Archive for October 2005
Clash of the (New) Titans: Exposure vs. Control
“Did you know you can search television? That you can type in ‘yada yada yada,’ and find the exact frames where George Costanza’s girlfriend Marcy said it first? Weird as it may seem, you can do it with one of Google’s little-known products, Google Video. It’s part of Google’s not-quite-secret master plan—to make as much of the ‘offline world’ searchable online as humanly possible.
“Google is the company that wants to be loved, and it is invariably shocked when people object to what they are doing. That, recently, has amounted to a lot of shock.”
Tim Wu. Leggo My Ego. Slate. Oct. 17, 2005.
See also:
On the Media. Steal This Book. Sept. 30, 2005. (Transcript of Bob Garfield interview of Siva Vaidhyanathan.)
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Photo Shops Seek Image Theft
“Bloggers, beware: That photo of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes on your Web site could be fodder for a lawsuit. Stock photography companies like Getty Images Inc. and Corbis Corp. are using high-tech tools to crack down on Web site owners who try to use their photographs without paying for them.
“At sites like GettyImages.com and Corbis.com, advertisers, publishers and others looking to license professional photographs can browse and purchase millions of high-quality images. In making it easy for customers to find pictures, though, the sites have also made it easier to swipe a copy of an image and post it on the Web.”
Vauhini Vara. Photo Agencies Scour the Web for Copyright Violations. The Wall Street Journal Online. Oct. 14, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Battle Royale in Tunisia
“Next month, world diplomats will travel to Tunisia to tackle a topic so dense that it normally clears a room in seconds: how the Internet is governed.
“But the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society could be the scene of an international brawl, with some claiming that the core freedoms and integrity of the global network are at risk.
“The battle centers on how much control the United States will continue to have in overseeing the Internet’s plumbing.”
Jonathan Krim. U.S. May Face World at Internet Governance Summit. WashingtonPost.com. Oct. 13, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Apple Unveils Video iPod & New iMac
Commentary by K. Matthew Dames, executive editor.
There was once this guy called Michael Jordan. He used to play basketball. He was pretty good.
A few years ago — April 20, 1986, specifically — this Jordan guy was in Boston, Mass. to play a basketball game. Jordan had missed most of that season (his second as a professional) with a foot injury, and rushed himself back so that he could play in that game. On that day, in that game, this Jordan kid proceeded to pummel the legendary Boston Celtics with an array of spins, pirouettes, fades, crossovers, and vacuum-inducing dunks that left the best team in basketball dazed and confused with admiration and respect.
Larry Bird, who at that time was probably the best player in the same league as Jordan said after the game, “I didn’t think anyone was capable of doing what Michael has done to us. He is the most exciting, awesome player in the game today. I think it’s just God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
Steve Jobs is on that kind of roll. “Unconscious,” is the term sportscasters would use.
Apple Unveils Video iPod & New iMac
Commentary by K. Matthew Dames, executive editor.
There was once this guy called Michael Jordan. He used to play basketball. He was pretty good.
A few years ago — April 20, 1986, specifically — this Jordan guy was in Boston, Mass. to play a basketball game. Jordan had missed most of that season (his second as a professional) with a foot injury, and rushed himself back so that he could play in that game. On that day, in that game, this Jordan kid proceeded to pummel the legendary Boston Celtics with an array of spins, pirouettes, fades, crossovers, and vacuum-inducing dunks that left the best team in basketball dazed and confused with admiration and respect.
Larry Bird, who at that time was probably the best player in the same league as Jordan said after the game, “I didn’t think anyone was capable of doing what Michael has done to us. He is the most exciting, awesome player in the game today. I think it’s just God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
Steve Jobs is on that kind of roll. “Unconscious,” is the term sportscasters would use.
HP IP Head Discusses Patent Licensing
The shakedown is on.
In the aftermath of the dot-com bust, a new kind of business with a simple, yet potentially lethal, model has emerged. Call them the ‘patent trolls.’
These operators have no products or customers. Yet they wield the power to bring the companies that actually make and sell products to their knees. This makes them as threatening as the toughest competitor in the market.
Joe Beyers. Rise of the Patent Trolls. News.com. Oct. 12, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Japan Seeks iPod Tax
“In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple’s success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan’s music industry has a different idea: putting a fee on iPods.
“The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple’s iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, which will be probably be 2 to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for revenue lost from home copying.”
Martin Fackler. Japan’s Music Industry Wants Fee on Sales of Latest Digital Players. The New York Times. Oct. 10, 2005.
(Editor’s Note: The Times allows free access to their stories on the Web for seven days before sending the stories to the paper’s fee-based Archive.)
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