Charges against Steven Kurtz finally dropped….

Turns out he is an artist and NOT a bioterrorist: A judge threw out charges Monday against a college art professor accused of improperly obtaining biological materials for an exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies.U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was ”insufficient on its face.”

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom. link

going viral

here is a video that outlines strategies for going viral: link

although i have tried, the closest i have come to getting something viral was a fake song that we made and uploaded it to napster (back in the day) and called it a phish & grateful dead jam out… the moral of the story is i think i hate this guy you is kind of ruining the internet and creating a movie about virality that has gone viral… i am having a meta meltdown

imagine art after

Curated by Breda Beban, imagine art after brings together artists who left their home countries and now live in London with artists who stayed.

This international contemporary art project, devised in different stages and across different locations, began in 2005 on Guardian Unlimited with online dialogues between pairs of artists from Afghanistan, Albania, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Serbia. Its inaugural exhibition was at Tate Britain (5 October 2007 – 6 January 2008).

imagine art after introduces an innovative and experimental curatorial model that emphasises process and production, drawing on Beban’s independent filmmaking practice where, in the process from script to screen, each stage is a result of the previous stage.

fitna removed from liveleak

controversial dutch film fitna has been removed from liveleak after threats were made against the staff: “Meanwhile, the Iranian government has summoned the Dutch ambassador in order to register protest against the film. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has published an article in the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, calling on people ‘to keep their head[s] cool and relations warm’. “

saudi woman killed for chatting on facebook

A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged.

The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man, the al-Arabiya website reported.

The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the “strife” the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation.  link

The Mother of All Privacy Battles

bits blog:   All of the outrage over privacy on the Internet is nothing compared to what may be coming. For years, Web companies have been trying to gather shreds of information about users in order to show them ads for things they are most likely to buy. These schemes have been accelerated over the last year, as the big Web companies like AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have been trying to combine information they gather on their own sites with data about users gathered from networks that place ads on other sites.

MoveOn’s new contest: Obama in 30 seconds

so all the videos need to be pro-obama?  are they creating an actual campaign ad for obama?  i am not sure what moveon is doing here.  granted, all the videos from their previous contest were all in the same political vein…i just get a little squeamish that moveon, in essence, wants user-generated campaign videos.  not to knock obama, he’s super rad and all, but it’s a little creepy…

Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’

Wired:  A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

Increased Cyber-attacks against Tibetan NGOS

Slashdot: The SANS Internet Storm Center reports about an increasing number of sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks against Tibetan NGOs. These attacks appear to be related to attacks against other anti-chinese groups like Falun Gong. ‘There is lots of media coverage on the protests in Tibet. Something that lies under the surface, and rarely gets a blip in the press, are the various targeted cyber attacks that have been taking place against these various communities recently.

Bell throttles traffic

Users of the Canadian family-run ISP Teksavvy (which we profiled last year) have started noticing that Bell Canada is throttling traffic before it reaches wholesale partners. According to Teksavvy CEO Rocky Gaudrault, Bell has implemented “load balancing” to “manage bandwidth demand” during peak congestion times — but apparently didn’t feel the need to inform partner ISPs or customers.  (link)