You Tube pulled R&B singer Rihanna’s latest music video from her official VEVO channel early Friday afternoon citing a copyright claim from the RIAA. The video has come under fire by family values activists over its violent narrative that tells the story of the singer shooting dead the man who sexually assaulted her.

VEVO is a music video Website and a series of YouTube accounts that serve as the official music video channel for dozens of recording artists. It is owned by three record companies and was originally envisioned as a Hulu for music videos.

So it makes little sense that the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, which is also owned by the recording industry would file a copyright take-down notice on what’s essentially themselves.

After contacting VEVO about YouTube’s removal of the video for Rihanna’s song “Man Down,” VEVO posted a series of Twitter messages about the incident.

“We want to UnblockManDown — we’re looking into why it was removed from Youtube. … Some shady activity is going on, … We’re about to get our CSI on,” said the company on Twitter.

Rihanna herself responded on Twitter to the news that her video had been blocked on You Tube.

“…Cuz I’m black bitch. UnblockManDown,” posted the singer on her Twitter account.

When contacted by e-mail in Washington DC shortly before the end of business Friday, RIAA spokeswoman Liz Kennedy wrote to say that she would look into the matter, but later followed up to say that she was having difficulty finding anyone still at work.

Around three in the afternoon Pacific Time, VEVO reported on twitter that the official video was back online.

“When #RihannaNavy mobilizes, it’s breathtaking,” the company wrote. “To be clear, #ManDownVideo was not blocked because of the video itself. There was a phony copyright claim that we laid some smack down on.”

You Tube has not yet responded to a request for confirmation or explanation of the safeguards in place to ensure that erroneous copyright claims are not used to take down videos on the site in the future.

Before its release the video’s director, Anthony Mandler, told MTV it would be “dramatic and shocking and intense and emotional and uplifting and enlightening.”

“It’s just one of those songs that demands a strong narrative and visual, and let’s just say she let me go all the way”, said Mandler.

“Man Down” premiered on BET Tuesday night. By the next day three family values groups focused on television programming had joined together to issue a press release condemning the video.

“‘Man Down’ is an inexcusable shock-only, shoot-and-kill theme song. In my 30 years of viewing BET, I have never witnessed such a cold, calculated execution of murder in primetime. Viacom’s standards and practices department has reached another new low,” said Paul Porter, a former music programmer at BET and co-founder of Industry Ears, in the release.

BET refused to pull the video saying that it met their content standards and guidelines, but The Parent’s Television Council fired back and urged MTV not to air the video.

“If BET is serious that the video ‘complied’ with its standards, we would like to know just what those ‘standards’ are,” said Parent’s Television Council spokeswoman Melissa Henson in a released issued on Friday.

The video was pulled from You Tube later that day, although the link has since been restored.

While police policy specifically states that press passes are reserved for outlets that regularly cover breaking news about fire and police events, these official passes also allow reporters access to government events and entitle them to sit in the press section during Board of Supervisor meetings.

“I was literally in shock when they were saying that I wouldn’t be able to use my press pass,” said Bill Wilson, a freelance photographer who has covered San Francisco for more than five years, and used his press pass to cover President Barack Obama’s flight into San Francisco International Airport.

Although he hasn’t found himself unable to cover a story since the police revoked his press pass, he did say that he decided to not cover a political event at the airport because he believed he would need a valid pass to get in.

Even at City Hall, Wilson has found his press pass to be a necessity. On one occasion when he forgot his pass at home, a Sheriff’s deputy told him he couldn’t enter the media area; the deputy eventually convinced his supervisor to let Wilson in after vouching for him.

Lt. Troy Dangerfield, a police spokesman, told me that although the police hold press conferences in a room that’s big enough to hold every interested reporter, other facilities, such as the room the mayor uses for press conferences, are much smaller. People from the major networks complained that they were being crowded out by their independent counterparts, and the police department responded by revoking the press passes of any reporters who hadn’t recently covered a breaking news story involving the police or fire departments, said Dangerfield.

Reporting for the San Francisco Sentinel, one of several outlets now without a police-issued press pass, Pat Murphy writes that Dangerfield told him the complaints were “from, but not limited to, KGO and KTVU.”

But when reached by phone, both Kevin Keeshan, the news director for KGO television, and Tony Bonilla, the senior assignment editor for KTVU, were adamant that their stations never requested the police revoke other reporter’s press passes.

Both men seemed genuinely surprised by the suggestion and emphasized that no one from their stations would ever advocate that other reporters should be denied accreditation.

When asked about the conflicting stories, Dangerfield said that all he told Murphy was the complaints came from “the major media.” He said that he cited only KGO and KTVU as examples of major media, and that he never suggested they were the specific source of the complaint.

Dangerfield would not tell me what media outlets had complained. He said they had approached him in confidence, and he would only tell me it was “major news organizations and individuals.”

When I suggested that the information should be available under the California Public Records Act, Dangerfield implied my request would likely be fruitless and compared it to requesting the identity of someone who tips off the police to a crime. In this case the crime would be abusing the police press pass, he suggested.

Dangerfield said that the passes issued by his department could potentially be abused by dishonest reporters and said that the passes can even be used to get discount tickets to Disneyland.

He said that any reporters who want to have their press pass reinstated simply must begin covering fires and police events. Under state law, working journalists are allowed to cross police lines to report on fires.

Dangerfield said that this is the purpose of the police press pass, and journalists can always print their own passes to help identify themselves as reporters.

He said that the police press passes are not designed to gain access to events at City Hall and that other city agencies are free to create their own press accreditation process.

But Dangerfield offered no evidence that the major media’s complaints had anything to do with their struggle to cover fires or other incidents involving the police — the specified function of the passes. Instead, he said mainstream media complained to him that “we always have to be in the back,” a gripe far more common during scheduled press conferences than when news breaks.

On Monday of that week, activists moved into Wheeler Hall, a university classroom building, for a 24-hour-week-long demonstration they called Live Week. Police didn’t shut down the demonstration until around 4:30 Friday morning. Dozens of students woke up to find out they were under arrest. In all, 66 people were charged with misdemeanor trespassing and taken to Santa Rita jail.

After police raided Wheeler Hall, the organizers decided to move a planned concert to an off-campus co-op. Following the show, a group of concert-goers marched to the campus.

“Somewhere between 40 to 70 individuals showed up outside the chancellors’ house,” said university spokesperson Dan Mogoluf. “Some portion of them were carrying lit torches. Those torches were thrown at the house, heavy objects were also thrown at the windows in what appeared to have been an attempt to break them and to gain entry into the house, possibly, again this is according to UCPD.”

Police charged the eight people arrested that night with numerous felonies including, threatening an education official, rioting, attempted burglary, attempted arson of an occupied building, felony vandalism and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

After being held over the weekend on more than $130,000 bail, the district attorney chose not to file any charges against them at their arraignment and ordered their release.

Two of those arrested, Zach Bowin and Angela Miller, are students at UC Berkeley. The university filed an interim suspension that barred them from coming on campus or speaking to students and university employees.

Stephen Rosenbaum is a lecturer at Berkeley law school. He is advising both Bowin and miller on their student conduct hearings.

“Both of these students were served a notice of interim suspension. They’re identical notices, which were also served on the UC Davis students,” said Rosenbaum. “And it recites about six sections of the UC campus code of student conduct and then almost no facts in support of it.”

While Bowin’s suspension was relaxed and he will be able to attend classes this semester, a student conduct panel decided on Wednesday not to loosen miller’s suspension.

During the hearing, the administration showed a university press release and a photograph showing miller holding a torch as evidence. Police seized that photo from an independent journalist who was reporting outside the chancellor’s house. That reporter, David Morse, was also arrested that night.

The panel said in a letter to miller that it decided not allow miller to return to class in part because it was unclear of her commitment to her studies, that she didn’t demonstrate any positive contributions she made to the university, and because she didn’t show any remorse.

Rosenbaum said the outcomes might differ because Miller didn’t have a lawyer present for the hearing.

“The difference is because I was able to find out about Zach Bowin’s situation in time, last semester, I was able to represent him at a hearing where we got most of those restrictions lifted. “Unfortunately I was not aware of Angela Miller’s situation until a day about a day after her hearing was actually held. So she had the same conditions imposed on her as Zach and what’s worse is because she’s living in university leased housing, one of the co-ops, they’re telling her that she has to leave her house as of, I think it’s 5 p.m. this evening.”

But Rosenbaum said Miller plans to stay at her co-op despite the university’s demands.

“The university cannot engage in what’s called self-help eviction. It’s been the law for a number of years in California —and most states— where the landlord can’t come out with the sheriff and put your furniture and your clothing and your belongings on the sidewalk. We don’t operate in the wild west anymore,” said Rosenbaum. “Furthermore as long as Angela continues to be a registered student at the university, the Berkeley student cooperative is not able to evict her from her housing, and if they try to do that — I don’t believe they will — she has a due process to go through. Fortunately the Berkeley student cooperative does believe in due process in ways that the University of California, Berkeley, does not.”

Mogoluf, the UC Berkeley spokesperson said the university is forbidden by law from discussing specifics about students facing disciplinary charges.

“I feel like my rights have been taken away as a student, i feel like the uc has wrongfully criminalized me and it has taken unlawful actions. I feel like the university has overly punished me for nothing,” said Miller. “But I also feel that in all this trouble that’s being caused, there’s a whole community of listeners there, and I feel like they are helping me to win the fight for our education.”

UC Berkeley law lecturer discusses the Office of Student Conduct from Josh Wolf on Vimeo.

Angela Miller was thrown in jail and held on more than $100,000 bail after she was arrested from a crowd gathered outside UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s home. But even after the DA dropped all the charges against the eight who were arrested, the university is refusing to allow Miller to return to class.

No one has shown evidence that any of those arrested broke any laws when they joined a march on Dec. 10 that resulted in some property damage to the chancellor’s on-campus house.

But on Tuesday, the student conduct office told Miller that she had to meet with a disciplinary panel the following day about her interim suspension. She said she figured the meeting was just a formality so that they could relax her suspension before classes resume Tuesday. The university had already loosened Zachin Bowin’s suspension, the other UC Berkeley student arrested that night, and the two appear to be in the same situation.

Miller brought a fellow student to the meeting as her advisor and a few supporters stood outside the room while the panel met. After discussing her fate, the panel decided to maintain her suspension and continue to bar her from campus. The suspension order also prohibits her from speaking to any of her fellow students as well as university faculty and staff. It should be noted that university spokesperson Dan Mogoluf has said he doesn’t know of any instance in which the university actually punished a student for exercising their First Amendment right to speak to others and said the university is reviewing that provision in its boilerplate suspension order.

The student conduct panel told Miller that since she lives in a student co-op that leases its property from a university-owned building she would also need to move.

Berkeley Law School lecturer Steve Rosenbaum, who advised Bowin during his hearing, has agreed to represent Miller.

In this video taken outside of the student conduct office when Bowin appeared before a hearing, Rosenbaum — who had just been asked to leave for being “disruptive” for acting on his client’s behalf — describes his reaction to the student conduct process, which now threatens Miller future at UC Berkeley.

But witnesses say that the people arrested on Dec. 10, which include a journalist, two UC Berkeley students, two UC Davis students and others, weren’t the instigators. Instead, the people arrested were the ones who refused to flea from the cops, they say.

After being charged with multiple felonies, the arrestees were held on $132,000 bail. But when the people charged appeared in court — three of whom had already paid more than $10,000 for a bondsman to bail them out — the Alameda County District Attorney decided not to press charges at this time.

Zach Bowin, 21, a sociology student at Berkeley, was one of the eight arrested. Following his arrest, he was immediately banned from campus and unable to complete his finals on schedule. Under the terms of his suspension, Bowin was prohibited from communicating with all faculty, staff and students at the university.

During a hearing last week to modify the suspension, about 80 supporters, including students, faculty and staff, gathered outside the student conduct building on the 2500 block of Channing Way.

Rosenbaum described the order barring all communications with anyone associated with the university as an illegal infringement on Bowin’s rights.

When asked about the restriction, university spokesman Dan Mogoluf said he couldn’t speak about individual student’s disciplinary records but said he does not know of any situation in which the university took action against students for breaking their silence.

“The provisions in the letter are primarily about setting expectations regarding the student’s conduct while under the interim suspension,” said Mogoluf. “At this point the university understands that there is a concern. …That language is now under review in order to ensure it is correctly interpreted in the future.”

Outside the hearing, Steve Rosenbaum, a Berkeley Law lecturer and Bowin’s advisor during the hearing, told the crowd. “He wants to finish his final exams. … He’s got a paper due tomorrow. All of this could have been avoided with informal negotiations.”

The hearing’s administrator allowed Bowin to bring a legal advisor and one family member into the hearing, according to Rosenbaum. During the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, Bowin’s father and brother stood outside while his mom joined him inside. About 10 UCPD officers watched the crowd outside and guarded the doors to the student conduct office. One officer in police uniform, and another UCPD employee who was not wearing a uniform videotaped the hearing, according to Mogoluf who directed all further inquiries about the police department surveillance to police spokesman Lt. Alex Yao.

“We don’t comment on police operations,” said Yao.

At one point the officials told Rosenbaum to leave the hearing because he was being “disruptive.”

“It is a secret tribunal. I can’t believe the greatest public university in the world in the year 2009 — we’re almost 2010 — conducts procedures this way,” said Rosenbaum, who helped revise the student conduct code 30 years ago, “I tried to figure out what it means, you can’t because they make up the rules as they go along. The sole evidence is a press report that he’s going to be a threat to the campus,”

About 40 minutes after Rosenbaum addressed the crowd, Bowin and his mother left the student conduct office. His mother quickly flashed a thumbs-up before joining the rest of her family and Rosenbaum to huddle about the hearing’s outcome.

“The suspension was, I’d say 99 percent lifted,” said Rosenbaum after meeting with Bowin. “I think at the end of the day basically it was a victory. Zach maintained his status as he should.”

Ronald Cruz, an organizer for By Any Means Necessary, asked the panelists to identify themselves as they left the building, but his attempts were rebuffed. A woman believed to be the student representative on the panel told him her identity is confidential.

“I’m glad to be able to contact people,” said Bowin. “It’s not something someone would really say, but I’m happy to get back to my studies.”

David Morse, 41, a reporter for Indymedia, who was also arrested during the Dec. 10 protest, told the Planet he was standing back taking photographs when police took him into custody. He said that he was targeted as a journalist and that his camera and photographs were seized as evidence by a court order.

While no one is currently facing charges for the incidents outside the Chancellor’s home, the university is continuing to investigate. Several students have reported receiving calls from UCPD detectives. But despite the specter of “terrorism” raised by the governor, Mogoluf said the university has not called on state or federal law enforcement to assist in its investigation.

Adriel Hampton admits his chances of getting elected to congress are slim, but he hopes his web-centric vision of American politics will serve as a harbinger.

Like most of the candidates running in Tuesday’s special election for the 10th Congressional District, Hampton, a 31-year-old Democrat from Dublin, opposes the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He’s in favor of gay marriage, single-payer health care and is advocating for an end to the War on Drugs.

But it is Hampton’s roots in what’s been coined “Government 2.0,” that set him apart.
Government 2.0 is a movement to apply the framework of Web 2.0, — social networking, open-source software and collaborative communication — to politics and government.

“It gives us the ability to connect with each other. And to see where certain things lie and how we can come together,” said Brooklyn resident Noel Hidalgo, 31, of the New York state senate. “We traditionally would have created this one-way platform, (but) instead these online tools allow us to develop a forum-nature where we can communicate with each other as well as elected officials.”

As the Director of Technology Innovations, Hidalgo created a Web site for the state senate that allows voters to connect with their representative through phone and e-mail, but also Facebook and Twitter.

“Ten years ago a politician who didn’t know how to use e-mail wouldn’t get reelected, and pretty soon it will be the same way for social media,” said D-10 candidate Hampton. “Using Web 2.0 tools to set an agenda, to actually get more voter buy-in, to really use it for governance. I think what I’m trying to do now will become more popular.”

But Jack Pitney, 54, a Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, said Government 2.0 isn’t needed to break down the walls of communication between politicians and their constituents.

“What barrier? Anyone can e-mail members of congress now. In the days of postal mail they were attentive to postal mail,” said Pitney. “Obviously we’d all like immediate face-time with a member of Congress. That isn’t always possible. … There are many many problems with congress but I don’t think a disregard of constituent mail is one of them.”

Hampton acknowledges that it will be difficult to change the paradigm, but he said the potential for Government 2.0 goes well beyond what’s possible through phone calls or e-mail.

He is exploring using MixedInk, a web-based collaborative writing tool, to collectively write legislation with individual groups and constituents. He has also launched an interactive policy page at adriel.nationbuilder.com. Registered visitors to the site can choose to endorse or oppose the priorities that are already listed, or they can add their own agenda.

“A more transparent process would be pretty cool. You’d actually see who had their fingers in the legislation. … Sierra Club wants to mark up my legislation. I’m going to have the final say and everybody is going to see,” said Hampton. “I don’t think congress is going to embrace that. I think that you’re not going to change the status quo by just pushing on the status quo.”

But if Hampton’s ideas for Government 2.0 are liable to challenge the status quo, then a victory by Mark Loos, 46, a Republican candidate from Livermore, could be seen as a declaration of war.

Loos promises to vote the will of his constituents on everything that crosses his desk. He said he plans set up a secure Web site with a list of all the bills and allow every registered voter in his district to have an account.

“However this district wants this question answered, that will be the way I vote. … If the voters are really interested in the process they need to have some sort of benefit to read the bill. That’s why I like putting the teeth in it,” said Loos. “If I (have) to call every voter to get them involved, that’s what I’m going to do, literally.”

But Pitney insists nothing will ever replicate a New England Town Hall Democracy.

“I don’t see anyway that you could return to those days,” said Pitney. “I think the Internet is a wonderful tool. I spend most of my day online, but it does not represent a recreation of human nature.”

Shane Bauer, a reporter for New America Media, his girlfriend Sarah Shourd, a freelance reporter and their friend Joshua Fattal have apparently been captured by the Iranian government after accidently stumbling across the Iranian border, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sound familiar? But unlike Ling and Lee who work for a company headed by a man who has President Bill Clinton’s cell on his speed dial, these three intrepid travelers must rely on whatever strings Bauer’s small nonprofit employer can muster.

I couldn’t disagree more with the pundits on Fox News and am thankful to have seen Clinton step in to secure Ling and Lee’s freedom, but their concerns over how this will bode for the next group of Americans caught in a similar situation, which has already happened, is not completely irrational.

If asked, should Clinton agree to meet with Mahmud Ahmadinejad to secure the release of Bauer, Shourd, and Fattal? Would he be willing to step in for a repeat performance?

Or would that set a dangerous precedent equitable to negotiating with terrorists?

Meanwhile, the Chronicle is trying to experiment by offering a weekly column by Phil Bronstein that will only appear in print. As if Bronstein alone can save a newspaper that decided to raise prices because not enough people want to pay for it.

There’s been a lot of clamoring that the only way to stem off this plague that’s killed newspaper after newspaper is to start charging for online content. It almost makes sense, people don’t want to pay for something they can get for free so if you charge them to read it online both sides of the business should benefit right?

I doubt it. I suspect that charging for online access will simply result in fewer informed people and more people turning to cable news in lieu of newspapers.

Why? Because people will gladly pay money for their MTV and VH1 celebreality melee. They’ll even check out the news that comes with their cable from time to time. But how many people would pay extra if the news stations were an ala-carte package? Not many, and most of them would probably be in their 30s and above.

That doesn’t mean that young people aren’t interested in the news. Most of us just aren’t willing to pay for it. Everyone I know will grab the local weekly and thumb through it, often cover-to-cover. Our news is filtered through blogs, twitter, and original news websites on a constant basis, and it doesn’t seem like the internet has made us less informed.

But it has made us cheap. Napster taught us we didn’t have to pay for music and newspapers themselves conditioned us to the idea that news should be free. Napster’s gone, of course, but between Pandora, Hulu, and a myriad of other web applications, it’s difficult to persuade us to pay money for something that we can’t feel between our fingers.

Does this mean that we should just accept the death of newspapers and move on? I don’t think so. The Daily Post, The Daily News, and The Daily Journal all distribute free newspapers along the mid-peninsula and the business model appears to be successful.

Until earlier this month I wrote for the Daily Post, and the experience helped me understand that a newspaper serves a role in the community the way a website probably never will. And a free newspaper, especially in transit-rich communities, will be read by almost everyone, from the very rich to the very poor.

Poor circulation may have squeezed the life out of the newspaper business, but if the Chronicle wanted to do a real experiment — instead of trying to figure out whether anyone besides Bronstein’s own family will pay a $1 to read his column — they should try giving the paper away for free and sell more advertising to cover the costs associated with putting out the paper.