Here it is folks, the 2003 usage statistics for Memestreams.net!

As you can see, the site is continuing to grow. Its worth comparing this with the statistics from 2002, which are at http://www.memestreams.net/awstats.html

The monthly usage graph is drawn to scale, so keep in mind that the usage in Jan 2003 is greater then the usage in Dec 2002. Scale the graphs in your head and you can see the progression. We are still trucking forward, and yet we are still very much in the early part of a network effects curve. This years Unique Visitors number is just a little over an order of magnitude larger then last year's. I hope to see another order of magnitude increase next year.

An interesting thing occurred in September of 2003. We got referral spammed. This means that a group of people set up robots which hit our site and claimed to be a web browser which came in from a link on a site that these people are trying to advertise. As a result I can't show you the statistics for referrals from other websites. They are spammed out. This also means that there was a bit of a spike in the overall numbers in September. The later months of the year were also impacted by the holidays. People simply tend to use the internet a lot less over Thanksgiving and Christmas.

In any event, hope you find this all interesting, and Happy New Year!

Statistics of www.memestreams.net for 2003

] Thus, at least according to this court, the more uncommon
] (and provocative) the context of the remixing, the less
] likely it is legal. Of course, this raises the question
] of how new contexts can ever become legal. Presumably, at
] some point in history, no one framed art. Then the first
] person came along and put a painting in a frame. Under
] the theories in Mirage and Munoz, that person would have
] been historically guilty of copyright infringement
] because the context of their remix was uncommon at the
] time.

This article is interesting and also deeply troubling. Apparently recontextualization of someone else's artistic work is a copyright infringement EVEN IF YOU PAID for the copy that you are recontextualizing unless there is a specific fair use exception. This is copyright law preventing artistic expression for no financial reason, but strictly to prevent expression.

LawGeek: We fought the Kuleshov effect and The Law won?

Alleged enemy combatants, after all, don't tend to be an organized constituency of campaign donors who can garner congressional attention.

This is quite an essay. The Washington Post is saying that we have a Congress that is completely ignoring it's responsibilities to the most critical Consititutional matters of our time, both because they are afraid of the Administration, and because they don't care: Constitutional issues are not important to the various special interests and lobby groups that make up their electoral support structure.

Congress doesn't care...

] So if jobs are scarce and wages are flat, who's
] benefiting from the economy's expansion? The direct gains
] are going largely to corporate profits, which rose at an
] annual rate of more than 40 percent in the third quarter.
] Indirectly, that means that gains are going to
] stockholders, who are the ultimate owners of corporate
] profits. (That is, if the gains don't go to self-dealing
] executives, but let's save that topic for another day.)

Here's our so-called recovery. Anyone here feel left out in the cold?

Op-Ed Columnist: Our So-Called Boom

Here is a direct link to the recent Gallup results on American opinions about the Iraq war. What you think of those opinions probably has a lot to do with how closely they resemble your opinions. The exception is the one Ryan pointed out... Do you think Sadam was involved with the 911 attacks? He wasn't and this is a simple factual measure of how confused you are about what is going on.

The rate is as high now as it has ever been. A slight decrease in the number occurred in September when Bush said he wasn't involved, but now its right back up again, proving that the only thing worse then our grasp of the facts is our attention span.

Campaign finance reform attacks the symptom and not the disease. We don't need campaign finance reform, we need voter clue reform. As long as so many people remain completely incapable of independent thought they will always be the victims of big marketing budgets.

Gallup Poll Analyses - Americans are clueless

] The more commercial television news you watch, the more
] wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq
] War and its aftermath, according to a major new study
] released in Washington on Thursday.
]
] And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News
] channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your
] perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by
] the University of Maryland's Program on International
] Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

Fox News, keeping America stupid and confused..

Asia Times - Study: People who watch TV less likely to understand Iraq

] Given the state of world affairs in March 2003, we have
] made this place for war murals and other graffiti artist
] war reactions.

Decius: In response to Rattles recommendation of Grafarc, I offer this: 8 pages of war related murals.

Art Crimes: War Art

] Own A Piece of BellSouth History…

] Due to downward trends in payphone usage, BellSouth plans to
] discontinue providing services to its payphone location provider
] customers.
]
] In partnership with BellSouth Public Communications, the BellSouth
] Pioneer Volunteers are offering for sale original renovated and
] completely operational BellSouth payphones and coinbox doors.

No longer do you need a crowbar to have your own payphone..

BellSouth Renovated Payphone Sale

] Matt Adams has a different idea. He's the co-founder of Blast
] Theory, a digital-arts group based in the United Kingdom
] that creates mobile multiplayer games that fuse wireless
] virtual space with real space.

Worth a look if you're interested in how people might use location based services.

Wired News: On Your Mark, Get Set, Unwire!

Chock full o' good "insider" informtion on the miltary and intelligence communities internationally.

Cryptome