May 28, 2003
A new LA media blog
Here's a new LA media blog: L.A. Observed, by Kevin Roderick. The lead item today concerns a memo by L.A. Times editor John Carroll on liberal bias. I'll be adding it to my blogroll in the coming days.
News sites' standards get loose
Steve Outing in E&P: Newspapers' Taste Standards Get Loose Online. Some Web Sites Push the Envelope. It opens with my backyard paper:
When the "Bay to Breakers" community road race in San Francisco was covered this year, SFGate.com, the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, ran a photo of nude male runners -- showing their bare backsides -- prominently on the home page. The print edition of the Chronicle took a more conservative approach, publishing photos of runners wearing underwear and fake fig leaves. This newspaper Web site and others apply far different taste standards online than in print -- even though the sites are operated by the same newspaper companies. It's part of an effort by publishers to attract younger audiences.
NYT drops its free news tracker
Oh, no. The NY Times is following the lead of the LA Times and ending its free news tracker service. Just got this notice from the Times:
As of June 13, 2003, Times News Tracker will be available to paying subscribers only and the original free service will be suspended. ...
The fee for the enhanced service is $19.95 per year.
I liked the old service just fine, thank you. But gotta keep those shareholders happy!
Apple pulls plug on Rendezvous
Interesting development with Apple and its iTunes Music Store. Today's NY Times carries a story about Apple's decision to pull the plug on Rendezvous:
... [I]t would not be an online success story without a complicating twist. That complication came this week when the specter of the music industry, which has been publicly supportive of iTunes, began to loom over Apple. The success of iTunes, after all, depends on cooperation from the music business, which controls the songs that iTunes wants in its collection. Apparently trying to stay in the record industry's good graces, iTunes removed a service it had previously offered customers. Called Rendezvous, the service enabled listeners and their friends to access one another's music and listen to it ó but not download it ó from any computers. Hackers, however, had figured out how to download the music as well, creating programs with names like iLeach and iSlurp. So on Tuesday Apple sent out an update for its iTunes software, disabling Rendezvous and limiting music access to a user's local network at home or at work.In a statement released yesterday, Apple said Rendezvous had been "used by some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us."
"We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) their music between computers at home or in a small group setting, and it does this well," the statement said. "But some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know. This was never the intent." A spokesman for Apple, Chris Bell, said the company made the decision by itself.
FCC decision: cutting off debate
Washington Post: In recent days, the FCC -- about to make a decision about the easing of media ownership rules -- has been inundated with hundreds of thousands of e-mails and e-petitions urging the agency to put off a decision. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Why does Blair fascinate us?
LA Times: Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass have the attention of columnists, magazine covers and bloggers -- because "we have a fascination with people who break the rules." Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
The saddest bloggers in the land
The saddest bloggers in the land must be the four newspaper bloggers at the Albuquerque Journal who reside behind a paid registration wall, meaning that their blogs are visible only to the hundreds or few thousand souls who ponied up for a subscription to the ABQjournal. (To spot 'em, scroll 2/3rds of the way down the right nav.) This is speculation, but a blogger who's cut off from the blogosphere has got to feel a bit unspecial.
John Fleck said:
I dunno. Sad? Sure, I'd enjoy a bigger audience. My bosses made a controversial decision to charge for our web content. A lot of folks in the industry, and a lot more folks in the cyberworld who have come to expect stuff to be free, think that's dumb. But about the time we started charging for web content, our home subscription numbers started climbing at a time when most everybody else's are flat or declining. So whatever my personal feelings might be about the decision to charge, it's hard to argue with the business logic. And since the blogs are among our most popular web content, the logic seems extensible.
To keep the sadness at bay, I have a personal blog that's fully free, but even behind the Cash Curtain, my Journal blog gets a lot more readers.
May 27, 2003
Jury slams eBay with $35 million verdict
Bloomberg News: eBay Inc. was ordered to pay $35 million yesterday [Tuesday] after a federal jury in Norfolk, Va., said that it was impermissibly using a company's innovations for conducting sales over the Internet.
What utter nonsense, and yet another indication that the patent system is out of control.
eBay's crime? Introducing a "buy it now" option for its auctions.
Record labels not into digital distribution
Wired News: Industry watchers say the decision by Sony and UMG to sell their service Pressplay to Roxio indicates that the major labels are turning away from distributing music online. By letting someone else "own the highway," they can still reap some of the profits.
Debunking pseudoscience
Archaeology magazine takes a look at how a group of fed-up archaeology buffs launched a Web site to help debunk ìalternative histories,î such as ancient space travel and the existence of Atlantis. The article also features a list of the top five pseudoarchaeological sites and the top five sites that refute them. Good stuff.
Disney is thinking inside the box
Jon Healey in the LA Times: Attempting to bypass the middlemen, the entertainment giant will test a service that beams movies into homes.
Hoo boy
Baltimore Sun: Journalism the 'Right' Way. Groups are teaching students to start their own conservative newspapers, with the long-term goal of altering the basic makeup of professional news outlets.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
Suspended N.Y. Times Reporter Says He'll Quit
Washington Post: Suspended Putlizer Prize winner Rick Bragg says a "poisonous atmosphere" has descended on the New York Times, one that prompted the paper to suspend him for practices he considers routine.
Here's CJR on Bragg's suspension.
And it gets uglier: NY Post: Four New York Times reporters under investigation for Jayson Blair-like abuses have "banded together" and may sue the paper if their names are leaked, says a source.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.
Spam and local radio
From today's San Jose Merc:
Editorial: Congressional bill to kill spam would do the opposite.
Brad Kava: Taking the 'local' out of radio programming.
Bush Tax Cuts Will Do a Number on Us
Op-ed piece by James K. Galbraith in Newsday. Take a look at Texas as a preview of what's ahead for the nation.
May 26, 2003
Some new additions to J-Log
kpaul has launched a couple of enhancements to the J-Log (J as in journalism): A My J-Log page that lets you customize your page, and a page devoted to the fine art of webmastering.
Probing the whys of digital editions
Holiday weekend update: Took our 4-year-old to Fairyland in Oakland yesterday and the San Ramon Kite Festival today. All three of us are wiped out.
Tomorrow morning I begin writing a piece on newspaper digital editions, or electronic replicas offered by companies such as NewsStand. Anybody bloggers ever read these things?
May 25, 2003
A look at photo blogs
Sunday's NY Times takes a look at photo blogs. Among those mentioned:
Chris Pirillo said:
It's getting easier and easier to do... ;)
May 24, 2003
PopTech sets lineup for October
PopTech has published this announcement of its program for this fall:
Pop!Tech Unveils 2003 'Sea Change' Conference.CAMDEN, Maine -- Pop!Tech, the world's premier conference exploring the impact of technology on society and the future, today unveiled its 2003 program, outside program chair, and new speakers for its fall conference, taking place October 16 - 19, 2003 in Camden, Maine. ...
Penn State prez on file sharing
Penn State President Graham B. Spanier, a leading figure in addressing the issue of file sharing on university campuses, discussed the topic May 22 in an online chat session hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's the transcript. Spanier shared his thoughts on how colleges should resolve the problem of file sharing on campuses, and whether or not it is a problem they should deal with at all. Spanier currently co-chairs a joint committee of the higher education and entertainment communities. In addition, here's the text of his recent testimony on peer-to-peer file sharing on campuses before the U.S. Congress.
Here's an excerpt from the chat:
Spanier: I don't think universities should block all P2P file sharing, since it is a legitimate technology that can have important uses, especially for research, collaboration, and education. The problem is how to prevent inappropriate uses, such as pirated music, videos, movies, and software. Few universities at this point actually block such material, and it is debatable whether there is a technology out there that could prevent a determined person from gaining access to what he or she wants. But there is pressure from Congress and from the owners of IP to block piracy.
And here's the Chronicle of Higher Ed's story: A President Tries to Settle the Controversy Over File Sharing. Penn State's Graham Spanier wants to make a deal with the music industry.
From across the media landscape
Recent pointers in IWantMedia:
Jimmy Guterman in Business 2.0: Return of the Dotcom Media Flameouts. The Wall Street Journal Online is adopting blogging conventions for its reporting.
Penton Media: The monthly print edition of Internet World will be discontinued with some services continuing on the magazine's website and email newsletter.
Columbia Journalism Review: The Lies We Bought: The Unchallenged 'Evidence' for War. The success of "Bush's PR War" was dependent on a compliant press that uncritically reported many fraudulent administration claims.
Business Week: The Faint, Fading Voice of the Left. Conservative voices in American media will become even louder if FCC chairman Michael Powell succeeds in easing ownership rules.
New York Daily News: College students shouting "God Bless America" pulled the plug on a New York Times reporter who gave an anti-war speech at an Illinois graduation.
Sad times we live in.
In your dreams, W.
What utterly preposterous gall.
Here's PBS's Online NewsHour with a segment on the White House's efforts to manage the message.
And as for a real patriot, here's Bill Moyers on candor in journalism and Memorial Day 2003.
Is a wi-fi bubble building?
News analysis in Business Week: Is a Wi-Fi Bubble Building? As one of tech's few growth areas, it's luring startups and VC cash -- in a familiar pattern. First to feel a pop may be consumer outfits.
Armies of the Right
Scary stuff: Armies of the Right: What campus conservatives learned from the '60s generation. In Sunday's NY Times Magazine.
bernie said:
A teeny-weeny little crack in the far-left hegemony that has stifled academia for three decades, and it gets labeled "scary stuff"? So much for intellectual diversity! Sounds like another case of SAD (Sixties Arrested Development).
JD said:
To each his own. When I look out at the political landcape, it appears that the right wing is in control of the presidency. In control of the Senate. In control of the House. In control of the Supreme Court. It's not enough that they control the political agenda and set the media agenda. Now they're coming after our kids by funneling tens of millions of dollars (wonder where those Bush tax cuts for the rich are going?) into recruitment efforts on campus.
As the article says:
>As with college conservative movements in the past, the recent wave has been fueled and often financed by an array of conservative interest groups, of which there are, today, almost too many to keep straight: Young Americans for Freedom; Young America's Foundation; the Leadership Institute; the Collegiate Network; the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. These groups spend money in various ways to push a right-wing agenda on campuses: some make direct cash ''grants'' to student groups to start and run conservative campus newspapers; others provide free training in ''conservative leadership,'' often providing heavily subsidized travel to their ''publishing programs''; others provide help with the hefty speaking fees for celebrity right-wing speakers. Through these coordinated activities, these groups have embarked in the last three years on a concerted campus recruitment drive to turn temperamentally conservative youngsters into organized right-wing activists.
Disposable DVDs go to the dumps
Katie Dean in Wired News: Environmentalists have one word about one movie studio's plans to market disposable DVDs: nuts.
What we have here is a solution in search of a problem.
Will the FCC add to media monopoly?
William Safire: The Great Media Gulp. Excerpt:
Many artists, consumers, musicians and journalists know that such protestations of cable and Internet competition by the huge dominators of content and communication are malarkey. The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many.Does that sound un-conservative? Not to me. The concentration of power ó political, corporate, media, cultural ó should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy.
Why do we have more channels but fewer real choices today? Because the ownership of our means of communication is shrinking. Moguls glory in amalgamation, but more individuals than they realize resent the loss of local control and community identity. ...
May 22, 2003
ReplayTV may strip ad skipping
Here's a big loss for the viewing public: ReplayTV May Strip Ad Skipping.
ReplayTV said it would likely leave some controversial features on its home television recording machines for now but may strip them from new models.ReplayTV, the digital video recorder maker purchased last month by Japan's D&M Holdings from bankrupt Sonicblue (SBLU), said it is mulling the fate of ReplayTV's features that skip commercials and send saved programs over the Internet.
Marc Canter said:
Well we knew it was coming so....
Thanks again to Craig Newmark and the EFF for fighting the fight.
JD said:
In a year or two, these used ReplayTV boxes may become hot items on the resell market. Especially if no other technology company steps up and offers similar features. (We use the TiVo fast-forward function perhaps 15 to 20 times a night, which becomes tiresome after a while.)
Tim Berners-Lee on the web's future
Wired News reports from Budapest: Tim Berners-Lee, the man who dreamed up the World Wide Web, is worried that commercial interests threaten the future of the Internet. Speaking at the International World Wide Web Conference, he offers a possible solution.
New movies section at NYT
The NY Times has launched an ambitious national Movies section. The section includes:
• National Showtimes and Ticketing: Find a movie and buy your tickets right on the spot.
• Rate and Review: Rate movies and write your own reviews.
• Critics' Picks: Find movies recommended by New York Times critics including The Times's "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made."
• Review Archive: A complete list of New York Times movie reviews dating back to 1983, as well as selected reviews back to 1929.
• Box-Office Charts: Weekend and all-time data for the U.S. and Canada, New York City and the U.K.
• DVD/Home Video: A complete section devoted to new releases.
Gotta like it. This was something city guides were good at. Glad to see the Times get ambitious here.
Hi-def camcorders and going digital underwater
Two David Pogue articles in today's Circuits section of the NY Times:
The High-Definition Camcorder Enters the Picture
Digital Underwater Photography, with shots of his snorkeling safari on his personal site. Nice. And here's Canon's meaty guide to underwater digital photography.
Also in Circuits:
A browser that shrinks web pages. Opera, a Norwegian company known for its Web browser for full-size computers, has introduced a new browser for some Nokia mobile phones.
False Web Ratings (in recommendation systems) Swing Opinion, Study Says
Annika Sorenstam shoots a 71
One minute ago, Annika Sorenstam shot a 71 in her opening round of the Colonial. She played well, but bogeyed the last hole to finish one above par. She said earlier that she hoped to shoot "around par," so this was a good day for her. The announcers on the USA network said she's got a 50-50 chance to make the final cut tomorrow and play through Sunday. I hope she does well.
The Web vs. big media
In Salon's continuing brilliant series on media consolidation, it brings us: Can the Web beat Big Media? FCC czar Michael Powell says new technologies will let diversity flourish even as giant corporations consolidate their control over TV and newspapers. Dream on.
May 20, 2003
New effort to monitor TV content
I'm 200+ emails behind due to pressing deadlines, and I've missed posting a number of articles I found interesting, so I hope you'll forgive my transgressions in the cathedral of blogging.
Meantime, in Wednesday's NY Times: A New Attempt to Monitor Media Content. A new group, called Common Sense Media, is introducing a Web-based media ratings system, devised with help from the publishers of the Zagat guides, that will rank entertainment products based on language, violence, sexual content and adult themes.
Einstein's genius lives on -- online
NY Times: Now on the Web, a Peek Into Einstein's Thoughts, Excerpt:
Yesterday the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University and the California Institute of Technology, where the Einstein Papers Project has its headquarters, started a new Web site, www.alberteinstein.info.It contains digitized images of some 900 Einstein papers as well as a searchable list of 43,000 documents in the archive. ...
The online collection includes all 230 original scientific manuscripts and drafts that were in his possession when he died ...
Among them, she said, is a notebook in which he worked out his general theory of relativity, which explained gravity as the warping of space-time geometry and is generally regarded as his greatest achievement. The notebook has been intently studied by historians in recent years.
In addition there are about 700 nonscientific writings and speeches and fragments from his travel diaries kept during trips to the United States, Japan and South America, among other places.
May 19, 2003
'Star Wars Kid' gets bucks from blogs
A couple of webloggers are raising money for an unfortunate teenager humiliated worldwide after a private video of his energetic lightsaber moves was leaked to the Net.Webloggers Andy Baio and Jish Mukerji launched a fundraiser Friday for the young man they call the "Star Wars Kid," whose home video has been downloaded millions of times and watched by people all over the world. ...
By Friday afternoon, the webloggers' fund had received more than 100 individual donations totaling nearly $1,000.
On Google, blogs and web publishing
Doc jumps into the fray on such matters at Dan's piece on OhmyNews and the twin pieces in the NY Times yesterday with this theme, says Doc:
Both carry a subtext that says bloggers aren't serious, and blogging is not Serious Journalism. Also that blogging is, in some way, a threat.
Related to all this, somehow, is Jonathan Peterson's Amateur Hour entry today, Embraceable News, in which he has some advice for big-media publishers, to wit:
In short, the problem isn't blogs or Google, the problem is that large publishers are unwilling to embrace the web. The way to fix that is for publishers to make changes, not Google. Use mod_rewrite to hide that ugly CMS, put content in it's permanent location the FIRST time you publish it, let the search spiders walk your site, read some documentation about search engine placement, leave your archive content visible. Or don't.
Doc has more on printwashing here, with the bottom line:
In the age of the Web, the practice of charging for access to digital archives is a collossal anachronism. It's time for The New York Times and the other papers to step forward, join the real world and correct the problem. Expose the archives. Give them permanent URLs. Let in the bots. Let their writers, and their reputations, accept the credit they are constantly given and truly deserve.
Steven Johnson on blog space
Steven Johnson in Wired: BLOG SPACE: Public Storage For Wisdom, Ignorance, and Everything in Between. Excerpt:
What happens when you start seeing the Web as a matrix of minds, not documents? Networks based on trust become an essential tool. You start evaluating the relevance of data based not on search query results but on personal testimonies.
mentor said:
However, we need to bear in mind that blogs, as a new phenomenon in the Internet space, are not minds, the blogs are only representations of people's minds (i.e. the thinking process) to some extend. Blog entries are documents also, albeit different type of documents with properties and attributes different than stand alone isolated documents (reports, articles, static web pages. etc.).
From: http://www.kmentor.com/socio-tech-info/archives/000075.html
Napster reborn?
Amy Harmon in today's NY Times: Deal May Raise Napster From Online Ashes.
But Wired News is a step ahead, announcing:
Software maker Roxio said Monday it has acquired for about $40 million the online music service pressplay, a venture jointly owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.Roxio, best known for its CD-burning software, owns the Napster brand and is expected to relaunch pressplay under the name that set Internet music file-swapping in motion.
May 18, 2003
Indie journalism fueled by reader donations
Interesting things going on in Maine. Freelance journalist-blogger David Appel made an appeal to his readers for him to pursue an investigative story. On first blush, it's highly unorthodox for a journalist to ask readers to pony up money for a piece of journalism. On second blush, isn't that what newspaper publishers do every day?
Here's the story from David, from Blogads, and from kpaul. Excerpt from Blogads:
Wednesday, journalist/blogger David Appel pitched his blog readers to support a story filled with "big politics, big science, and big money."David has been investigating a sugar lobbying group's attempt to get Congress to kill funding for the WHO, which offended the sugar daddies. "Usually, at this point I'd query editors of various magazines and, usually, get assigned an 800 word story or so, paying anywhere from $400 to $1,000 or more."
Instead, he asked 40 readers to donate $5 each, so he can publish the story on his blog. $200 "is a fraction of what I'd usually get for this type of work, but I want to try it for the idea of it all." David is "a full-time freelance science journalist living in southern Maine... has appeared in Scientific American, Salon, New Scientist, Nature, Audubon, the Boston Globe, Discover, Psychology Today, and many other publications."
Blogs redraw the cultural map
More from today's Sunday NY Times:
As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation
A New York State of Blog (a profile of Nick Denton's Gawker)
Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It. Excerpt:
While personal blogs have been around for years, their proliferation has caused a wrinkle in the social fabric among people in their teens, 20's and early 30's. Inundated with bloggers, they are finding that every clique now has its own Matt Drudge, someone capable of instantly turning details of their lives into saucy Internet fare."It's like all your friends are reporters now," said Douglas Rushkoff, a blogger and author of "Media Virus" and other books about the impact of technology on society.
In the rush to publish, many bloggers are running headlong into some of the problems conventionally published memoirists know too well: hurt feelings, newly wary friends and relatives, and the occasional inflamed employer.
"All writing is a form of negotiation between the reader and writer over what constitutes responsibility," said David Weinberger, author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," a book about the Internet. "Because blogs are a new form, the negotiation can easily go awry."
Mr. Weinberger said the confessional nature of many blogs had "redrawn the line between what's private and public."
The most curious factoid in the article was the statement by Nick Denton that there are "three million active blogs online." But Nick didn't say that. As he notes, only about 20 percent of those 3 million blogs are active. The Times will likely not publish a correction, and other media outlets will doubtless now pick up on the wildly inaccurate 3 million blogs figure.
Citizen journalism in South Korea
Dan Gillmor is just back from South Korea and files this report in today's San Jose Merc: A new brand of journalism is taking root in South Korea. Excerpt:
OhmyNews is transforming the 20th century's journalism-as-lecture model, where organizations tell the audience what the news is and the audience either buys it or doesn't, into something vastly more bottom-up, interactive and democratic.The influence of OhmyNews is substantial, and expanding. It's credited with having helped elect the nation's current president, Roh Moo Hyun, who ran as a reformer. Roh granted his first post-election interview to the publication, snubbing the three major conservative newspapers that have dominated the print-journalism scene for years.
Even taxi drivers who don't have time for newspapers have heard of OhmyNews. The site draws millions of visitors daily.
How Wal-Mart shapes cultural tastes
The Sunday NY Times has a story on the impact of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains on American popular culture. Excerpt:
Music executives say the chains have helped turn country performers like the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith and Faith Hill into superstars. And major book publishers say the growth of the mass merchandisers has helped produce a string of best sellers by conservative authors like Bernard Goldberg, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly.The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains ó they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD ó has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers.
"They have obviously reached the Bush-red audience in a big way," said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, chairman of AOL Time Warner's books unit ...
May 17, 2003
The DVD wars
From Reuters in Wired News today:
Hollywood Expands DVD Dupes War
Major movie studios launch a lawsuit in New York against five makers of DVD copying software as a similar court battle continues in California. Film makers call the products illegal, while software companies say "fair use" provisions of copyright law protect their offerings.
This DVD Will Self-Destruct
Disney found a way to rent DVDs without needing a system to get the discs back. Using self-destruction technology, Disney will begin "renting" DVDs this August that become unplayable after two days and do not have to be returned.
Ms. Jen said:
"...do not have to be returned."
But will Disney make them bio-degradable one hour after the two days are over?
May 16, 2003
New media sessions in Berkeley
UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism is sponsoring another even-filled new media week. The sessions will focus on multimedia, convergence and online publishing:
Monday, May 19
Doing Weblogs for Newspapers and Local News Sites
7:00 ‚- 8:15 p.m.
- Ken Sands, managing editor of online and new media, The Spokane Spokesman-Review
- Paul Andrews, technology columnist for the Seattle Times and author of The Paul Wall Weblog
Tuesday, May 20
Charging for Online Content
12:45 -‚ 1:45 p.m.
- Peter Krasilovsky, vice president and senior partner, Borrell Associates
The Daily Routine of Internet Users: The Day-Part Survey
7:00 - 8:15 p.m.
- Rusty Coats, director of new media, Mori Research
Wednesday, May 21
Online Advertising and Revenue: The Personal Shopper
7:00 - 8:15 p.m.
- Bob Cauthorn, vice president of digital media, San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, May 22
Doing a Multimedia Project
1:00 ‚ - 2:15 p.m.
- Robyn Dochterman, interactive editor, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Friday, May 23
Putting Multimedia Into Practice: Deadline Stories and Projects
1:30 - 5:00 p.m.
- Rob Curley, general manager, World Online, the Internet division of The Lawrence Journal-World
All the presentations are free and no RVSP is necessary. Each presentation will be in the library at the UC Berkeley Journalism School in North Gate Hall. Directions are available here.
The presentations also will be Webcast live here.
The sessions are sponsored by the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and USC Annnenberg School for Communication.
FCC: Public Be Damned
The Nation: Consumer and public-interest groups say FCC chairman Michael Powell hasn't allowed enough scrutiny of the impact to to democracy from easing media ownership rules.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.
ONA conference set for November
Early-bird registration is now open for the fourth annual Online News Association Conference and Awards Banquet, to be held in Chicago on November 14-15, 2003.
As usual, the prices are absurdly high for any journalist or student whose news organization won't spring for the costs: $300 for journalists who belong to ONA, $475 for non-members, $100-$200 for students, with all those prices going up after Aug. 31.
The dullest blog in the world
The NY Times profiles a British blogger who writes the dullest blog in the world.
I guess irony isn't dead.
Why the RIAA loves tech
RIAA chief Hilary Rosen has a piece in Business 2.0: Why the Recording Industry Loves Tech. Forget what you've heard -- the RIAA believes technology holds the key to music's future. All you have to do is give that future a chance.
Court hears DVD copying dispute
Wired News: A federal judge listened to arguments Thursday in a lawsuit filed by Hollywood studios against a maker of DVD-copying software. The case could determine whether DVD owners can legally copy portions of videos. Katie Dean reports. Excerpt:
Russell Frackman, an attorney for the Motion Picture Association of America argued that the "321 product mimics and copies the CSS authentication," the encryption lock that is encoded on his client's DVDs, thereby bypassing security settings. The DMCA prohibits this, he argued.Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is illegal to bypass any technical measures that control access to copyrighted materials. The law also bans any technology that can circumvent these mechanisms.
But Daralyn Durie, attorney for 321 Studios said the court should take into consideration that the intended users of its products have already purchased the DVDs from which they are reproducing content.
"The DMCA has to be read to allow users access to encrypted content if they have the right to access it, if it is purchased," Durie said.
She argued that once a consumer buys a DVD, there is no license to tell them what they can and cannot do. They own the DVD. Durie compared an encrypted DVD to an antique, locked chest, explaining that if the item is purchased, the owner has the right to break the lock and access what's inside.
A fascinating -- and important -- groundbreaking case in the digital rights wars.
Search results clogged by blogs
Wired News: While many commercial websites struggle to be noticed, some bloggers are unintentionally attracting lots of hits. Their daily utterances, even on topics they know nothing about, are generating high traffic from search engine queries.
May 15, 2003
Stick a stake in the Lakers
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Here in Northern California, we watched the lunar eclipse usher in a new era as we drank a toast to the demise of the most arrogant team in professional sports. And most pampered. As the ESPN sportscasters summed up the loss during a too-lengthy obituary tonight: "You half expected David Stern to run onto the court and say, 'Wait a minute! Best of nine!' "
The false dynasty is no more.
ed cone said:
i'm with you until the "false dynasty" thing. three in a row is pretty dynastic.
Kynn Bartlett said:
Thank goodness it's over.
You think it's bad in northern California -- try being in southern Cal and not enjoying the Lakers.
--Kynn
JD said:
First two championships were legit. With the third, they used sixth and seventh players -- the referees -- in Game 6 of the western conference finals. Legitimately, their two-term reign as champs should have ended right there.
I suppose if they celebrated their victory with style and grace and even a hint of humility, we non-Laker fans could have overlooked that egregious miscarriage of sports justice. But Shaq, Rick Fox and Kobe don't know a thing about class.
On wireless and convergence
Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org has some good new postings about the TV Meets the Web Seminar and the IFRA online trends conference in Amsterdam, where the emphasis was on wireless.
Showdown at the FCC
On PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer today: The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote early next month on whether to allow companies to own more media outlets in a single market to expand into more media markets. The proposed changes would mark the most significant revision to media ownership regulations in a generation.
Blair may cash in on Times scandal
More on the Jason Blair reporting scandal at the NY Times:
NY Times: Editor of Times Tells Staff He Accepts Blame for Fraud. The Times' town-hall style meeting was closed to news coverage. As a result, Jacques Steinberg, The Times's media writer, was not allowed to attend it.
Newsday: Trying Times For Executive Editor. Times insiders say the Jayson Blair case is galvanizing opposition to Howell Raines.
Reuters: NY Times Editors Meet with Angry Staff Over Scandal. Howell Raines, who was asked if he considering resigning, says he plans to stay on, and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says he wouldn't accept his resignation.
Raines admits, "I was guilty of a failure of vigilance." Still, Blair's actions were so beyond the pale for a journalist that I have a hard time siding with those who want to lay the blame at Raines' feet.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.
Meantime, here's the latest:
Reuters: Jayson Blair, who resigned as a national reporter for the New York Times amid charges he plagiarized and falsified stories, is taking steps to cash in on the scandal, the Daily News reported on Thursday.Blair may not miss his Times paycheck for long after hiring literary agency David Vigliano Associates to explore book and TV deals, according to the newspaper.
I hope Blair's efforts to profit off his heinous behavior crash and burn (even though I have high regard for David Vigliano, who was the agent for my novel).
Jason, take some time off, travel, see the world, get your head together. But a tell-all of your lies and deceit isn't worthy even of the Fox network.
Watching rental films on the PC
NY Times Circuits columnist David Pogue sizes up the two online movie-rental services: Movielink and CinemaNow. His bottom line:
There's a key difference between the movie-download sites and the music-download sites, however: the music sites show a glimmer of promise.How CinemaNow stays in business is a marvel. The site is so marred by typos and poor programming, it could have been a high school sophomore's first Web design project. After you provide your credit-card information during the registration process, you're asked for it again on the next screen, and yet again each time you buy a movie. It's like a hovering Blockbuster employee who follows you around the store, asking every 30 seconds: "And you're sure you can pay for this, right?" ...
It boggles the mind that these services don't exploit the potential of the Internet. Any number of improvements could make them more attractive than other video outlets. Online movie stores could offer tens of thousands of movies, dwarfing the selection of video stores. Digital rentals could last two weeks, not 24 hours, without costing the companies a penny more. And there should be a choice of download speeds; people willing to wait longer for superior quality should be allowed to. It is executives, not technology, who keep these services from greater success.
Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'
Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict.But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived. ...
Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital. ...
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan." ...
Thanks to Hylton for the pointer.
Meantime, comes this book news:
The Iraqi lawyer who provided maps to lead Marines in their rescue of Private Jessica Lynch Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief's RESCUE IN NASIRIYA: The Untold Story of American P.O.W. Jessica Lynch's Harrowing Ordeal and the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Save Her, to David Hirshey at Harper, in a significant deal for nearly $500,000.