Author: mklang

Top 10 Lies Newspaper Execs are Telling Themselves

SimsBlog has listed (and explained) the top 10 lies newspaper executives are telling themselves (and us). Here is the short version – but go to her blog and read the motivations:

Lie #1: We can manage this disruption from within an integrated organization.
Lie #2: Print advertising reps can sell online ads too
Lie #3:  Aggregators are killing my business
Lie #4: We can re-create scarcity by putting up pay walls
Lie #5: Our readers paid for news in the past, they will again
Lie #6: There will never be enough online revenue to support our newsroom
Lie #7: No one will ever cover crime/health/city hall the way we do
Lie #8: Our readers can’t be trusted/they are idiots/they are assholes
Lie #9 Democracy will collapse without us
Lie #10: I can compete with the best digital leaders/thinkers/creators in the world without becoming an active member of the online community.

All these are important and serious but in my book the most dangerous is the myth that democracy is dependent upon print newspapers (Lie #9). This will be one of the factors media will use to demand stronger protectionism through legislation.

An example of this idea recently appeared on the Becker Posner Blog:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Posted on by mklang

I forgot to read the license

Recently the Norwegian browser released version 10, a nice slick browser and a good alternative. But I forgot to read the license. Thanks to Olav Torvund for reminding me by presenting the most important section on his blog:

By uploading Content to Opera’s site, you grant Opera an unrestricted, royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, display, perform, modify, transmit, and distribute such material in any manner, including in connection with Opera’s business, and you also agree that Opera is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques that you send Opera for any purpose. For the avoidance of doubt, this clause does not apply to the files you share as an End-User of the Opera Unite, as such files are never uploaded to Opera’s site. Opera will not make a claim to own or use those files.

This is not a totally unusual claim to rights but it should make you think. Any ideas or knowledge shared via Opera belong to Opera 🙂

Posted on by mklang

When clouds fail

From Sysomos comes a comment on yesterday’s major outage that struck GMail (on No Google day no less). The outage yesterday lasted 1.2 hours  comments on Slashdot

JacobSteelsmith was one of many readers to note an ongoing problem with Gmail: “As I type this, GMail is experiencing a major outage. The application status page says there is a problem with GMail affecting a majority of its users. It states a resolution is expected within the next 1.2 hours (no, not a typo on my part). However, email can still be accessed via POP or IMAP, but not, it appears, through an Android device such as the G1.” It’s also affecting corporate users: Reader David Lechnyr writes “We run a hosted Google Apps system and have been receiving 502 Server Error responses for the past hour. The unusual thing about this is that our Google phone support rep (which paid accounts get) indicated that this outage is also affecting Google employees as well, making it difficult to coordinate.”

Besides people being frustrated, disappointed and angry. The outage illustrated the weakness in cloud computing.

This is the third GMail outage this year (A major outage in February and 20 minutes in May) and after returning online Google said: “We’re still investigating the root cause of this outage, and we’ll share more information soon. Thanks for bearing with us.”

Despite the outage today, the sentiment (via Sysomos MAP) for “GMail” today from the social media landscape was 36% positive, 44% neutral and only 20% negative.

Below is the BuzzGraph generated from MAP that shows the major keywords today for “GMail”gmail buzzgraph.jsp

Posted on by mklang

Another pro-copyright proposal

Protecting old media, old school… an idea from the Becker Posner Blog:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Posner is an extremely influential American jurist with a intimidating pile of publications to his name. But that does not mean he is always right…  Using copyright to create protectionism is the opposite of creating and sustaining free markets.

Posted on by mklang

Runes and churches from the RAÄ

Another selection of photographs from the Swedish National Heritage Board have gone online at Flickr Commons. The latest batch (20 images to begin with) are photographs of churches and ancient monuments and the Heritage Board hopes that these images will both be appreciated by the public and that the public will contribute with information about the images as well as tagging and commenting them.

How about a nice rune?

Runic inscription (U 308) on a rock at Ekeby, north-west of Skånela Church.

The inscription says: “Gunne had these runes carved to his memory, while he was alive. Torgöt carved these runes.” – is this the twitter of the past?

Commenting on their selection the National Heritage Board write on their blog:

We on the Flickr Commons team at the National Heritage Board think that these plain and sometimes even a bit anonymous pictures have  something to tell us about the Swedish Cultural Heritage – not in a glamorous or fanciful, but in an honest way. Some of the photographs are taken by scientists or devoted scholars with the purpose to document. Some of the photographers are unknown to us.

We hope these photos will raise an interest in Old Time Sweden with its people, churches and ancient monuments. Welcome to share a part of our Heritage!

Posted on by mklang

Black day to remember

Seventy years ago today:

At 0445 Central European Time, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opens bombardment on the Westerplatte, a Polish military base outside Danzig, firing what are, according to many sources, the first shots of World War II. At the same time, regular Wehrmacht troops begin crossing the border into Poland. (wikipedia)

It is interesting to note that on the very same day Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland declare their neutrality. Spain and Ireland followed the next day. On the 3rd September The United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany. Obviously declaring war is a longer process than declaring neutrality.

But declaring neutrality on the very day of the attack, what does that say? No protest, no moral judgment simply a quick raising of the hands and a shout of “not my problem”?

Posted on by mklang

Gikii 4 programme

Registration is now closed, but here is the programme for this year’s Gikii. The good news is that I am in the first session.

17 September

09:15-09:30 Opening

09:30-10:45 First morning session (3): Doomsday

  • Christopher Lever, Fortun@e 500: A Consideration of the Contract Law Consequences of Cache Poisoning
  • Clive Feather, Resilience of the PGP “web of trust” and the disruption of criminal networks (no abstract)
  • Mathias Klang, Strangelove and Salami: An illustration of the unintended consequences of technical solutions

10:45-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:30 Second Morning session (3): Digital Identities and Legal Life After Death

  • Burkhard Schafer, ZombAIs and family law: technology beyond the grave
  • Lillian Edwards, Death 2.0
  • Wiebke Abel, Shawn H.E. Harmon, Future Tech: Governance & Ethics In The Age Of Artificially Enhanced Man (Or ‘Beware The Zombais At The Gate’)

12:30-13:30 Lunch (on location)

13:30-15:15 First Afternoon session (4): Robots and Interfaces with Humans

  • F.E. Guerra-Pujol, Blade Runner, Time Scarcity and the Optimal Lifespan of Robots and Clones’
  • Miranda Mowbray and Burkhard Schafer, EAT ME
  • Dr Richard Jones, ‘CyberTags: The third generation of electronic offender-monitoring systems’

15:15-15:45 Coffee Break

15:45-17:30 Second Afternoon session (4): Copyright: Take A Bite!

  • Bernt Hugenholz, ‘A Future of Levies: The Taxification of Copyright’
  • Ot van Daalen & Iris Kieft, Towards new methods for resolving the conflict between copyright and the free flow of information
  • Nicolas Jondet, France: the land of the Linux? The case of DRM interoperability and reverse-engineering

19:30 Sponsored conference diner.

18 September

09:15 Opening

09:15-10:30 First morning session (3): New Media Harms

  • Andrea Matwyshyn, Intended Data Beneficiaries
  • Arno R. Lodder, Is it possible to control personal information that was uploaded by others without the intention to harm or infringe?
  • Caroline Wilson, Twit or Tweet? Legal Issues Associated with Twitter and other Micro-Blogging Sites”

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 Second Morning session (4): Making and Sharing

  • Maarten Brinkerink, Inge van Beekum, Incentives and Constraints for Dutch Public Broadcasters to Adopt Creative Commons Licensing
  • Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, Creative Commons licenses incompatibilities : when sharing needs to be rationalized
  • Steven Hetcher, Location, Location Still Matters: Pop Stars, User-Generated Popular Culture & The Dislocation Of Non-Location
  • Ray Corrigan, Protecting the public domain: a five point plan’

12:30-13:30 Lunch (on location)

13:30-15:15 First Afternoon session (4): The World Explained

  • Andrés Guadamuz, Luddism 2.0, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Web
  • Peter K. Yu, The Crossover Point
  • Chris Marsden, Net Neutrality as a Debate About More Than Economics

15:15-15:45 Coffee Break

15:45-17:30 Second Afternoon session (4): Fundamental rights

  • Joris van Hoboken, Search Engine Censorship: New Metaphors for the Suppression of Findability
  • Judith Rauhofer, “Get out of my head, bloodsucker!” Notions of surveillance in the vampire mind
  • Martin Jones, Sousveillance: The Emergent Digital Eye Witness
  • TJ McIntyre, Won’t somebody please think of the children!?
Posted on by mklang