Monday, July 21, 2003

Hey! Let's buy a surplus television station from CBS or FOX! (A Benton Headline) NEWS CORP PRESSES FOR CHANGE Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is aggressively lobbying the US Congress not to overturn the FCC's decision to relax media ownership rules. News Corp, along with Viacom, had supported Michael Powell and the FCC when they pushed through new rules that would increase the national television ownership cap from 35 percent to 45 percent. Both companies were already in breach of the previous cap. If Congress succeeds in reinstating the old rules, News Corp and Viacom would be forced to sell off a number of media properties in order to be in compliance with the cap. Financial Times AUTHOR: Demetri Sevastopulo 6:29:22 PM    comment []

Three from BNA News: German Court Upholds The Right To Deep Link Thanks to an ILN subscriber for reporting on a recent German decision which affirmed the legality of deep linking. The federal court found that a news gathering service did not infringe copyright or engage in unfair competition by providing direct links to online news articles. The court noted that without deep linking, a meaningful use of the Internet would not be possible and that publishers' rights should give way to the general interest of the functioning of the World Wide Web. German language coverage at http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/tig-18.07.03-000/ http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/on/15246/1.html English coverage at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31838.html Class Action Suit Filed Against Doubleclick Internet advertiser Doubleclick has been hit with a class action suit over the dissemination of advertising that impersonated computer error messages. The suit claims that Doubleclick deceptively and fraudulently tricked millions into responding to the false error message. Complaint at http://www.ferencelaw.com/doubleclick/documents/complaint.pdf P2p Caching Raises New Copyright Concerns Three major ISPs in Europe have licensed PeerCache technology, in an attempt to reduce costs of P2P network traffic. The software is designed to cache frequently traded digital files within file-swapping systems. According to an early survey by one recording-industry trade association, holding copies of copyrighted material could make ISPs accomplices in illegal file trading. http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1027508.html 2:28:45 PM    comment []

Fairly fascinating animation by way of Daypop Top 40. 11:33:46 AM    comment []

Study: Software makers head offshore. Lured by low labor costs, more than eight in 10 software companies are shipping work overseas or will do so in the next year, according to a study sponsored by a venture capital group. [CNET News.com] 11:25:40 AM    comment []

Democrats Still Lack Favorite For 2004, by Dan Balz, Washington Post (via News Is Free). 8:14:04 AM    comment []

Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books. Amazon.com is negotiating with book publishers to assemble a searchable online archive with the texts of thousands of nonfiction books. By David D. Kirkpatrick. [New York Times: Technology] 8:09:55 AM    comment []

An excerpt from "Y: The Last Man". What's worse than death, destruction and the fall of civilization as we know it? Try the end of rock 'n' roll. [Salon Headlines] Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, Book 1), by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra (Illustrator), Jr. Jose Marzan (Illustrator). 8:07:49 AM    comment []

Rearranging an Ad Jingle So That It Now Jangles. An album to be released on the Web features the work of artists who captured samples from commercials and rearranged them in ways that often subvert the source material's original message. By Matthew Mirapaul. [New York Times: Technology] Tracks and cover art available for download at the Free Speech for Sale Web site. 8:04:09 AM    comment []

Homage to Blogalonia. George Orwell's wartime columns have much in common with today's blogs: They were often trivial and idiosyncratic, but bore within them the seeds of something greater. [Salon Headlines] 8:01:19 AM    comment []