Verizon has apparently dropped 1938media’s content from its Vcast service and the distribution deal is off. Some people are happy with the decision while others think it is hypocritical. What do I think? Obviously, Verizon is a private company that gets to do whatever it wants, and this kind of controversy isn’t good for business. But those who argue that this isn’t a free speech issue are making a mistake, I think. It’s easy to stand up and defend speech when we agree with it — harder to do so, but just as important, when we don’t.

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A video that controversial video-blogger Loren Feldman of 1938media did almost a year ago has come back to haunt him, it seems. Several civil-rights groups and media watchdogs are protesting a decision by telecom giant Verizon to add 1938media’s video clips to its mobile Vcast service, saying Loren’s “TechNigga” clip is demeaning to black people. Project Islamic Hope, for example, has issued a statement demanding that Verizon drop its distribution arrangement with 1938media, which was just announced about a week ago, and other groups including the National Action Network and LA Humanity Foundation are also apparently calling for people to email Verizon and protest.

The video that has Islamic Hope and other groups so upset is one called “TechNigga,” which Loren put together last August. After wondering aloud why there are no black tech bloggers, Loren reappears with a skullcap and some gaudy jewelry, and claims to be the host of a show called TechNigga. He then swigs from a bottle of booze, does a lot of tongue-kissing and face-licking with his girlfriend Michelle Oshen, and then introduces a new Web app called “Ho-Trackr,” which is a mashup with Google Maps that allows prospective johns to locate prostitutes. In a statement, Islamic Hope says that the video “sends a horrible message that Verizon seeks to partner with racists.”

The TechNigga routine (which was actually a series of videos) apparently led to Loren’s distribution deal with Podtech being dissolved, and also caused problems with The Huffington Post — which 1938media was also working with — after founder Arianna Huffington was quoted as saying she was offended by the clip. Loren also said recently that a proposed deal to make videos and write columns for CNET was on hiatus, although it wasn’t clear exactly why. Was the company concerned about possible offensive content, given the TechNigga incident and the series of videos taking shots at social-media guru Shel Israel? Possibly.

On some level, I can understand the protests against Loren. Some of his content is in pretty poor taste. That said, however, a lot of it is also pretty funny. Does it cross a line sometimes, or at least come right up to the line and stick its tongue out, or give the line the finger? Yes. Lots of good comedy does. There are plenty of people who don’t think TechNigga was funny, and for the record, I am one of them. I get the point that Loren was trying to make (or at least I think I do), but to me it just didn’t work. Loren’s friend Prince Campbell — who is black, and considers Loren a friend (as I do) — has said much the same thing.

But does that mean his content shouldn’t be allowed on Verizon’s mobile service? No. I think when it comes to comedy and critical commentary of all kinds — satire or otherwise — we have to offer a lot wider latitude than we might otherwise. Freedom of speech shouldn’t be just a flag that we wave from time to time whenever it suits us. It’s an important principle. Loren should be free to make and distribute his content, and others are free not to watch it. Somehow I doubt that a mega-corporation like Verizon is going to see it that way, however.

So what is going on? A quick recap: Shel is a social-media consultant and Loren Feldman is a former actor who started a video-production business called 1938media.com and began doing video blog posts about some of the personalities in the blogosphere — Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Dave Winer, etc. Loren has a New York accent and attitude, and doesn’t pull any punches either in language or delivery, looking straight into the camera and calling people out if he thinks they need to be called out. It’s refreshing, and it’s often pretty funny — but it is also occasionally kind of mean-spirited, in that “Hey, you’re a moron, and your mom dresses you funny” kind of way. Think Don Rickles with video.

Loren’s videos “taking the piss” (as the Brits say) out of Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis got him a lot of attention, and he has wound up becoming friends with both of them — and as far as I can tell is now working on doing the same with Julia Allison (here’s the two of them discussing what is okay and what isn’t okay as far as parody goes). One of the places where Loren made friends with Mike was at mesh 2007, when Mike was a keynote and Loren was on a panel about video, and for the record Loren was polite and funny and a pleasure to have as a panelist. I did a video with him, and he was a real pro.

Over the past few months, Loren has been making fun of Shel and his video interviews, which until recently Shel was doing through FastCompany.tv (where Scoble now works). The early videos were fairly painful to watch, and Loren sent a lot of Twitter messages and so on around about how bad they were — and then came the puppets. In a flash of evil genius, Loren came up with the idea of doing interviews with a puppet version of Shel, and has since done them with a number of people, some of whom Shel knows. I confess that I find the videos pretty funny — even though Shel has made it clear that he doesn’t, and that he resents people like Mike Arrington supporting Loren, and resents friends who are playing along with the joke.

One of the reasons I decided to write about all this is that there are some fascinating debates going on about the implications and issues involved, and most of those discussions are taking place on FriendFeed. There’s a thread from a few days ago in which Chris Pirillo compared what is happening to the abuse of Kathy Sierra (a comparison I took issue with in a comment on that thread — I think they are very different); there’s also a thread that Dave Winer started, in which he rails against people who defend Loren, blames Mike Arrington, attacks complete strangers, and draws some comments from Loren as well as support and non-support from a host of others.

As Mike Arrington notes in one thread, Dave’s role in all this is a lot more murky than he would like to let on: some early Twitter messages make it clear that Dave thought the videos were pretty funny, and that Shel was handling them the wrong way by getting his back up, instead of laughing along the way Mike and Jason and Scoble have. Those Twitter messages have been deleted. Dave has also taken some of his own shots at Loren and has also said some fairly mean things about Stowe Boyd in the past (although he says they are friends now).

In Twitter messages, Loren has said that Shel took shots at him when he was starting out, and that in some sense what he is doing is payback. I asked him about that on FriendFeed, and his response is here. But he also argues that what he is doing — whether it’s mean-spirited or not — is funny, and that he finds Shel’s reaction to what he’s doing fascinating, in the sense that a social-media guru can’t seem to figure out how to handle it. Is it funny? Opinions differ on that front. I think a lot of it *is* funny (although I thought the Tech Nigger routine crossed the line), and the problem with edgy comedy is that it’s not always clear what is too far until the line has been crossed.

I must admit that on a certain level, whether it’s high school 2.0 or not, I find the whole thing fascinating too. The latest installment is here.

For anyone who has an actual life and hasn’t been paying attention to the brouhaha between Shel and Loren, it started when Shel began doing video interviews for FastCompany.tv. Loren — who makes corporate videos and also does his own blend of free-form comedy and commentary videos at 1938media.com — began criticizing the quality of Shel’s videos mercilessly on Twitter and on his blog, and also started posting parodies of Shel’s videos using Muppet-style hand puppets.

At some point, Loren also noticed that Shel hadn’t bothered to register the domain name version of his name, ShelIsrael.com. So Loren did, and it is now filled with parodies of Shel using the puppets, with some of Shel’s actual videos mixed in. At this point, I should probably mention that I know and like Loren — we had him as a panelist at the mesh conference last year, and he is very funny. But there’s no question that he likes it “edgy,” as they say, and not everyone takes to that.

Regardless of what you think about Loren grabbing Shel’s domain name, or taking repeated shots at him on Twitter and elsewhere, there’s no question in my mind that Loren is just having fun with Shel — just as he has with Jason Calacanis, Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble, all of whom are now friends. As Aaron Brazell notes in a comment on Shel’s blog, Loren often goes after people he either respects or likes — it’s the video equivalent of a boy pinching a girl when he likes her.

That’s why I thought the best take on this whole thing came from Tom over at Tom’s Tech Blog, who has written a thoughtful post about how Shel has handled this whole affair in completely the wrong way. It’s not just that he has been sniping at Loren on Twitter, or threatening to get private investigators to look into his background — it’s more that he hasn’t followed through on the principles in his book. And more than that, he’s made it obvious that he doesn’t really have much of a sense of humour either. For a comedian like Loren, that is the ultimate flaw.

For any of you not familiar with Loren, his video blogging usually involves a stark, in-your-face, blunt assessment of someone’s shortcomings, something the British refer to as “taking the piss” and New Yorkers refer to as “talking.” A prime recent example was the clip below about Jeff Jarvis, which is right on that fine line between cruel and hilarious — territory that Loren pretty much owns.

Although he is part of Podtech now, like Robert Scoble, that hasn’t stopped Loren from taking shots at the Scobleizer, or at Jason Calacanis, or pretty much anyone else for that matter. If you know Ze Frank at all, just think of Loren as the anti-Ze — or like Ze with a five-day growth of beard (and occasionally without a shirt) and a really bad hangover.