iran­Fil­ter is a new col­lec­tive news web­site — writ­ten by reg­is­tered mem­bers — that focuses on Iran. Thanks to Boing­Bo­ing for the pointer.

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Jon Healey in today’s LA Times: Look­ing to Play a Dif­fer­ent Tune. As the num­ber of online music stores grows, carv­ing out their own niches may get tougher.

With 99-cent music down­loads mov­ing quickly from nov­elty to com­mod­ity, Full-Audio Corp. needed to set its online store apart.

So along with the stan­dard lay­out of hit albums and pop­u­lar songs, its Music­Now site fea­tures exclu­sive antholo­gies — such as “Shaken, Not Stirred,” a col­lec­tion of songs from James Bond movies, and “Mul­let Rock,” fea­tur­ing bands with bad ‘70s hairdos.

By con­trast, audiolunchbox.com doesn’t ped­dle any hits, or even any flops, from the major record com­pa­nies; the founders couldn’t afford the labels’ licens­ing fees. Instead, the store stands out online by offer­ing an array of tunes from inde­pen­dent labels, includ­ing Epi­taph Records and Bar­suk Records. And unlike all its com­peti­tors, it puts no lim­its on what shop­pers can do with the songs they buy. …

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From today’s NY Times: Hatchet Job? Rea­gan Movie Is Run of the Mill

There is no rea­son Showtime’s ver­sion of “The Rea­gans” could not have been broad­cast on CBS ear­lier this month.

Tonight’s made-for-television movie incited con­ser­v­a­tives to threaten a boy­cott, which led the net­work to can­cel it. Con­signed to Show­time, a pre­mium cable chan­nel owned by CBS’s par­ent com­pany, Via­com, “The Rea­gans” turns out to be nei­ther a lib­eral screed on Reaganomics nor a char­ac­ter attack on for­mer Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan and his wife, Nancy.

It is a movie. More pre­cisely, it is a made-for-television movie that squeezes real life char­ac­ters and his­tor­i­cal moments into a con­ve­nient dra­matic arc: a love story lived out against a back­drop of the cold war, Cal­i­for­nia pol­i­tics and Wash­ing­ton intrigue. “The Rea­gans” is rea­son­ably accu­rate, at times engross­ing, at other times silly and some­times even dull. It is not a thought­ful look at a crit­i­cal moment in Amer­i­can his­tory. It is a domes­tic drama about a lov­ing cou­ple beset by Hol­ly­wood agents, Repub­li­can back­ers, schem­ing advis­ers and, most of all, their angry, needy children.

Any­one eagerly antic­i­pat­ing or dread­ing a hatchet job on the 40th pres­i­dent is bound to feel confounded. …

When it can­celed “The Rea­gans,” CBS said it was not respond­ing to pres­sure, but mak­ing a “moral call.” But the three-hour ver­sion on Show­time does lit­tle to sup­port the network’s claim. “The Rea­gans” may not be a cin­e­matic mas­ter­piece, but it is hardly an act of treason.

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In this Sunday’s New York Times Mag­a­zine, Rob Walker has a long look at the iPod, mark­ing its two-year anniver­sary. (We’ve got two.) “The Guts of a New Machine” explores its design aes­thetic and much more.

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Paul Boutin in Slate: Will the broad­cast flag break your TiVo?

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InfoWorld: Breach of copy­right would be no crime under a draft Euro­pean Union law, as a Euro­pean Par­lia­ment com­mit­tee sug­gests mak­ing it a civil, not crim­i­nal offence, but enlarges scope of the draft law.

Mean­time, the UK’s Reg­is­ter has been fol­low­ing the lat­est exploits of “DVD Jon” Johansen, who recently unlocked itunes’ locked music. The read­ers also respond here and here.

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Jon Healey in today’s LA Times: Hey, kids! Want to join the FBI and chase music pirates? That would be the Funny Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tions, and the chase would take place in the make-believe world of a com­puter game based loosely on Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Trea­sure Island.” But the under­ly­ing mes­sage is seri­ous: Don’t boot­leg music.

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From today’s wire ser­vices, via the San Jose Merc:

Forum OKs stan­dard for next generation

Toshiba and NEC said Fri­day that the DVD Forum, an inter­na­tional asso­ci­a­tion of elec­tron­ics mak­ers and movie stu­dios, has approved the two Japan­ese com­pa­nies’ stan­dard for next-generation DVDs.

The move gives Toshiba and NEC a leg up on a rival stan­dard based on the Blu-ray disc for­mat, which has a larger record­ing capac­ity, advo­cated by Sony, Mat­sushita Elec­tric Indus­trial, which makes the Pana­sonic brand, and Philips Elec­tron­ics of the Netherlands.

But the approval does not rule out devel­op­ment of Blu-ray disc prod­ucts. Sony, Pana­sonic and Philips are also mem­bers of the DVD Forum.

Next-generation DVDs will be able to record five times the amount of infor­ma­tion of cur­rent DVDs.

The news brief leaves two key ques­tions unan­swered (and the DVD Forum web­site pro­vides not a clue): Will these next-gen DVDs be playable on the tens of mil­lions of DVD play­ers now on the mar­ket? And, what kind of addi­tional encryp­tion do these DVDs contain?

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I decided — mis­tak­enly, in ret­ro­spect — to forgo my new Packet8 Inter­net phone (which some­times causes small dropoffs in con­nec­tiv­ity) in favor of a tra­di­tional land line when I inter­viewed Ian Clarke, founder of Freenet, by tele­phone from Scot­land three weeks ago.

Today I got the bill (cour­tesy of SBC). For a 72-minute call, I was charged $163.

They’ll be receiv­ing a call from me on Mon­day morning.

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Newsweek has a fun lit­tle story about gaffes found by moviemistakes.com in the first two Lord of the Rings movies — with direc­tor Peter Jackson’s responses. Mean­time, it looks as if the Dec. 17 finale, The Return of the King, may be the best of the bunch. (Saw Mas­ter and Com­man­der on Fri­day, so I’m in an epic mood.)

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