10 Zen Monkeys
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hailing its premiere as "the return of the webzine," 10 Zen Monkeys is a daily-updated internet publication covering areas like tech and pop culture, politics, internet memes, and controversies. It ranges in tone from hard news to gossip and opinion, capturing a distinct voice and sensibility. It's listed as a "Very High Authority" web site (the highest rating) by the blog ranking site Technorati, which also lists it as one of the 1,000 most linked-to sites on the internet.
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[edit] History
Former GettingIt.com collaborators R. U. Sirius, Jeff Diehl and Lou Cabron started publishing in September of 2006 under the banner of the MondoGlobo Network of internet properties. The site first got major attention in October and November 2006 for its stories about negative mid-term campaign ads and a civil lawsuit that Diehl and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed against "social griefer" Michael Crook. R. U. Sirius is known for his writings on the Counterculture, Psychedelia and Cyberculture, co-authoring Timothy Leary's final book, Design for Dying, and more recently, Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. He was also a founding editor of Mondo 2000, one of the first magazines about cyber-culture.
[edit] The Gawker Firing
Gawker fired their blogger Nick Douglas after he gave an interview to 10 Zen Monkeys. Douglas wrote gossip about Silicon Valley on Valleywag, and public statements by Gawker's Nick Denton claimed the firing was due to a desire to change the site's tone. However, an internal memo surfaced on New York Times blog, DealBook attributing Douglas's firing to sarcastic comments he'd made in an interview with 10 Zen Monkeys claiming Valleywag intended to provoke a lawsuit.
[edit] The Crook Controversy
The site first wrote about Michael Crook when he mimicked Jason Fortuny's experiment of baiting men on Craigslist by pretending to be a young woman looking for casual sex, and then posting their private information on a website. The article contained an image from Crook's appearance on Fox News Channel a year back. Crook claimed ownership of copyright over his likeness in the image and filed a DMCA takedown notice to have it removed. Diehl saw this as an abuse of the law and an attempt to harass the publication for criticizing Crook, and filed a lawsuit in which he was represented by free speech lawyers from the EFF.
As the blogosphere picked up the story, Crook continued to serve takedown notices on sites that ran his image in any form, including Boing Boing, Laughing Squid, and even Jason Fortuny. On March 14, 2007 the EFF announced Crook had agreed to their settlement terms, including relinquishing all claims to the image, withdrawing all DMCA notices with a promise not to send more, and even recording a video apology to the internet.
[edit] Notable articles
- Awesomest Congressional Campaign Ever
- 5 Nastiest Campaign Ads So Far
- EFF and 10 Zen Monkeys vs. DMCA and Michael Crook
- Crook's Internet Club
- Neil Gaiman Has Lost His Clothes
- Dan the Automator Remixes the Blue Angels
