to have that day. Africa will be gone because everyone there is too poor to pay royalties for copyrighted music that they’ve almost certainly heard at some point. Nevermind that they don’t have computers; they must have heard explorers whistling while they hacked through the jungle. They were impaled and then boiled alive because they deserved it, dirty whistle pirates.

Obviously it’s of utmost importance both geographically and security-wise that AllOfMP3.com not incur this ginormous debt to the RIAA. But unless the RIAA somehow forces them to incorporate in the US and then sues them, I think we’ll be safe from RIAA-induced apocalypse.

In a battle between Satan and the Great Harlot, who do you root for?

I’ve long said that Myspace is a blight upon the internet. I’ve also said that the record labels are driving us towards societal destruction. But for all the flack that Myspace takes for its chaotic and mind-bendingly vapid communities, it does provide another, far more respectable service to the internet’s ecosystem: a distribution channel for bands around the record labels.

Naturally the record labels want to preserve their own monopoly on distribution. They can’t touch unsigned or independently signed bands, but the growing number of mainstream bands on Myspace is worrying the labels. Kids can’t stream our music from the internet! It’s unnatural!

But this distribution method is vitally important in a battle against the RIAA. It’s certainly the most visible and accessible method of free distribution (the bands control what songs they upload, and whether they’re available for download or just streaming), helped in no small part by its vast secondary community of non-musicians. Aside from the glaring banner ads everywhere, Myspace is completely agnostic to financial backing in its site capabilities. There’s no “Myspace Plus” for paying customers; the garage band down the street can use Myspace just as well as Nickelback themselves.

This is the power of internet democratization. We may get blinking text and animated GIFs, but isn’t that preferable to an Orwellian world of content controlled by copyright conglomerates?