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File in the “Free Country?” category….

Miramax, a film company owned by the Walt Disney Corporation and home to such diverse films as Kill Bill and Shakespeare in Love has pulled the distribution of Michael Moore’s latest film Farenheit 9/11.

Why? Because they “expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush’s brother, Jeb, is governor” according to the story via the NYT.

Wow…this is wrong on so many levels that I can’t even begin to list them. Isn’t there something that should protect this speech from political retaliation of this sort? A company, based in a state, fears retaliation from the governor because the film that said company is producing is critical of his brother, who happens to be the president of the US.

Wow.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

5 replies on “File in the “Free Country?” category….”

Well, to me the critical thing is that Disney’s afraid of losing tax breaks, i.e., extra-special treatment that they get from the State of Florida. I’m not sure I’d call losing a tax break “retaliation;” I might be more inclined to call it “redistributing the wealth.”

But then, I’m just basically a communist.

Nevertheless, point well taken regarding the fundamental cowardice of large corporate media.

Oh, I agree (that you’re a communist).

🙂

Just kidding! Actually, far be it from me to defend the Disney corp. for basically ANYTHING. They are as near “evil” as any media corp. can be. The situation is just a bit…odd.

I don’t think I’d trust anything that came from Disney that claimed to have any historical
content anyways..

First of all it is not a movie, but a documentary. I agree the movie was very biased leaning
toward one side way too much, and put together just to show what the bias was,
but not a single thing in there was a lie, otherwise Moore would be sitting now.
They were all facts.
Sorry to break this news to you, but you are living in the world of lies

Reality, just pure reality we are part of, but don’t want to know it.

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