I agree with crap fire whatever who said the proper argument is being muddled. Maybe if a frickjillion people stopped tearing apart the issue, we could all just track the story from the parties actually involved, and go ‘hmm, thats interesting.. but we dont need to bother posting a hundred billion times about it’.

Everyone’s crazy but me.

Instead of phoning people at random to breath heavily at them and speak dirty to them (you know, “Huh … huh … uptight rightwing nutjob … huh … huh … naked leftie commie … huh … huh … middle of the road moderately dressed independent … huh … huh … huh”), you do it online. It’s verbally abusive political pornography. A whole new genre!

I’m sure you’ll be invited to Gawker to discuss it in more detail. Until then, please keep it between yourself and your analyst.

The only so-called confusion arises when people repeatedly call a radio show AND its web site something they don’t even call themselves. Then the web site quotes said blogger to make its case. Ah what a lovely, circular web….

Why oh why would anyone want to muddy the waters and create such confusion? Why such efforts to discredit and malign OSM in its first two days of operation?

If it isn’t one thing, you can bet your booties it will certainly be another any second now. [Wonder who owns WGBH Radio Boston? Oh geez. It’s that right wing bastion, “Public Broadcasting from Boston”. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=WGBH&btnG=Google+Search Who would have thunk it?

I believe that’s 3.5 million, Noel.

So what if they’re mostly conservatives and have got 3 million dollars to spend? It’s what they say that matters. Let’s hear them before we start savaging them. There’ll be plenty of room for that in their comments section.

Furthermore, the concept of .org has now officially lost ALL meaning, as this is a for-profit blog site, nothing to so with an organization.

Very, very cynical use of the domain extension, and the name.

And very confusing for fans of the other Open Source Media.

The ‘net’s culture is defined by inventive names like Napster, Amazon, eBay. One of the world’s biggest, most successful companies is named “Google”. PJ Media would have fit in, suggesting something irreverant and unpredictable. The fact that they felt the name was inappropriate for their venture says something about their overblown self-image. Simon et al need desperately to get over themselves.

OSM doesn’t distinguish itself from the pack, and the choice is indicative of a lack of nerve (also a great Internet media name by the way). Others have been using the same name (for other types of businesses) for quite some time. A simple search would/should have told them that – yet they used the name ANYWAY. Laziness? Arrogance? Take your pick. Either way, this does not bode well.

Open Source
A joint production of Open Source Media Inc. and the University of
Massachusetts-Lowell, Open Source is presented by WGBH Radio Boston and distributed by … http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=radio+open+source&btnG=Google+Search

Who is it, exactly that is creating a “growing dispute over the name” [and other disparaging efforts re OSM] around the blogosphere? More importantly, why?

Just color me cynical, eh?

Ah, that must be it for sure, then. I thought the thing was supposed to be a bipartisan effort. If it’s *predominantly* conservatives, that explains the overheated hyperbole, and it explains why some people are assuming that I’m blindly defending a conservative effort, when I’m only asking why the exaggeration is necessary.

Now I’m torn… I don’t think you’re entirely right, Eileen, in laying this all on politics. There is clearly a growing dispute over the name, and that’s apolitical. But the overheated hyperbole clearly *is* political, if not deeply personal (as we see with DennisThePeasant).

Well… good luck to whoever. I use Bloglines for my “blog portal”, anyway.

I disagree with you here, Carson Fire. OSM’s trade name is distinct from the radio show’s trade name, OPEN SOURCE. Moreover, OSM’s corporate name is wholly distinct from the radio show’s production company name.

They don’t need to change a damn thing.

I would love to see you advance that argument in court. Seriously, I’d really like to see it.

DJM: I’m not arguing for OSM; I’m pointing out the exaggeration of bloggers when they get a burr up their butt.

If you have a winning argument, why introduce easily contested exaggerations and fibs? As I said, OSM will most likely have to give up their name because of the radio show’s incorporated production company. But the shorthand of saying that the radio show was called “Open Source Media”, when it apparently was not, only muddies what should be a slam-dunk case.

Why would a lawyer be that stupid?

In the case of a blogger, it’s just an inconvenient detail. The story flows better if we say that OSM nicked the radio show’s name. It doesn’t sound as strong to say that OSM nicked the name of the radio show’s production company. Not as sexy.

But it’s those inconvenient details that get you in trouble, even if you’re right. Look at Rather and Mapes… there are certainly plenty of leftists, Democrats, and assorted Bush-haters who are convinced that the AWOL story is true, but it doesn’t matter because Rather and Mapes flagrantly fudged on the inconvenient details.Rather and Mapes lost their “case” in the public court (and CBS’ commission, too) because they tried to prove their case with unsupportable materials, which wound up effectively voiding and discrediting whatever other evidence they may have had.

Being right isn’t an open license to fib and exaggerate.