Posted on July 23rd, 2008 by William McGeveran
Last November, when powerhouse social networking site Facebook unveiled its new “Facebook Ads” programs, company founder Mark Zuckerberg declared, “Once every hundred years, media changes.” (This absurd hyperbole immediately became a punch line, as in the hilarious response from Nicholas Carr at the time.) I have criticized these programs before from a privacy […]
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Filed under: Social Networking, Digital Media, Privacy, Scholarship, Media
Posted on July 16th, 2008 by William McGeveran
I have complained before (here and here) about private entities that make public employee salary data available online. Now my local newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, has jumped on the bandwagon, plopping data about the paychecks of at least 52,000 state, county, and city employees into an online database, conveniently searchable by name. […]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Digital Media, Privacy, Intermediaries, Media
Posted on July 10th, 2008 by William McGeveran
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports another infuriating example of universities betraying their key role in the dissemination of knowledge and becoming just another greedy content provider. (The converse of this, I guess…)
Apparently some universities now cut deals with publishers to sponsor “custom” versions of textbooks and then require their students to purchase those special […]
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Filed under: Open Access, Education & Copyright, Copyright, Scholarship, Media
Posted on June 28th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
On reading about the dispute between the Associated Press and the Drudge Retort, I wondered immediately if AP had hired the Count from Sesame Street, and whether Cookie Monster blogs.
Copyright fights with bloggers are nothing new. Heck, they even show up in divorce proceedings occasionally. But this looks like serious overreaching by AP, for three […]
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Filed under: Copyright, Education & Copyright, Internet & Society, Intermediaries, Scholarship, Media, Peer Production, Blogging
Posted on June 11th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
Update: I should have read more carefully: Time Warner and Verizon confirmed they’re not going to block any Web sites. I’ve changed text below to reflect that.
Yesterday, I posted a quick analysis of the new policy (using the methodology I propose in a new draft paper) undertaken by Sprint, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable at […]
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Filed under: Digital Media, ISP, Internet & Society, Filtering, Intermediaries, Media, international, Search Engines
Posted on June 10th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
Filtering: it’s not just for China anymore. (Or Australia, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea…) Internet censorship via technological means is a growing trend, and now it’s surfaced in the U.S. Three major ISPs have agreed, under pressure from New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, to block access to Usenet groups and Web […]
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Filed under: ISP, Internet & Society, Digital Media, Filtering, international, Intermediaries, Media
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
What does it mean if you invite John McCain to speak at your school’s commencement?
For one thing, it means your dean is smart enough to want news coverage with lots of shots of your school’s logo. But does it mean your institution agrees with any / all of McCain’s positions?
I was pondering this question after […]
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Filed under: Court Decisions, Cognitive Decisionmaking, Law School, Media
Posted on April 10th, 2008 by William McGeveran
Back in September 2006 I expressed skepticism about the posting of all congressional staff salaries by a web site called LegiStorm. At the time I said:
It might be different if this were the members of Congress themselves (whose salaries are set by statute) or perhaps their most senior aides. Can it really matter to […]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Digital Media, Privacy, Voting, Media
Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Tim Armstrong
Paul Caron brought an interesting piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal to my attention: Candid Camera: Trove of Videos Vexes Wal-Mart. The story: about 30 years ago, Wal-Mart hired a small video production firm to record meetings of Wal-Mart’s executives, as well as speeches, shareholder meetings, sales presentations, and the like. The video […]
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Filed under: Video, Copyright, Media
Posted on March 15th, 2008 by Derek Bambauer
No, it’s not the eighth installment of the Rowling series - rather, it’s the latest installment of the ongoing legal fistfight over RDR Books and Steven Vander Ark’s attempt to publish a book version of the on-line guide to the Harry Potter wizarding world. (I posted briefly on this earlier, when I was annoyed by […]
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Filed under: Internet & Society, Court Decisions, Trademarks, Copyright, Media, Books