Monday
Jun192006

QED

Bob Garfield, on why he started his new blog: "[T]he Old Media/Marketing model is in mid-collapse. We criticize 30-second TV spots for a living. We have 15 years to go before retirement. Do the math." [Via Steve Rubel]

Monday
Jun192006

Sucking Value For 15.5 Years And Counting

Professor Lessig and Random House's new media division president Richard Sarnoff went at it at this year's D: All Things Digital about the Google Library lawsuits. (A partial transcript is available in today's WSJ.) Seems the two found scarce common ground on the role of lawyers in modern society, and that apologies and dismissals from the plaintiffs' side aren't likely to be forthcoming. Apart from that? Don't expect the litigants to be passing one another the Grey Poupon any time soon.

Sunday
Jun182006

Totally Tubular

"YouTube is viewed 50 million times and 50,000 video uploads occur each day, according to company statistics." Via BetaNews | YouTube Strikes Back at Yahoo Video, which also discusses the "Blog Video" functionality added earlier this month — a feature which automatically embeds any YouTube video into a post on any weblog using Blogger, Blog*Spot, or LiveJournal (support for other platforms in the works). In case you're wondering about the copyright ramifications of that, under the YouTube Terms of Use, "[y]ou also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service." (Emphasis added.) It's like a mandatory, site functionality-specific CC license, and a broad one at that: no need to give attribution, and derivative works and commercial use are a-OK. Note that no one seems to be kicking up a fuss about this [Update: though the license you grant YouTube itself has raised some eyebrows], and note too (how could you miss it?) how central it is to YouTube's positive user experience and staggering growth. But does this mean YouTube-hosted vids will be the foundation for other commercial ventures? You bet [via Marty Schwimmer]. [Update: Yahoo!, too.]

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Sunday
Jun182006

Metabits

Saturday
Jun172006

EFF Presents: The Corruptibles