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Vote Different vs. PhonyFred.org: Apples to Apples?

BY Joshua Levy | Saturday, September 15 2007

This year has seen two controversies surrounding online political attacks that were designed to look voter-generated, but were actually produced by people indirectly connected to campaigns. In one, the producer and ... Read More

Tax Day Special Report: What is Online Fundraising?

BY Alan Rosenblatt | Sunday, April 15 2007

With all the attention being paid to how much money the candidates are raising online, I think we need to better understand what “online fundraising” means.  Does it just include funds that are solicited ... Read More

On "Hillary 1984": Phil de Vellis Speaks to YouTube and PoliticsTV

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, March 30 2007

YouTube news and politics editor Steve Grove has a great interview up on YouTube with Phil de Vellis (a.k.a. "ParkRidge47") on how and why he made the now famous "Vote Different"/Hillary 1984 video. The whole phenomenon ... Read More

Daily Digest: 3/28/07

BY Joshua Levy | Wednesday, March 28 2007

The Web on the Candidates There's a new GOP Bloggers straw poll out, and this month Fred Thompson is the conservatives' fave.   However, the Hotline's Blogometer is starting to notice a pattern: "a new name is ... Read More

Daily Digest: 3/23/07

BY Joshua Levy | Friday, March 23 2007

The Web on the Candidates He got it wrong: Yesterday morning, Ben Smith of the Politico reported that John Edwards was suspending his campaign due to his wife Elizabeth's recurrence of cancer. As we know now, Edwards is ... Read More

Daily Digest: 3/22/07 - Vote Different Edition

BY Joshua Levy | Thursday, March 22 2007

The Web on the Candidates Comments from around the web: Ben Smith of the Politico: "The web consultant who left Obama's web consulting firm after taking credit for the Vote Different ad has been shadowed in the past by ... Read More

ParkRidge47 Mystery Solved by HuffPost

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, March 21 2007

My hat is off to Arianna Huffington and her crew for figuring out who made the "Vote Different" Hillary 1984 video mash-up, and even better for getting Phil de Vellis, its author, to say more about his reasons for ... Read More

ParkRidge47: Not an R, and Not Bill Hillsman

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, March 21 2007

It's become a parlor game for the chattering class: Who is ParkRidge47? TechPresident blogger David All has a great post up on his personal site that, at least for me, pretty definitively closes the door on the author ... Read More

Daily Digest: 3/21/07

BY Joshua Levy | Wednesday, March 21 2007

The Web on the Candidates The search for parkridge47: It's been two weeks since techPresident's Micah Sifry first posted his email exchange with "parkridge47," creator of the Obama/Clinton "Vote Different" video, but the ... Read More

Hillary Responds to "Vote Different"

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, March 20 2007

NY1, the all-news cable channel of New York City, has gotten a response from Hillary Clinton to the "Vote Different" 1984 video. They report that she isn't worried about the video's impact. I'm told that this was an ... Read More

News Briefs

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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