Continue reading Apple fan site shutting down

Apple fan site shutting down originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you want to get Patrick Byrne's take on naked short selling and the alleged conspiracy (involving class-action lawyers, hedge funds, and journalists) against his company, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK), then Deep Capture, the Movie is a good place to get it.

In the 45th slide of the presentation, to provide evidence of the journalistic conspiracy, Mr. Byrne plays a clip of former New York Post business editor Dan Colarusso speaking to Herb Greenberg, Joe Nocera, and Dave Kansas: "When I think of Patrick Byrne ... We have barrels of ink and stacks of money and all the resources in the world at our disposal, legal and, indeed our media, to crush him."

Is this indicative of a conspiracy? Speaking on Mad Money with Jim Cramer about Mr. Byrne, Herb Greenberg said that "the real conspiracy, if there's a conspiracy, is a conspiracy by these people to silence the critics."

Exactly. And here's a tip for Mr. Byrne: Journalists tend to be big believers in free speech. When you attack their ethics, attempt to intimidate them into silence, and an employee of your company sets up a website to smear them -- that angers journalists, and they jump to each others' defense.

Was there a conspiracy of journalists against Patrick Byrne? I seriously doubt it. But Byrne's efforts to silence his critics have made him an enemy of journalists and lovers of the First Amendment everywhere. Maybe that's the conspiracy.

A media conspiracy against Patrick Byrne? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Being that I'm a hale-and-hearty defender of the First Amendment, I always take special notice of occurrences which could have significant impact on the dissemination of art, literature, or other such things. Once again, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has quashed a request for a .xxx domain to be created for the registration of "pornographic" websites. I cannot blame ICANN for shying away from giving its approval when I understand that the position of responsibility that approval would place it in is unacceptable for it, and would take the group well outside the scope of what it was created for.

So, we are still faced with the heavy infusion of pornographic material within the mainstream internet, and whether or not something can or should be done about it. I myself am in favor of a designated domain for sexually explicit material, for the simple reason that it would make it easier for parents to have success in restricting those materials from being accessed by their kids. I'm not writing this because I want to debate the existence of porn. I'm simply stating that we still have a situation which, in my opinion, must be dealt with.

I find it rather odd that the Family Research Council applauds the decision of ICANN. FRC claims that to provide a designated domain for the lusty sites would legitimize their existence and create a virtual "red light district" within the mainstream internet. I guess they don't understand that the stuff is already entrenched. I ask the Family Research Council to answer me this: If you were trying to displace prostitutes from your neighborhood would you rather do battle with them on your front porch or send someone else to deal with them in their own home? Your short-sighted approval of the ICANN decision is lost on me. Would it not be better to suggest an amended proposal that would get the job done?

In my considered opinion, this is a matter that shall not quietly pass. What we need to do is create the conditions wherein ICANN can to provide porn its own top-level domain without taking the responsibility to police it. The issue of domain monopoly would also need to be addressed. Then, without involving the courts, porn site webmasters could be encouraged to migrate their content to the new domain. After a reasonable period of voluntary change, I suspect about 70% of the adult sites would have willingly moved to the new domain. Then, I think it would be appropriate for adult sites in other domains to be challenged to prove why they should be allowed to remain outside their available "proper" channels.

I don't mean to say that porn should be stripped from the internet. I'm too much of a constitutionalist for that. I'm just saying that if the porn webmasters wish to remain unmolested on the web, we should create the safe conditions to allow them to do that. We will never do away with porn, but we most certainly can do away with being assaulted by it.

ICANN nixes .XXX domain: You bet, I have an opinion originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Finally, Fox did something I can applaud. Today Fox's parent News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) announced that it was canceling the OJ Simpson book If I Did It, and corresponding TV interview. The project was so vile, so immoral, that even the media's most whorish member bowed to universal disgust and kaboshed the thing. So much for its Sweeps week zinger.

"I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project," Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman said in an Associated Press report. "We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."

Books have been pulled out of contract or off shelves when there are questions of accuracy, but it's almost unprecedented, thanks to the First Amendment, to pull a book solely due to objectionable content. Certainly this may be the first time such a high-profile book has been pulled this close to publication. The only book that springs to mind that spawned such widespread vitriol from publishing circles was Brett Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" in 1991.

It's not surprising that Fox's affiliates, many of whom bear the mantle of Conservatism proudly, would protest loudly. How many of its Christian-family- values" audience want to see this sort of content on the tube? As for bookstores, Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP) one of the nation's largest, said it would donate any profits resulting from the book to charity.

Absolutists on the First Amendment might disagree with the decision to pull the project from public consumption, preferring to let the marketplace decide for itself, but in today's world, that's going to happen anyway. The book is now officially a collectible. And eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is there to make sure there's a market for it.

Fox did right by cancelling OJ "If I Did it" project originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.