TechdirtEasily digestible tech news...Yet Another Study Points Out That Video Games Aren't Evil- September 17, 2008 We've seen a bunch of similar studies over the years, but the folks at the Pew Internet and American Life Project are out with their latest study noting that video games don't turn kids into isolated angry loners unfit to deal with the real world. Yeah, that seems obvious, but you wouldn't know it listening to some of the rhetoric from politicians and anti-video game activists. What the study found, instead, was that nearly every child (both boys and girls) now plays some form of video game,..http://techdirt.com/articles/20080916/1934422288.shtml Groups Demanding That ACTA Negotiations Be Made Public- September 17, 2008 We've been asking for months why the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty is being negotiated in near total secrecy, allowing the entertainment industry to effectively rewrite international copyright law in substantial ways with almost no legislative review. Basically, various trade representatives, together with industry insiders, have been crafting ACTA to their own liking, with a plan to push it through for approval, claiming it's a trade agreement that shouldn't involve any...http://techdirt.com/articles/20080916/1839352286.shtml Hugh Cornwell Is Still Not A Taxi Driver; Musician Learns To Embrace Free- September 17, 2008 Jean Savoye, a reader here at Techdirt, sent in a submission using the provocative title that "Hugh Cornwell Is Still Not A Taxi Driver," and wrote about how former Stranglers' frontman, Hugh Cornwell, appeared to be embracing some of the concepts we talk about here as a business model. On his official website, he's offering up his latest album as a completely free download. However, he's pairing that with a much more complete business model. Like Trent Reznor, Cornwell is also offering a...http://techdirt.com/articles/20080910/0340092223.shtml Revolving Door Undermines FCC's Watchdog Role- September 17, 2008 In previous installments of my series on network neutrality, I've pointed out that the end-to-end principle is not as fragile as a lot of people assume. Technological platforms have a kind of momentum that make them hard to change once they've become established, and so it's not at all obvious that major broadband providers have the ability to significantly change the Internet's architecture. In my view, this is one reason to be skeptical of making the FCC the nation's network neutrality...http://techdirt.com/articles/20080831/0618342133.shtml Metallica Still Struggling With Embracing The Whole File Sharing Thing- September 17, 2008 While Metallica is claiming (this time around) they don't mind that the latest album is being shared online, someone forgot to tell the band's representatives. TorrentFreak notes that the band's European record label, Universal Music (in the US, the label is Warner Brothers Records) has canceled the band's scheduled interview with a Swedish newspaper after a reviewer for the paper reviewed a remixed version of the album that he admitted he had downloaded via The Pirate Bay. Universal's claim..http://techdirt.com/articles/20080916/0258502283.shtml Apple's Podcaster Block Backlash Getting Louder- September 16, 2008 Apple is getting an awful lot of attention for blocking a podcasting app from the iPhone App Store because it competes with iTunes, and the more details come out, the worse it looks for Apple. In the original post on it, I had wondered, as an aside, if the app had useful functionality that Apple refused to provide -- and, indeed, that's the case. CNET is pointing out that the app is much more useful, since it lets you download podcasts directly to the iPhone -- something iTunes doesn't...http://techdirt.com/articles/20080916/0226122280.shtml Applying A 'Chrome' Strategy To Your Own Business- September 16, 2008 We recently pointed out Nicholas Carr's troubling suggestion that Google was somehow unique in being able to leverage complementary markets to make its core market significantly more valuable. As we pointed out, this shouldn't be unique to Google at all, but should be a key focus for every business out there. Umair Haque has now come along and written what should be seen as the flipside to Carr's piece, looking at how plenty of other businesses can and should leverage complementary markets --.http://techdirt.com/articles/20080912/0142542252.shtml When There Are So Many 'Human Errors' On Your E-Voting Machines, It's Your Problem- September 16, 2008 Last week, we wrote about yet another problem with Sequoia e-voting equipment where the company was vehemently denying the problem was with the machines, even saying: "There's absolutely no problem with the machines in the polling places. No. No." Of course, this came right after a report revealing how easy it was to hack their machines, as well as numerous other problems with Sequoia machines. Yet the company consistently employs the same exact strategy: it couldn't possibly be the fault of..http://techdirt.com/articles/20080915/0237532274.shtml NBC Proud That It Made It More Difficult For People To Watch The Olympics- September 16, 2008 We've already explained how screwed up NBC's Olympic coverage policy on the web turned out to be. Its use of proprietary technology and annoying restriction severely limited its online audience -- even though the company admitted that its own research found that the more people watched online, the more they watched it on TV as well. So, given all that, you have to wonder why NBC Universal's Rick Cotton is somehow claiming a "victory" in preventing other sites from showing Olympics coverage. ..http://techdirt.com/articles/20080915/0158272270.shtml Hey, Didn't Taxpayers Pay For Those Patents NASA Is Auctioning Off- September 16, 2008 ReallyEvilCanine writes in to let us know that Ocean Tomo, the patent auctioning company has worked out an agreement to auction off a package of 25 NASA patents covering things like signal processing, GPS for spacecraft and sensor technologies. Ocean Tomo always presents itself as somehow creating value from patents, but always seems to ignore how its version of creating value often means significant value lost to actual innovators. In this case, there's an even bigger question: didn't...http://techdirt.com/articles/20080915/1859022278.shtml |