Barney Rosset died yesterday.  Rosset never met a fight he didn’t like and his longest, most protracted fight was over freedom of speech in the U.S. and what he could lawfully publish.  Starting in the early 1960’s, with Grove Press, Rossett deliberately set out to test the limits of U.S. obscenity laws, first with D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and then with Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Winning the right to publish and distribute both he went on to introduce Americans to a whole new generation of writers and filmmakers – Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, William Burroughs, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Allen Ginsberg and Frederick Wiseman.  Brooke spoke with Rosset in 2008 about his life and love of literature.

The staff of OTM pick a few of our favorite things.  Please leave us comments below.

It's Monday and time again for a few of our favorite things.  Please post comments below and enjoy!

The staff of OTM pick a few of our favorite things.  Please leave us comments below and enjoy.

It's Monday and time for a few of our favorite things.

The staff of On the Media pick a few of our favorite things.

It's time for a few of OTM's favorite things.

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Thinking about cracking down on 'stolen' copyrighted material but worried you might be a hypocrite? Know thyself. The site, youhavedownloaded.com, has given SOPA opponents a new way to see which lobbyists and media companies have been attached to downloads of copyrighted material - an uncomfortable and contradicting situation for some of the very people who support SOPA. As the New York Times reports, "Users of the site have said they found connections between purloined content and major Hollywood studios as well as to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who has supported similar legislation in his country."

This is a small but insane story. Classified interviews conducted by the US military into what happened during the massacre in Haditha, Iraq were supposed to be destroyed as the last US troops leave Iraq. Instead they wound up in a kind of junk yard and The New York Times found them. I think it's the best story of classified documents exposed I've ever heard.

An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/united-states-marines-haditha-interviews-found-in-iraq-junkyard.html?hp

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

When the diplomatic cables leaked online last year via Wikileaks, the world saw thousands and thousands of behind-the-scenes conversations that are ordinarily classified.  The American Civil Liberties Union saw an opportunity.  They filed a freedom of information request with the State Department and requested 23 of the cables that discussed particularly controversial topics, including torture, rendition, Guantánamo, and targeted killings by drones.  When the State Department refused, the ACLU sued and now 11 of the cables have been released (albeit heavily redacted).  Compare the two and you get an amazing glimpse of what the U.S. government chooses to censor and why. 

This week Brooke speaks with Ben Wizner of the ACLU’s National Security Project about the redacted and unredacted versions.  But you know what they say about pictures and words and equivalency; the ACLU have created a webpage that shows the cables with redactions – but when you move your mouse over the blacked out sections, the text underneath is revealed.  It’s great fun and we encourage you to check it out: http://www.aclu.org/wikileaksFOIA

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Your weekly dose of recommendations from the staff of OTM.  Give us some of your own down in the comments section and enjoy!

Every week the staff of On the Media pick a few of our favorite things.  Feel free to offer us feedback in the comments section, and enjoy!

It's Monday.  Time for OTM staff picks. Feel free to offer us feedback in the comments section, and enjoy!