Three months after they acquired Instagram, Facebook launches a completely audacious intellectual property rights grab. Unless you delete your Instagram account by the January 16 deadline, they claim the right to license any public Instagrams uploaded after that date “without any compensation to you,” in perpetuity…and you can’t opt out. As Declan McCullagh notes, this [...]

The current generation of youngsters are exposed daily to sexuality, not only through media and advertising, but also through the computer and smartphones. Tonight’s film, Sexy Baby, explores how the easy access to sexual material and the constant sexualization of society affects women, using three women’s stories as examples.

Preserve Marriage Washington, the group opposing approval of Referendum 74 and Washington’s freedom to marry law, has for the first time responded to reports of their apparent purchase of fake Facebook “likes”.

When Facebook began to struggle after going public this past May, they launched a desperate crusade for revenue that has ultimately placed the burden on users by severely limiting your ability to reach your friends unless you pay a premium.

We did it! Facebook is now running our marijuana reform advertisements. But thousands of you signed our petitions and contacted Facebook. The ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation spoke with Facebook on our behalf, and the social network backed down, approving our ads to run on the site.

Just Say Now’s Jon Walker discusses the upcoming marijuana ballot measures on Radical Russ Belleville’s radio show, and they both scratch their heads at how out of step with popular opinion the elite drug warriors at Facebook are.

Tell Facebook To Stop Censoring the Marijuana Legalization Debate

When I sat down to read Friends, Followers and the Future by Rory O’Connor, I thought I knew what to expect. This is how I earn my living- by advising others on how best to integrate social media into their lives and work. The world that is social media is at best a microcosm of the world at large and at worst a poor substitute for the offline world, and I figured that it would be easy to read this book, digest it into manageable pieces and write this intro for today’s book salon.

I was wrong.

Barack Obama’s Justice Department is waging a federal war on state-legal medical marijuana clinics in California — even as his campaign wants marijuana ballot initiative supporters to turn out for him in swing states this fall. Mitt Romney says he’ll fight medical marijuana legalization “tooth and nail.” And candidates who most closely represent the opinion of the majority of Americans, like Gary Johnson, are systematically excluded from the debate.

Just Say Now is working hard to make marijuana a campaign issue in 2012. Last week we sent pharmaceutical bottles with pro-medical marijuana messages to protesters in San Francisco who brought them to a demonstration at one of President Obama’s fundraisers, asking him to stop his IRS and DoJ from shutting down clinics like Harborside and Oaksterdam. And this week, after Mitt Romney’s “tooth and nail” comment, we want to make marijuana more popular than Mitt.

Society needs weapons against cyberbullying, which can be a seriously harmful activity, and against libel that is shielded by anonymity. But somehow, surprise surprise, neoliberal governments are using those worthy goals, in Great Britain now (but in New York last month), to advance a sledgehammer attack on internet anonymity.

Morgan Stanley and Facebook are facing scrutiny and potential litigation for how they managed Facebooks Initial Public Offering, and whether they properly disclosed information to investors. But Congress just passed and Obama signed the so-called “JOBS” Act, which allows companies and banks to hide the very IPO information investigators now claim may have been missing or misleading in this case.