Micheal Crook, who is being sued by the EFF for sending out false DMCA claims regrading the above image (he sent us over 10 DMCA claims), is now retracting all of his DMCA claims. This is all part of a pending settlement with Jeff Diehl (10 Zen Monkeys) and EFF, the details of which have not yet been made public.

Full Story: Laughing Squid.

RU Sirius Show: Zen Monkeys Talk About 10 Zen Monkeys.

NeoFiles Show: On Probability Beach with Richard Kadrey.

And, not a podcast but also from the MondoGlobo Network, A Selection of Obscure Robert Anton Wilson Essays.

R.U. Sirius (who before becoming a podcasting pioneer, founded Mondo 2000 magazine) interviews From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism author Fred Turner, and prefaces the interview with some of his own thoughts. Very interesting critiques on both sides. I only wish the interview was longer.

[RU:] I must say honestly that, although I was repulsed by the Gingrich alliance and by much of the corporate rhetoric that emerged, at least in part, out of Brand’s digital elitist clan – I think Brand’s tactics were essentially correct. Turner implies that valuable social change is more likely to happen through political activism than through the invention and distribution of tools and through the whole systems approach that is implicit in that activity. But I think that the internet has – palpably – been much more successful in changing lives than 40 years of left oppositional activism has been. For one example out of thousands, the only reason the means of communication that shapes our cultural and political zeitgeist isn’t COMPLETELY locked down by powerful media corporations is the work that these politically ambiguous freaks have accomplished over the past 40 years. In other words, oppositional activism would be even more occult – more hidden from view – today if not for networks built by hippie types who were not averse to working with DARPA and with big corporations. The world is a complex place.

[...]

FT: The idea of back-to-the-country didn’t work. But I think something deeper didn’t work, and it haunts us today, even as it underlies a lot of what we do. The notion that you can build a community around shared style is a deeply bohemian notion. It runs through all sorts of bohemian worlds. The notion that if you just get the right technology you can then build a unified community is a notion that drove a lot of the rural communal efforts. They thought by changing technological regimes; by going to 19th century technologies; by making their own butter; sewing their own clothes – they would be able to build a new kind of community. What they discovered was that if you don’t do politics – explicitly, directly, through parties, through organizations – if you don’t pay attention to and articulate what’s going on with real material power, communities fail.

So I argue that there’s a fantasy that haunts the internet, and it’s haunted it for at least a decade. And it’s the idea that if we just get the tools right and communicate effectively, we will be able to be intimate with one another and build the kinds of communities that don’t exist outside, in the rest of our lives. And I think that’s a deep failure and a fantasy.

Full Story: 10 Zen Monkeys.

If you haven’t heard, an online prankster named Michael Crook is trying to abuse the DMCA to have unflattering pictures of himself taken off of web sites. 10 Zen Monkeys (RU Sirius’s new zine) and the EFF are fighting back. I’m suggesting everyone put a pic of Crook and a link to the 10ZM page to 1. Spread the pic far and wide in defiance of the DMCA and 2. Google bomb for the term “michael crook.”

Here’s a snip of code to add a pic and link to your own site. By standing up to intimidation and spreading the word about this case, you can help the fight for free speech online.

A few years ago, the ‘UFO cult’ leader claimed to have cloned human beings, and was widely dismissed as a crass self-publicizer and hoaxster.

‘Once we can clone exact replicas of ourselves,’ he says on the Clonaid website, ‘the next step will be to transfer our memories and personality into our newly cloned brains, which will allow us to truly live forever.’

His latest achievement is only slightly less ambitious. He has undertaken to single-handedly restore the clitorises (clitori?) of African women disfigured by the tribal ritual of clitoral excision. Rael is passionate in this cause, since the beneficiaries ‘now have the possibility to regain sexual pleasure and be whole once again.’

Full Story 10 Zen Monkeys.

I guess I missed the initial announcement of this: The MondoGlobo Network has launched a blog web zine. They’ve also republished what I think is a bunch of old Getting It stuff.

Here’s a snip from an article by R.U. about 9/11 conspiracy theories:

Those who believe that 9/11 was an inside job are wingnuts – rank amateur investigators and their sycophantic followers. They can’t tell a rumor from a piece of evidence, or a piece of evidence from conclusive proof.

Those who believe that 9/11 was not an inside job are sheeple – brainwashed dupes who have a psychological block against accepting unpleasant facts.

As a 9/11 conspiracy agnostic, I suppose I can live with both of those characterizations. (Oh wait, I forgot – agnostics are gutless weasels who are afraid to take a stand.)

Both sides in this hostile exchange follow their own stream of evidence. Both sides say the evidence presented by their opponents is incomplete, misconstrued, or just downright false. Primary representatives of each point of view are characterized as sleazy opportunists with suspect connections. In other words, it’s pretty much like all other political debates that happen during polarized times, but a bit weirder.

10 Zen Monkeys.