Have you head the exciting news? About Apple and EMI? Huh? You have? You say you’ve read it about twenty times, just in the last hour? Oh. Well I guess I’ll leave it then…

Oh, here’s an interesting snippit: while many are doing the usual prostrating at the Altar of Apple, seems like this was actually EMI’s Idea.

An interesting little piece by Andrew Keen in response to the whole Kathy Sierra debacle where said blogger had death threats and some almost-impossibly misogynistic threads posted on her website. While many – like Tim O’Reilly – trumpeted the usual “free speech” and “self-policing” arguments, Keen argues that the libertarian ideal of the internet is precisely what makes it such an unpleasant place to be – a choice little bit:

O’Reilly sounds like a libertarian spokesman for the NRA. Guns don’t kill people, the anti firearms lobby claim, people kill people. Thus, the O’Reilly line goes, blogs don’t sexually humiliate and threaten women, male internet bloggers sexually humiliate & threaten women. But the problem is that the blogosphere has been colonized by a type of technophile male whose dialectic method is insult rather than polite argument. And this rotten culture of anonymity has spawned a contemporary Internet of social deviants, loonies, perverts and get-a-lifers (not to mention weird Second Lifers).

A perfectly valid point, I think – though why he says “social deviants” instead of the simple “sexists and homophobes” that he means is a little confusing. Of course, what Keen goes on to suggest is that all anonymous posting online be banned which, if I might descend into cliche for a second, seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It might deter online death threats, but it will do little do curb the rampant misogyny and homophobia, while costing billions to maintain. Still – how incredibly refreshing to see a voice that isn’t completely invested in right-wing libertarianism. In a recent half-assed exchange with Rex on fimoculous.com, I tried to flesh out some of my unease with the tech-world’s right-wing underpinnings, but was totally unsuccessful, and came off sounding like a silly undergraduate instead. Nuts.

Also, the comments section on Keen’s post is actually pretty smart – a pleasant change.

As a lifelong cynic, I think I have a pretty good knack for detecting the difference between comedic parody and intelligent critique. After seeing this Alanis Morissette cover of BEP’s “My Humps”, my brain just sat there, sucking wind. If this isn’t the most confounding thing you’ve ever watched, then you have lived a much stranger life than me.

[Update 1]: Alright, everyone and their mother has seen this. I now wish to add that I get that it’s supposed to be parody. It just seems so fucking earnest that it’s entirely discombobulating to watch. Yeah. That’s right. Discombobulating.

Oh, this is via fimoculous.com: