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Last week, The Next Web broke the news that CBS, Pepsi, and Entertainment Weekly magazine will join forces to launch the first video advertisement in a paper magazine. A paper-thin screen on the page, activated when a reader open the magazine, will then flicker and load the video. Is this the future or just another fad? Chase Jarvis calls it “pretty damned desperate.”

The Pentagon has commissioned The Rendon Group to run a background profile on any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces. And who is doing these checks? Rendon, the firm notorious for furnishing false information to justify the invasion of Iraq during the Bush administration. Stars and Stripes has the full story.

Burning Man, which starts Monday, has spurred controversy this week with its photo rights policy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said that its policies to “protect attendees’ rights” are infringing on fair use rights. Of course, the Burning Man organizers argue that “our rules about photography are different from the outside world – but isn’t BRC’s unique environment what makes Burning Man transformative in the first place?”

The Federal Trade Commission has decided to jump into the crowded “Where is journalism headed” debate. In December they will run a series of workshops titled “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” in December.

The “Obama Joker” photo has stirred up plenty of controversy since Flickr decided to take it down. Flickr says it received a takedown notice from a copyright holder, but PDN did some investigative work and found that neither Time, DC Comics, nor the photographer seem to have sent such a notice. Blogger Thomas Hawk says he saw the name on the takedown notice, and it looks like “a totally bogus made up name.”