Abby Donivosif writes "CNet has up an article about the history of the digital camera. It's fascinating to note how far the technology has come in such a short amount of time. 'The camera generally recognized as the first digital still snapper was a prototype developed by Eastman Kodak engineer Steven Sasson in 1975. He cobbled together some Motorola parts with a Kodak movie-camera lens and some newly invented Fairchild CCD electronic sensors. The resulting camera, pictured above on its first trip to Europe recently, was the size of a large toaster and weighed nearly 4kg. Black-and-white images were captured on a digital cassette tape, and viewing them required Sasson and his colleagues to develop a special screen.'"

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The CEO of the Associated Press, Tom Curley, gave a speech yesterday to a group of news executives supposedly calling on them to drop their antiquated ways, learn to embrace the new opportunities of the internet and, most importantly, ditch the mindset of being the gatekeepers of the news. At least, that's what the Associated Press's own writeup on his speech suggests. It's powerful stuff, but it seems a little odd. After all, isn't this the same Associate Press that less than a month ago sued Moreover for linking to AP articles? Isn't this the same Associated Press that pressured Google to pay for the same thing? That doesn't sound like an organization that's trying to stop being a gatekeeper and embracing the new opportunities of the internet. It sounds like the opposite.

So, let's go to the details. Thankfully, the AP also published the full text of Curley's speech so we can dig into the details a bit. While the AP reporter's coverage of his speech definitely does capture the gist of it, it leaves out some of the key (and somewhat contradictory) details. So, while Curley says: "Our focus must be on becoming the very best at filling people’s 24-hour news needs. That's a huge shift from the we-know-best, gatekeeper thinking" his own plan doesn't seem to agree with that. He later says: "we're coupling those initiatives with strong new efforts to protect news web sites from unauthorized scraping through tighter site protocols and content tagging." Sorry, but it's those protections against scraping that is part of the gatekeeper thinking. He also says: "Enforcement, too, must be a part. What we do comes at great cost and sacrifice, even death. We believe content should have wide distribution. We intend to be compensated for it." and "We have the power to control how our content flows on the Web. We must use that power...." In other words, we're going to restrict access to what we do in order to create artificial scarcity in order to charge for it. Restricting access is what might also be called gatekeeping. It seems like Curley's big wake up call to newspaper execs is really "say goodbye to the old gatekeeper, and say hello to the new gatekeeper."

There are plenty of business models that make sense for the Associated Press, but it's pretty amusing for the CEO of that organization to call for getting rid of the old way of thinking and then outline what's basically the same old thinking.

Mattintosh writes "A blogger at C|Net takes a moment to consider the impact Netflix has had on Blockbuster. Some notable highlights include heavy losses ($35 million), job cuts ($45 million worth), and store closings: 'Much like the print media and retail stores refusing to change, Blockbuster has been a victim on an online company finding new and inventive ways of bringing a product to a customer. And due to its size and outdated corporate culture, there really is no salvation for Blockbuster at this point. Try as it might, the future of Blockbuster is bleak, at best. Sure, the company still enjoys revenue that climb into the billions of dollars, but with an ever-increasing net loss and a public refusal to focus on Total Access--the area where Netflix continues to dominate--what is the impetus for us to jump on the Blockbuster bandwagon?'"

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Earlier this year, the RIAA began to focus many of its file sharing lawsuits on college students. The RIAA incorrectly referred to it as an education campaign, when it might more accurately be described as pissing off the very people the RIAA needs to support any future business model (oops, too late for that). While the RIAA tried to force universities to just hand over the names of those it accused of file sharing, it was nice to see at least a few universities fight back. In most cases, this mean telling the RIAA to shove off, as it wasn't the university's job to help serve legal complaints. Eventually though, when subpoenas came through, most universities would hand over the info. However, it looks like the University of Oregon is taking a stand. Together with the Attorney General of Oregon, they've actually filed a motion to quash the RIAA's attempt to identify students at the school. In other words, they're not just refusing to pass on the info, they're actively pushing back against the RIAA's lawsuit.

Specifically, the Attorney General points out that with just IP addresses, it's basically impossible to identify the students that the RIAA is asking the university to hand over: "Plaintiffs' subpoena is unduly burdensome and overbroad. It seeks information that the university does not readily possess." In order for the university to figure out who was associated with those IPs, it would involve a level of investigation that isn't required (and shouldn't be required) under law. In other words, the university isn't there to be the free investigative arm of the RIAA. It doesn't get to just throw some weak evidence over the wall and tell the university to figure out who's responsible. Either it comes up with a better way to find the information itself, or it should stop filing these lawsuits. It should be interesting to see if this works... and if other universities follow suit.

On Thursday, Mike noted EFF's Fair Use Principles for User Generated Video Content. I wanted to highlight the "test suite" of fair-use videos they released in concert with those principles. It's a a gallery of videos that EFF thinks constitute fair use of copyrighted works. It includes a number of golden oldies that made the rounds in recent years, including "Ten Things I Hate About Commandments", a video featuring that ridiculous Nixon Peabody song, and a video about fair use constructed by splicing together short Disney Cartoon clips. It's worth noting that the law is far from settled in this area, so it's far from certain that the courts would find all of these videos to be fair use under copyright law. But in a sense, that's the point: deciding what constitutes fair use requires the exercise of human judgment. The four factors determining fair use include subjective factors like "the effect of the use upon the potential market" and "the purpose and character of the use" that simply can't be determined by an automated algorithm.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

Anita Thompson, who was married to Hunter S. Thompson for two years before he died, is unhappy with Jann Wenner's Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, An Oral Biography. She told the NY Daily News:

"There are beautiful parts in [Wenner's] book, but it sensationalizes Hunter unecessarily. It's meant to portray him as losing his mind at the end, but he was not. He was just as kind and decent and brilliant as when he was younger.

"And it portrays him like leaving Rolling Stone was the biggest mistake of his life. After leaving Rolling Stone, he's portrayed as an awful beast of a man. Jann looks at it as humiliating that, after he left Rolling Stone, Hunter wrote for ESPN. But Hunter's deepest passion was politics and sports. And he was looking at sports readers as just as important. He saw them as a powerful voting bloc if they could be inspired to vote.

"When Hunter was compiling his second letters book, there was some humiliating correspondence between Hunter and Jann. His publisher was urging him to put it in, but in the end, Hunter didn't run it. It would've sold more books. But he protected his buddy. I'm sad that Jann didn't do the same.

(Shown here: Anita and me at her book signing in Aspen Colorado for The Gonzo Way: A Celebration of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. She told me Hunter would have loved my shirt.)

Link

shadowmage13 writes "Google just announced that starting tonight, developers can start writing applications using the social API for Orkut, MySpace, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial. Will Facebook give in?" There is quite a bit of analysis of this announcement available in yesterday's discussion.

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We're big believers in the importance of various "safe harbors" that protect online service providers from being responsible for the activities or content of their users. After all, it seems unfair to blame the telephone company if a telephone is used in a crime. However, some people have trouble with that concept -- and some countries don't have the same sort of clear cut safe harbor provisions written into law that the US offers. For example, it seemed pretty ridiculous that France declared Yahoo (yes, the company) and its then CEO war criminals half a decade ago, just because some users had auctioned Nazi memorabilia. After realizing how ridiculous this was, French courts later reversed that ruling -- and now perhaps they recognize the importance of these kinds of safe harbors. Apparently, they even changed the law in 2004 to protect sites from being liable for certain actions of its users -- and that law has been now used to clear Wikipedia of any wrongdoing, after the company behind Wikipedia was sued by three people who were upset about how others had written about them in a Wikipedia article. The court noted that the allegedly defamatory references had been removed and that Wikipedia shouldn't be responsible for that content anyway: "Web site hosts cannot be liable under civil law because of information stored on them if they do not in fact know of their illicit nature." Nice to see these kinds of safe harbors getting more widespread acceptance.

MAKE is looking for makers who would like to show off their creations at the upcoming Felt Club event in Los Angeles. (I'm editor-in-chief of MAKE). Here are the details:

The Maker Faire team is joining forces with Felt Club for the upcoming Felt Club XL Holiday event -- Sunday, November 18th from 11am-6pm on the Los Angeles City College campus (855 N Vermont Ave, LA CA 90029).

This family-friendly event will feature 70+ amazing crafters, delicious food and great music, plus an all-new section called MAKER SQUARE, a miniature version of Maker Faire! (Felt Club is a twice-yearly indie craft fair featuring the best and brightest of the SoCal craft scene. Our carefully juried shows highlight a wide variety of handmade goods, including handbags and jewelry, baby gifts and paper products, clothing and housewares, one-of-a-kind plushies and original artwork. In between shows, we host a variety of craft-related events around the city, including how-to workshops, craft supply swaps, and more).

Maker Square is organized by the staff of Make and Craft magazines and is a mini-fair that brings together science, art, craft and engineering in a fun, energized and exciting public forum. The aim is to inspire people of all ages to roll up their sleeves and become makers. We will showcase the amazing work of all kinds of makers -- anyone who is embracing DIY and wants to share their accomplishments with an appreciative audience.

We encourage you to join the fun and enter a project to exhibit. You can submit you entry by sending an email to sherry@oreilly.com. In your Maker Square entry request, please tell us about yourself and your project. Entries can be submitted from individuals as well as from groups such as hobbyist clubs and schools. Please provide a short description of what you make and what you will actually bring to Maker Square. Please provide links to photographs or videos of what you make. Maker exhibits should be non-commercial. We particularly encourage exhibits that are interactive and that highlight the process of making things. Please remember that our space is outdoors and we do not have access to electricity.

Here's some suggested ideas for topics that we're looking for:

• Things Made From Recycled Items
• Microcontrollers
• Robotics
• Making Musical Instruments
• Bicycle Hacks
• Ham Radio
• Puzzles, Games and Toys
• Cars (hot rods, custom vans, electric vehicles)
• Airplanes and Aeronautics (models, etc)
• Biology/Biotech
• Chemistry
• Cool RC Toys & Mods
• Video Games (retro, home arcade and more)
• Model Trains and Planes
• Weaving/Looms (historical or unusual)
• Kites
• Temporary Structures (Tents, Domes, etc.)
• Unusual Tools or Machines
• How to Fix Things or Take them Apart (Vacuums, Clocks, Washing Machines, etc.)

Maker Square Space: Our standard setup for each Maker is roughly a 10x10 space. Use this space to display your work and/or demonstrate how you make something. You will need to bring your own tables and chairs.

NOTE: Makers whose entries are accepted will receive free admission to Felt Club/Maker Square. However, we cannot pay for transportation and accommodations. Makers do not pay a fee to exhibit at Felt Club/Maker Square and maker exhibits are non-commercial.

MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium 3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. An examination of the issue makes one wonder why."

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Carl Malamud sez, "Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce a joint venture with the U.S. government's National Technical Information Service, a program I've dubbed 'FedFlix.' Each month NTIS will send us 10-20 videotapes, which we'll digitize, then send the tapes back. We'll upload all this public domain data to places like the Internet Archive, and also give the NTIS a digital copy of their data." Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Bonnie sez, "Find out how to make a giant Jabba the Hutt puppet out of irrigation tubing, foam mattress padding, spandex fabric, plastic bowls and other supplies from discount and hardware stores!" Link (Thanks, Bonnie!)

Techdirt has beat up on the New York Times a lot over the years for its bone-headed use of the web. For years, it treated the website as an afterthought, serving up warmed-over versions of its print coverage and charging for the privilege. As we pointed out repeatedly, the web is different from older media. Success online requires that you be part of the conversation. Users expect a faster-paced, more connected experience from a website than you get from a newspaper. But in the last six months or so, the Times has made a series of decisions that suggests they're finally starting to understand that the web is its own medium with its own unique rules. They've dropped their paywall, launched a ton of great blogs, produced podcasts and videos, and added new personalization features. This summer, they unveiled Open, a blog by and for geeks about the use of open source technologies at the Times. And now they've launched Blogrunner, a news aggregator they snapped up last year and are integrated in various places around the site, starting with the technology section. Integrating links to other sites into their subject-specific pages makes it more likely that people will make that page their starting point for information on that subject. None of these developments are that Earthshaking by themselves, but when you add them all up it starts to look like the Grey Lady is finally taking the web seriously. Now if we can just get them to give us full-text RSS feeds of their blogs!

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

A economic study funded by the Canadian government has concluded that heavy P2P users buy more music.

* When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.

* When viewed in the aggreggate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. According to the study authors, "the analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole."

Link

I moved back to London a couple months ago and I've been trying to get a British Telecom phone line installed ever since, and so far, all I've gotten is a comedy of errors that's played out like a cross between a Fawlty Towers episode and 1984.

There appear to be at least three departments at BT that aren't talking to each other (or themselves) and between them all, I've been put through a meat-grinder. First, there's the billing department, who seem to call me every other day to tell me that I need to put a deposit down before my line can be installed, and then, when I remind them that I've provided them with a credit card on three separate occasions, promise to call me back (and never do).

Then there are the schedulers, who keep calling to confirm a November 1 installation date, and every time I say, "No, we agreed that you'd install on November 6th -- that's why I cancelled a flight and a day's worth of meetings to be home for you." Why, just Wednesday a BT rep assured me that the installation would be on the sixth, not the first.

Finally, there are the customer service people, who insist that someone needs to come out to "install" my line, even though there's been a working BT line in this flat for the past ten years, and all I want to do is switch it back on again now that the tenants who rented the place while we were in LA last year have gone.

Thursday morning, a BT engineer called to say that he was on his way (it being the first) and I told him, no, I'm not in today, you're supposed to be coming on the sixth. Since then, I've been on the phone for two days with BT, speaking to customer service rep after customer service rep, none of whom can explain when -- or if -- my line will be turned on (though several of them have told me firmly that no work can be done until I put down a deposit).

Now it seems like I'm going to get installation sometime before the end of the month. Maybe. Who knows? At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if BT's next step was to burn my house down and dance in the ashes.

narramissic writes "In his keynote speech at the Communist Party Congress in October China's president Hu Jintao was specific in his references to one area of IT: defense. 'We must build strong armed forces through science and technology. To attain the strategic objective of building computerized armed forces and winning IT-based warfare, we will accelerate composite development of mechanization and computerization, carry out military training under IT-based conditions, modernize every aspect of logistics, intensify our efforts to train a new type of high-caliber military personnel in large numbers and change the mode of generating combat capabilities.'"

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