Category: media

Jack Valenti is president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and has shown with two lawsuits in the past few weeks that he’s serious about grabbing control of copyright protection on the web. The high-profile suits threaten to curtail some of the freedoms that coders and Net entrepreneurs have been taking for granted. – Salon 02/14/00

Bay Area tycoon buys KRON-TV, the local NBC affiliate, for a record price – $823 million. NBC, a spurned bidder for the station, demands new conditions for remaining network affiliate on new owner. New owner to NBC: Drop dead. We’ll go it alone. – San Francisco Chronicle 02/14/00 

The Smithsonian has entered the commercial movie business. The institution’s experts are consulting on the latest Mel Gibson movie. – Washington Post 02/13/00

Two weeks ago, San Francisco Chronicle film reviewer Mike LaSalle wrote that it was time to do something about violence in movies. He suggested that any time a film showed a gun being fired, it should receive an NC-17 rating. Letters to the newspaper came flooding in, so the Chronicle is changing its reviewing policy. – San Francisco Chronicle 02/13/00 

• Some of the letters.

Ten years ago Robert Coover helped usher in the artistic and technological revolution of hypertext. Now the world wide web has brought us something new. “For those who’ve only recently lost their footing and fallen into the flood of hypertext, literary or otherwise, it may be dismaying to learn that they are arriving after the golden age is already over, but that’s in the nature of golden ages: not even there until so seen by succeeding generations.” – Feed 02/11/00

As “Peanuts” finishes up its comic-strip run this weekend, a fan remembers the making of the first “Peanuts” TV special. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a struggle to get to TV, and was at first considered a failure by its creators. – Los Angeles Times 02/11/00 

Artist at Canada’s Banff Center invites scientists, computer designers to work on more body-friendly ways for people to interact with computers. “Art will be the model for creating new computer technologies. In turn, those advances will actually create new forms of artistic experiences.” – CBC 02/11/00

— in the US, with the obstacles to getting distribution growing. So why does one of the country’s leading art-house movie chains think now is the time to expand? – LA Weekly 02/11/00 

All internet, all the time. Coming to a website near you. – New York Times 02/10/00

Musicians and other artists whose work streams across the Web may finally see some of the profits after Microsoft announced new software that enables pay-per-view and pay-per-download distribution of Windows Media audio and video files. The Recording Industry Association of America strikes a deal to pay royalties to millions of major-label artists whose work is webcast. – Wired 02/10/00