Last week, reporter Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died in Syria of an asthma attack. Brooke remembered him on the show this week with a snippet from an interview we did in April of 2011 about the American media's short attention span for international crises and the dangers inherent to foreign crisis reporting. You can listen to the entire story here. Transcript below. 

Way back when we re-launched our website in July of this year, we did a Q&A with director Kirby Ferguson. Ferguson has been working on an ongoing series of videos called Everything is a Remix, about the culture of remixing that permeates just about every creative endeavor out there. Ferguson uses a couple of very famous examples (Star Wars, the ouvre of Quentin Tarantino, the innovations in the graphical interfaces in modern computing) to demonstrate that innovation is at least partly appropriation.

As part of Facebook's initial public offering yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter that was included in Facebook's registration statement with the Security and Exchange Commission. Wired's Epicenter blog has an interesting breakdown of Zuckerberg's letter, but there was one section that stood out to us - Zuckerberg's pontifications on hackers and the term "hacker" itself.

On the Media has reported plenty on both our show and our 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. They've had an incredible run of bad luck in the last six months, culminating in their assets being seized in order to pay off court debts, and an investigation by the Nevada State Bar. One of those seized assets was their website, righthaven.com, which was sold to a mystery bidder earlier this month for a paltry $3,300. The bidder is now a mystery no more.

Every Monday, the staff of On the Media talks about a few of their favorite things. Tell us what media you've been consuming in the comments!

Last week, asked Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000 for some pointers on the art of riffing in preparation for the launch of the 2012 iteration of our Media Scrutiny Theater. Today, we're proud to announce our inaugural video!

I'd say we get an email at least once a week from a listener asking us why Bob pauses when he says "edited...by Brooke" at the end of every episode. Even as a member of the OTM staff, that question will remain one of life's great mysteries, like the sound of one hand clapping, or why people dislike cilantro.

Comic artist Tyler Crook (you can find him on his website and on facebook) has obviously spent a considerable amount of time thinking about Bob's weekly pregnant pause and has drawn a cartoon imagining what happens in the studio during recording. It's pretty great.

This weekend, we will be airing an interview with Mark Lemley, who is representing a website called Rojadirecta that had its domain name seized by the US government for copyright infringement in February of this year. But several blogs are reporting today that the Justice Department, which has worked with the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a domain name seizure operation known as Operation In Our Sites, has returned a mistakenly seized domain after a year of legal wrangling.

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. 

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

In my second entry on Superbetter, I discussed my confusion about the usefulness of a couple of aspects of the game - achievements and resilience score. After using the game for a few weeks, I wanted to post a short update about my feelings on the utility of these two aspects of the game.