Technology360

Should Web Search Data Be Stored?

The Wall Street Journal printed an interesting email "conversation" between Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, a lobbying group for Internet firms, prompted by AOL's disclosure of the searches of over 650,000 of its customers.  Bankston writes:

I'd also like to point out that search histories are a privacy risk even when they are not tied to the searcher, based on information that's in the search queries. For example, with a little phone and Internet legwork, the New York Times was able to identify AOL searcher no. 4417749 as Ms. Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga. Ms. Arnold, appropriately, responded: "My goodness, it's my whole personal life," she said. "I had no idea somebody was looking over my shoulder."

Link:  Wall Street Journal.  The New York Times link under the word "identify" above requires paid access.  --Dennis

Interview with VeriSign's VP of Broadband Content Service

Tracy Swedlow has an interesting interview with Todd Johnson, VP of Broadband Content Services at VeriSign.  Johnson was formerly CEO at Kontiki, which VeriSign recently acquired and which powers a number of Net-based video on demand services, including Open Media Network, with which a group of public broadcasting stations and independent producers that I'm chairing has been working for the past 18 months.  Link:  [itvt] News Blog.

Satellite radio reeling

Paul Bond writes:

Pull up the six-month performance of companies making up The Hollywood Reporter/Bloomberg 50 Entertainment Stock Index and a tiny pattern emerges:  Dead last is XM Satellite Radio, and third from last is Sirius Satellite Radio. ...

Link:  Hollywood Reporter.

Get Ready For Online Video Price Wars

Om Malik writes:

With Apple and Amazon about to throw their hat in the ring, existing players are looking to fight back with price cuts and content promos that will suck the profits out of the legal video download business.  ¶  The first salvo in what will be a brutal price war is being fired by San Francisco-based Guba, which is going to announce that users will be able to download the movies for $9.99 on the very day the movie, is released on DVD. In addition, they are going to sell catalog movie titles for $4.99 and television shows for 49 cents an episode. Movies can be rented for 99 cents. ...

Link:  GigaOM.

The Attention Economy and the Music Business, Part 2

On 7/31, I posted a link to Part 1 of Gerd Leonhard's essay.  Part 2 has now been posted to Digital-Lifestyles.info.  --Dennis

The New Deal: How Digital Platforms Change Negotiations between Public Media and Independent Producers

The Center for Social Media at American University has issued a new report with this title.  From the related press release:

... The study discovered that television programmers are asking for and obtaining rights for digital distribution, without having concrete plans for distribution on new platforms. The study recommends that producers clarify their expectations and that public television programmers clarify their plans for use of video content. The study concludes that this is an excellent time for documentarians and public media executives to work together on demonstration projects online. ...

Link:  Center for Social Media [PDF].

A closed mind about an open world

Duke law professor James Boyle has a terrific article in the Financial Times which ends:

... The questions I asked are related to the world wide web – which celebrated its 15th birthday last year. Would we create it today? In 1991, you would have scoffed at the web, at open-source software and at getting your information from Google. Control and ownership seem intuitively the right way to go. How do you feel about today’s debates? Should we preserve “net neutrality” and openness or give network owners greater control? Should we create new rights for broadcasters and database owners? The next project of the behavioural economists should be to study our cognitive frameworks about property, control and networks. Like the pilot in the cloud looking at his instruments, we might learn that we are upside down.

Link:  Financial Times.  If you only read one thing from this blog this week, make it this one.   Thanks to Cory Doctorow via JP Rangaswammi.  The latter's comments, The openness aversion, are also good reading (link:  Confused of Calcutta).  --Dennis

Broken links fixed

I was limited to BlackBerry-only Internet while in Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Victoria last week when some nice person, whose email I accidentally removed from the server, told me of two broken links under "Writings, Presentations" on the left side of this page.  They're now fixed.  Thanks for your help and sorry for any inconvenience.  --Dennis

FCC Lacks Multicast Muscle, Says McDowell

John Eggerton writes:

New FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put something of an exclamation point on his regulatory independence in a briefing with reporters Tuesday, including making it clear he does not think the FCC has the authority to mandate multicast must-carry without clearer direction from Congress. ...

Link:  Broadcasting & Cable.  He would have been the deciding vote to approve multicast must-carry had he chosen to support it.  --Dennis

A Goal for New Media

John Sutton writes:

... Every report, meeting, and conference session I’ve been exposed to offered some new angle on public radio’s new media possibilities. After weeks of trying to synthesize all the information and ideas into a new media goal, I've come to realize that new media goals are secondary to the overall health of individual public radio stations.  ¶  I know that's a pretty strong statement. It comes from trying to answer this question, "Can public radio be a player in new media without radio?"  ¶  I keep coming up with “no.” ...

Link:  RadioSutton.