Under current copyright law, it is apparently legal for you to make backup copies of movies and music on your computer, or for you to move the material from the original distribution disk onto a device like an iPod.  But… according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act it is illegal to bypass or crack any copy protection put on the disk by the original distributor.  So it is legal for me to make a digital copy of a movie I’ve bought to put it on my computer but illegal to break the copy protection that keeps me from making a copy.

Mother Jones magazine has a really interesting article up about a new proposed law called the “Unlocking Technology Act o f 2013” that would do the following:

• Allow consumers to bypass copy protection as long as the user does not do so to “facilitate the infringement of a copyright.” So for example, as long as you are ripping a disk you bought for personal use, you are ok.
• Allow consumers to unlock cell phones to move it to a different network after its contract is over. That means that if you have a Verizon iPhone that you bought under contract and you complete your contract, you could use software to reprogram the phone to work on another service provider’s network.
• Blind consumers would be allowed to bypass copy protection on e-books to make them work with screen readers
• Remix artists who are legally creating transformative art using copyright material would not be able to be sued for breaking the copy protection on the original work.  (Girl Talk’s Gregg Gillis, we’re talking about you.)

Great reporting from Mother Jones’ Dana Liebelson.

But it’s his closing video from space, a cover of David Bowie’s 1969 hit “Space Oddity” that has truly brought him to the forefront of popular culture with more than 12 million views, as of today:

Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield

It is worth noting that Hadfield does his own singing and guitar playing in the video, which was produced by his son Evan. (And original artist David Bowie praised the cover on his official Facebook page. He also notes that Emm Gryner, who was a part of Bowie’s band from 1999-2000, worked on the piano arrangement for the video.)

Hadfield had previously recorded an Earth/space music video with the Canadian band the Barenaked Ladies:

Prepping before launch

To produce this:

And he’s done music with another astronaut as well:

“Ride On” Tribute to Sally Ride by astronauts Chris Hadfield and Catherine Coleman

But all this is not just about drawing attention to Hadfield, it’s Hadfield trying to draw a whole new generation into being interested in space travel. So along with all of his space demonstration videos, he’s tweeted images of Earth, life in space, and of the station itself.

As a child of the space age, I have to say I have been totally geeking out on how Hadfield has done such a great job of bringing our world’s space programs to life.  I’m also so impressed with what a renaissance  man he is, being an astronaut, and educator, and a pretty credible musician.

Hey, even David Bowie likes him…

(The class that I teach using Living in a Media World is called Global Media Literacy.  Guess this is a blog post that is truly global.)

Hitler Finds Out That AOL Has Shut Down Comics Alliance

If you are any kind of comics nerd (@dwainsmith, I’m talking about you…), you were saddened to learn that AOL had closed the doors on their great comic blog Comics Alliance.  Of course , Hitler was unhappy when he heard about it….

Mountain Dew Uses Racism and Violence Against Women to Promote Caffeinated Sugar Water

This is so awful, I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea.  As Mashable points out:

A Pepsi rep told Adweek: “We understand how this video could be perceived by some as offensive, and we apologize to those who were offended. We have removed the video from all Mountain Dew channels…”

Could be perceived? You watch and decide.

UPDATE: He’s going to interview celebs on the red carpet of a movie premier for Live with Kelly and Michael.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

To those of you getting started in broadcasting, those are not likely to to be the first words you utter on the air.  A.J. was promptly suspended from the station and very shortly after that fired.

And then… the sports blog Deadspin picked up on the story, and it went viral.  You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about the story.  The famous F-bomb clip even showed up in bleeped form on Letterman this week.

So what happens to Mr. Clemente now?  Edward Esposito, of the Radio Television Digital News Association tells him:

“Don’t worry, it’ll pass. 

You’ll always be “that guy” who lost his first anchor gig on the first day he anchored by muttering two very bad words right off the bat. You’ll always be the guy who lost his job over it. You don’t have to be the guy who sinks his career over it.”

A.J. is trying to keep up his side of the story through his Twitter account, though he’s been pretty subdued.  He did note that he’s going to be on the Today show tomorrow.

I should note that I was on the journalism faculty at WVU for 15 years before moving to Nebraska, and both A.J. and WVU (and Bismark’s NBC affiliate for that matter) all have my sympathy.  But I thought the most interesting comment I saw on this case came from my old buddy “Doc” Ivan Pinnell, public relations professor and retired Army lieutenant colonel.  He wrote on Facebook:

“Deep in the bottomless pit of every broadcaster’s stomach there was a twitch of relief when they heard A.J.’s story. Emotions? Sympathy? Empathy? Sorrow for A.J.? A desire to reach out to A.J.? Thank God it was A.J. and not me! Some station somewhere will snap him up in a heart-beat, and out of sheer curiosity some potential broadcast student and/or his/her parents who did not know WVU had a School of Journalism will pull us up on the internet just to check us out. In the long-run A.J.’s mishap may be a positive for A.J. and the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism. Every cloud, even the darker ones, has a silver lining. We just have to look for it.”

Good luck, A.J.  And watch the open mics….

• Examples of simple, fun video commentaries from my Tumblr
  Please note that some of these have NSFW language in them either spoken or in subtitles.  (Yes, there’s a “Hitler Finds Out About” video here.)
• Old examples of commentaries, some from old JMC 406 classes
  Samples from the Washington Post, old sections of J406, and even one from me.
• Examples from 2011 JMC 406 along with alum examples
  See what Cody Riedel has produced for the Kearney Hub!
•  And a few more examples from 2011

• Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza tells us “What the Boston bombings taught me about journalism.”
  Some real food for thought here from @TheFix.   Main points:
  1 – Better safe than sorry.
  2. Twitter is a reporter’s best friend… until it’s not.
  3. Primary sources matter…
  4. … and so do good reporters.Required reading.
• Boston Globe’s Damon Kiesow on how the ‘controlled explosion’ story went crazy on Twitter
  Great Storify account by @dkiesow on how a Twitter notification that police would be setting off ‘controlled explosions’ turned into a ‘false flag’ conspiracy story.
• CNN – Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources looks at what went wrong covering Boston.
  Video story on how CNN, Fox, NBC the AP, the Boston Globe, and the New York Post handled the Boston story.
• Local columnist has good critique of media coverage but quotes fictional news anchor.
  Oops.
• But NBC’s Pete Williams getting widespread acclaim for getting it right
  This story is from the Huffington Post, but there’s a lot of praise out there for NBC justice correspondent Pete Williams not only getting the story right about the Boston bombing but also being willing to admit what he didn’t know — which may have been just as important.
• NPR’s On The Media takes a wide-ranging look at coverage of the bombing
  Stories cover the legacy media, Twitter, broadcasting through a crisis, listener reaction, and how Runner’s World magazine covered the bombing.

And finally, Neil Diamond leads crowd at Fenway Park in Sweet Caroline Saturday. 

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” 

At a time when a lot of us were looking for words of comfort when something utterly un-understandable was going on, the words of Mr Rogers spoke to us. (I passed the quote on at the time through my Tumblr blog.) The words of Mr. Rogers were often paired with a photo taken by Jim Judkis, the man who for years was the official photographer for Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. (I learned this part of the story by reading an article by Washington Post reporter Maura Judkis, Jim’s daughter.)

This week, following the Boston Marathon bombings, the quote resurfaced and may have been been even more quoted than it was during the Newtown aftermath.

Slate had a good history of the “look for the helpers” story on Tuesday.  Rogers first published his mother’s advice back in 1983 in a book called Mr. Rogers Talks With Parents. He has repeated the story multiple times, and quotes and video of him telling this story show up after each American tragedy.

I’ve seen the quote show up on multiple photos, but perhaps the best portrayal was on this cartoon by Randy Bish of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

Check out the amazing collection of Boston Marathon cartoons at Cagle.com.

It was hard to get the news last week that Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert had died of cancer.  Just the day before he died, Ebert had announced on his blog that he was taking a “leave of presence” from the Chicago Sun-Times.  He said that he would be limiting himself to writing only about the movies he wanted to as he dealt with a recurrence of the cancer that cost him his jaw, his voice, and the ability to eat and drink. (Back in 2010, Equire ran a fantastic profile of Ebert by Chris Jones that talked about Ebert’s post-cancer, post-voice life online.)

I don’t have the time to write the remembrance of what Ebert has meant to me since I first started watching him on TV more than 35 years ago.  Suffice it to say that he has always been the critic I turned to first when I wanted to know what critics had to say about movies.  One of the things I loved about him is that he wasn’t afraid to trash a popular movie, praise an unpopular movie, and to love movies that are just plain fun. (The NY Times called him “a critic for the common man.“)  One thing I had not realized until the news of his death broke was what a talented student journalist he had been working at the Daily Illini.

I have long talked about Ebert (and his old TV partner Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune) in my commentary class, and was scheduled to talk about him in class right when he died.

As I started digging through my blog archives, I was startled to see how many times I had mentioned Ebert over the last 9 years.  Here are links to as many of the blog posts as I can find.

But first, here are two of his reviews from television with Gene Siskel.

Siskel & Ebert review The Shawshank Redemption:

Siskel & Ebert review Jurassic Park:

Mentions of Roger Ebert in this blog over the years:

• January 2, 2012 – Roger Ebert on why the 2011 box office was down
• August 5, 2011 – Why should we care about 3D movies?
• March 29, 2011 – Reviewing the movies
  Includes a great video appearance of Siskel and Ebert at the National Press Club back in 1995.
•  March 7, 2011 – Great Bollywood example
  (Includes a link to an Ebert blog post on Bollywood.)
• February 23, 2009 – Slumdog Millionaire brings Bollywood to American mass culture
• December 5, 2008 – Roger Ebert on what’s wrong with movie writing today
  Includes a link to “Roger’s little rule book” on writing reviews.
• December 7, 2010 – Media news I learned from Twitter
  Ebert had a massive presence on Twitter.  This blog post was based in part from something I learned from  @ebertchicago.  It also has a link to Jane Austen’s Fight Club.
• February 19, 2010 – Esquire profile of Roger Ebert
• April 20, 2010 - Some thoughts on reviewing
  Includes links to material about my other favorite reviewer – Pauline Kael.
• November 22, 2006 – Robert Altman remembered
  And who could do it better than Ebert….
• April 9, 2009 – How did movie critic really feel about Bill O’Reilly?
• October 9, 2006 – Podcasting hits the mainstream
  Included a link to an old Ebert podcast that is no longer out there.
• June 13, 2005 – Everyone’s gone to the movies
  You’ll have to search for Ebert on this one.  Predates me having permanent links on the blog.
• May 5, 2006 – United 93 opens amid media attention (or is it hype?)
• February 27, 2006 – Why Munich won’t let go of me
  Has a link to a commentary by Jim Emerson on Ebert’s web site.