Do Newspapers Need Comments?
25 Jul 2008 9:58pm GMT A few weeks back, we wrote about the question of whether or not newspapers should be getting into the community business by noting that you don't build communities, you enable them. But, the question still remains how you enable those communities. Gawker had an interesting post recently along those lines arguing that newspapers shouldn't allow comments on articles. The argument is, basically, that a lot of the comments are really dumb, and don't add very much. That may be true, but in many...
TorrentSpy Appeals Lawsuit Over MPAA Getting Access To Its Emails
25 Jul 2008 8:42pm GMT While TorrentSpy may have shut down and lost its copyright infringement lawsuit against the MPAA, it's still appealing a separate issue: whether the MPAA broke the law in hiring a guy to break into TorrentSpy's email server and forward emails to the MPAA. The MPAA got away with playing dumb when this issue first came up, claiming it assumed the guy they hired had legitimate access to all of the emails he was handing over -- though, that seems highly questionable. ...
Senator Introduces Unconstitutional Bill To Ban Sale Of Certain Video Games To Minors
25 Jul 2008 7:09pm GMT We were just talking about how New York State was about to become the latest in a long line of states to waste taxpayer money fighting for an unconstitutional law requiring video games to be labeled and also banning the sale of certain video games to children. Nearly a dozen states have tried to introduce similar legislation, and every time they've been rejected by courts as unconstitutional. Every time. There is simply no excuse for politicians to introduce another one of these laws. The...
Trent Reznor Gives People A Reason To Buy Latest CD Even Though It's Free Online
25 Jul 2008 5:54pm GMT It's getting rather repetitive to show what a good job Trent Reznor is doing in showing how Nine Inch Nails is embracing the new business models available to the music industry, but he's doing such a consistently good job of it, it's so useful as an example. The latest move is that he's now releasing his last album, The Slip, which was offered as a totally free download, as a special limited edition CD/DVD and deluxe vinyl. In other words, like he's done multiple times in the past, he's...
Redlasso Sued By NBC Universal And Fox For Making It Easy For People To Promote NBC Universal And Fox
25 Jul 2008 4:26pm GMT Redlasso is an interesting company. Something of an online "clipping" service for television content, it has a nice web feature that allows users to do a search and find a relevant clip -- and to also embed that clip in your own website. It's been used to great effect by various sites that want to provide commentary on certain television content. The actions by Redlasso don't seem all that different than some old school TV clipping services, but (once again) the addition of "the internet" to...