Archive for January 19th, 2006
Boycott Google, Suggests BusinessWeek
“What if 2006 is the year big media players take aim at Google’s kneecaps? No, not with more lawsuits. Rather, picture this: Walt Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal, and The New York Times, in an odd tableau of unity, join together and say: ‘We are the founding members of the Content Consortium. Next month we launch our free, searchable Web site, which no outside search engines can access. From now on we’ll make our stuff available and sell ads around it and the searches for it, but only on our terms. Who else wants to join us? Membership’s free.’
“A Content Consortium would wreak havoc with the Web as we know it in its bid to restore the role of content owner as gatekeeper. Doing it would require spinal implants for intimidated media barons. But the notion that some pushback is pending is not far-fetched.”
Jon Fine. Putting The Screws To Google. BusinessWeek Online. Jan. 23, 2006.
See also:
Techdirt. How Jealousy Could Destroy The Internet. Jan. 13, 2006.
BNA E-Commerce Law Daily. In Battle Over Use of News Headlines, Court Focuses on Policy Implications for Web. Jan. 12, 2006.
Updates:
Center for Citizen Media Blog. Biting the Hand that Feeds? Feb. 1, 2006.
Greg Sandoval. Newspapers Want Search Engines to Pay. News.com. Jan. 31, 2006.
Adam Pasick. Newspapers Take Aim at Google in Copyright Dispute. Reuters UK. Jan. 31, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Why U.S. Broadband Is So Slow
“At the top of my wish list for next year’s Consumer Electronics Show is this: the introduction of broadband service across the country that is as up to date as that 103-inch flat-screen monitor just introduced by Panasonic. The digital lifestyle I see portrayed so alluringly in ads is not possible when the Internet plumbing in our homes is as pitiful as it is. The broadband carriers that we have today provide service that attains negative perfection: low speeds at high prices.
“It gets worse. Now these same carriers – led by Verizon Communications and BellSouth – want to create entirely new categories of fees that risk destroying the anyone-can-publish culture of the Internet. And they are lobbying for legislative protection of their meddling with the Internet content that runs through their pipes. These are not good ideas.”
Randall Stross. Hey, Baby Bells: Information Still Wants to Be Free. The New York Times. Jan. 15, 2006.
See also:
Lessig Blog. The Fiction Zone That DC Has Become. Jan 13, 2006.
Between the Lines. The Bandwidth Scarcity Myth. Jan. 11, 2006.
Patrick Barnard. A Two-Tiered Internet in Our Future? TMCnet. Jan. 10, 2006.
Gigaom. Need For Speed… How Real? Dec. 20, 2005.
Philip J. Weiser and Thomas Bleha. Which Broadband Nation? Foreign Affairs. September/October 2005.
Thomas Bleha. Down to the Wire. Foreign Affairs. May/June 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.)
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Digitization Movement Excludes Librarians
“What would you do if you had a personal home library numbering in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands of books? Hire a librarian, right?!
“The open access movement has put masses of scholarly content, similar to what one would expect to find in an academic library’s periodical collection, into the line of sight of Yahoo! Search, Google Scholar, Scirus, and other free Web search engines. How is a user to tell the wheat from the chaff, the plums from the prunes, the true from the false? Hire an information professional, right?!
“Well, we know they need us, but do they?”
Barbara Quint. The Home Guard. Searcher. January 2006.
Updates:
Chris Alden. Libraries Begin Uncertain New Chapter. The Guardian. Feb. 22, 2006.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
Libraries Failing In Nation’s Capital
“More than $450 million is needed to properly fix the District’s public library system, a task force said yesterday, because the buildings suffer from years of neglect and should be almost entirely rebuilt.
“The draft report released yesterday marks the launch of the public phase of an effort by Mayor Anthony A. Williams to change the face of the frayed library system.
“It calls for adding at least 400 computers in the city’s 27 libraries, replacing half of the books in the next three years and expanding and reorganizing staff. The decision to release the report hours before the first of a series of public-comment meetings drew fire from critics.”
Debbi Wilgoren. Overhaul Urged For D.C. Libraries. WashingtonPost.com. Jan. 18, 2006.
See also:
District of Columbia Public Library. Community “Listening Sessions” on Mayor’s Task Force Recommendations to be Held at D.C. Public Libraries. (Press Release). Jan. 10, 2006.
District of Columbia Public Library. The District of Columbia Public Library: A Blueprint for Change. (.pdf, 695 kb) November 2005.
District of Columbia Public Library. Draft Technical Report of the Mayor’s Task Force on the Future of the District of Columbia Public Library System. (.pdf, 3.7 MB) November, 2005.
CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.
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