At about 1:30 AM Tuesday, as the NYPD was evicting protesters from Zuccotti Park, Tim Pool picked up his cell phone and started streaming video to his Ustream channel. Twenty-one hours, 100,000+ views, and countless batteries later, the 25-year-old activist put down his camera and found he had been declared “the eyes of the movement.”

Last weekend was the weekend of my epic win - doing a lap around Prospect Park on my bike. This week Brooke and I did a sort of debriefing interview with Superbetter designer Jane McGonigal about my experiences playing the game to recover from being run over by a car. In the interview, I described my feelings about riding my bike around the park, but my comments didn't make it into the final cut. Brooke has entreated me to write a blog post about my ride to share with the people who have been following my progress over the past 6 weeks, so here it is!

It wasn't too long ago that On the Media interviewed Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The act, written in 1986, was designed to outlaw criminal computer hacking, but according to Hofmann, it is written in such a technically imprecise manner that it could be used to prosecute someone who violated Terms of Service for a site like Facebook. 

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Six months ago, I was hit by a car while I was riding my bike, and spent months in and out of the hospital and recuperating from incredibly painful surgeries. Six weeks ago, I began using Superbetter, a game designed by game designer and theorist Jane McGonigal, with the express purpose of helping people recover from traumatic injuries and achieve health goals. This weekend, I will wrap up my 6 weeks stint using the game. 

James Murdoch is currently testified before parliament this morning about the News of the World voicemail scandal that erupted earlier this summer. Parliament is streaming the hearing live via its website, and you can follow the Twitter reaction to the hearings right here. If we find an embeddable live stream of the hearings we will embed it on this site as well. See below for the Parliament hearings.

UPDATE: On Thursday, November 10, the Senate split along party lines to defeat the measure that would overturn the FCC Net Neutrality rules. You can read more at Wired's Threat Level blog.

Via The Hill, the Senate is planning a vote to overturn the controversial FCC decision last year to implement net neutrality rules, mere days before they would go into effect:

The FCC’s net-neutrality regulations prevent Internet service providers from slowing down or speeding up access to websites. Wireless carriers are banned from blocking lawful websites or applications that compete with their services.

Supporters of the rules say they preserve competition and protect consumer choice, but opponents argue they impose unnecessary burdens on businesses and amount to government regulation of the Internet.

The FCC approved the rules along party lines last December. They are scheduled to go into effect Nov. 20.

The House already approved the repeal of the FCC's rules in April. The Obama administration has indicated it would veto the law if passed, saying it "would undermine a fundamental part of the Nation’s Open Internet and innovation strategy – an enforceable, effective but flexible policy for keeping the Internet free and open."

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Unfortunately, this week's entry will be kind of short. My work week has been incredibly busy, and I haven't been able to devote as much time as I like to Superbetter. I'm hoping that next week, I'll have more time.

On this week's show, we'll be looking at the way SuperPACs are already having an impact on the 2012 presidential race. Remember, PACs can't explicitly be linked to a candidate, but several have popped up with clear intentions to back one particular person. Here are a few of the ads we've noticed, with links to the PACs behind them. If you want to add to the list, post a link in the comments section below.

Last week, we reported on a proposed change to the rules governing the Freedom of Information Act. The change would essentially allow the government to lie to requesters of information through FOIA by saying that it had no relevant documents, even when it did. Transparency advocates were up in arms about the proposed change, and ACLU policy council Michael German told Brooke this undermines the spirit in which the Freedom of Information Act was drafted:

The purpose of the Freedom of Information Act request is to give the public access to government information, so that public accountability can take place. And one of the key elements of the statute incorporates judicial review in government decisions about exemptions. People have a right to know what exemption is being applied so that they can challenge that in court and a judge can make an independent decision.

According to a press release just posted by the ACLU, the Department of Justice has withdrawn the proposed rule change:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) today withdrew a proposed regulation that would allow government agencies to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests with false denials that the documents sought actually exist, when, in fact, they do. Providing such false denials has apparently been a practice at DOJ for decades, which was most recently revealed in a FOIA lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

The recent dismissal of Caitlin Curran, freelancer for WNYC/PRI's The Takeaway, has generated a conversation about journalistic ethics and the participation of journalists in political advocacy. Brooke Gladstone, host of On the Media, will take your questions and share her thoughts about the issue on Wednesday, November 2nd, at 3PM, EST.

This live chat is over, but we really appreciate everyone's participation. If you would like to look at the transcript of the conversation, it's available below. We look forward to more chats like this in the future.

Jon Ronson is one of our favorite journalists -- he wrote a very good book about extremists called Them, one of his books was turned into the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, and he's done some great radio stories for This American Life. He's working on an online documentary called Escape and Control, about people who try to control this internet. 

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

We've reported numerous times both on the show and on the blog about Righthaven, a company that buys copyrights on newspaper stories and images and then sues bloggers who repost them either in part or in full. Recently, they've suffered setback after setback, having several cases dismissed, and being hit with attorney fees in dismissed cases, and court penalties.

As of yesterday, things have become much worse for Righthaven, as US District Judge Roger Hunt ordered the company to pay nearly $120,000 in court and attorney fees in a failed lawsuit. The Las Vegas Sun's Steve Green reports:

Today at 15:00 GMT, Julian Assange will be answering questions live on The BBC's World Have Your Say. Unfortunately, due to region restrictions, US viewers are not able to watch the program live, but if you have a question for him, you can either post it on the World Have Your Say website in the comments section, or on the WHYS Facebook page. Once the episode is archived, we will post it to our blog. EDIT - It's up now! Check below to see both parts of the Julian Assange interview that aired this afternoon.

After the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the US was split about whether to release images of his body. With Moammar Gadhafi we had no such decision to make - dozens of videos and pictures instantly found their way around the world. Once again, we're in a discussion about how these images help, hurt, repulse, enshrine or dehumanize their subject. But this is not a new conversation.

For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about Jesse James this past week. Something in the images of Gadhafi remind me of the pictures that circulated of James after he was killed by Robert Ford in 1882: the angle of repose, the beard, the crowd.

And the way we relive the death of Gadhafi on YouTube every time we watch one of those videos -- that reminds me of how Ford relived his assassination of James night after night on stage.

I'm now in my fourth week using Superbetter to deal with a traumatic injury I sustained in a bicycle accident, and my co-workers (or at least Brooke) have been talking about how uncharacteristically sunny my disposition is. I would say that at least part of that is due to my continued use of Superbetter.

Here is this week's list of picks from the OTM staff.  If you want to recommend your own picks, please do so down in the comments section!