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Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:19:06 -0500

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:01:05 -0500

Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown.

—Krugman

The research that Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer previewed for David Brooks has finally come out: Are...

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:10:22 -0500

The research that Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer previewed for David Brooks has finally come out: Are High Quality Schools Enough to Close the Achievement Gap? Evidence from a Social Experiment in Harlem. [Via: NBER]

we exist in different worlds

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:49:44 -0500

It’s an experiment with a different way of telling stories. I think in it, you can see the germ of something quite interesting.

—Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company

So much of what you see online today is a reflection of the way it’s told in newspapers. They haven’t taken advantage of what the Web offers to tell news in a different way…This project is a pilot. The idea is to make improvements based on the feedback we receive, then make those tools more widely available…On the search side, there’s a single page to point to. Instead of thousands of links, there is a single point of reference. And that’s helpful for users as well…I think we would expect that different publishers would take it in a number of different directions

—Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News

There’s been a series of steps to work with and mollify news publishers, to improve the P.R., and you can see the living page in that same vein

—Ken Doctor, a media analyst with the analysis firm Outsell

The culture of Google is a culture of engineers. We exist in different worlds…The idea is that users, news consumers, are interested in experiencing news in different ways, and it’s important for news organizations to be experimenting… . The question is, when you take the car out for a spin, what are the advantages?

—R.B. Brenner, deputy editor of The Post’s new Universal News Desk

It is clearly a much better picture, and appears to be mostly genuine. It shows employers have come...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:52:00 -0500

It is clearly a much better picture, and appears to be mostly genuine. It shows employers have come back so much and are starting to rehire.

You create this class of people who essentially become permanently unemployed and can’t get back in. You have people who have lost contact with the labor market, whose skills are not relevant for jobs for the future, who employers regard with skepticism because they have been out of work for so long.

—Nigel Gault, IHS

With firms seeing profits improving we’re starting to see a much brighter labor market. Confidence has been restored and firms now have started to redeploy their cash.

—Stefane Marion, chief economist at National Bank Financial in Montreal

Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:33:37 -0500

Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?

—Tony Judt, What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy: NYRB

But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:20:39 -0500

But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform.

—O’Reilly

I’ve outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:13:27 -0500

I’ve outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the “small pieces loosely joined” model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects.

One of the points I’ve made repeatedly about Web 2.0 is that it is the design of systems that get better the more people use them, and that over time, such systems have a natural tendency towards monopoly.

—O’Reilly

This is an important turnaround after the free fall in world trade, industrial production, asset...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:26:00 -0500

This is an important turnaround after the free fall in world trade, industrial production, asset prices, and global credit availability which threatened to push the global economy into the abyss of a new Great Depression in early 2009.

—Preview of UN Report on the world economy

Nice Bikez

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:22:20 -0500

Nice Bikez

Even though he kind of plays with the facts, it’s more about the overall message. —Erin...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:20:18 -0500

Even though he kind of plays with the facts, it’s more about the overall message.

—Erin Power, 21, of Long Island, N.Y., on Oliver Stone, during a class [HIST-288: Oliver Stone’s America] dedicated to his work at American University by Peter Kuznik.

that's what property taxes are for

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:52:00 -0500

The gravy train continues to roll without impediment for select groups of employees on the public payroll…Startling amounts of taxpayer-funded booty continue to be dispensed across New Jersey without regard for the common good.

—State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation: The Beat Goes on, waste and abuse in local government employee compensation and benefits

Counties are often political fiefdoms. County freeholders or executive boards get to pad the ranks of public employees with political supporters.

—Brigid Harrison, Montclair State University

How to compromise your ethics for $110

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:13:00 -0500

JustAnswer.com - breaking new ground in homework for hire and plagiarism. Now, for $110, provide answers of 225 to 300 words each to sixteen questions on business ethics!

Question

225 - 300 words to each question COURSE TEXTBOOK: Ferrell, O.C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2008). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases (7th ed.) Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company Unit 1: The Importance of Business Ethics

U1-Q11: List three business problems, situations, or opportunities that you believe are ethical issues. Please give possible solutions and explain your responses in some detail.

U1-Q12: Describe why it is important that business people study business ethics? What are possible benefits to companies, individuals, society and the world of business? Please explain. Unit 2: Emerging Ethical Issues and the Institutionalization of Business Ethics

U2-Q11: Describe the three criteria that must be met in order to define a hostile work environment. What is the key ethical issue within sexual harassment?

[…continued…]

Read more: http://www.justanswer.com/questions/2trw2-225-300-words-question-course#ixzz0YZ1eum4r

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I am seeking to get out because of what’s happening. Not that I see a crisis, but people seem to be...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:52:29 -0500

I am seeking to get out because of what’s happening. Not that I see a crisis, but people seem to be loving it too much.

—Paul Krugman on selling assets in Brazil

ginning content from their audiences

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:07:02 -0500

The future, which is not a bad deal if you ignore all the collateral gore.

—David Carr

we live in public

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:44:20 -0500

Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.

—Tiger Woods

Copyright, Fair Use, and the Perils of Legislation

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:03:46 -0500

Bruce Sanford and Bruce Brown commented in the WSJ on “Google and the Copyright Wars” (11/12). Many are focused on the status of orphan works in the Google Books project, but Sanford and Brown argue that the idea of fair use and its application by search engines is the controversy’s center, not orphan works. Sanford and Brown would say that a search engine’s use of the web’s content is definite and definitely unfair.

Fair use of a book’s content, a website, or even the news underpins a search engine’s ability to find and deliver websites to users of the internet. Sanford and Brown stake out a position for search engines that is similar to a public library. Just as a library can employ the contents of its archive to establish an index for its patrons, the search engine uses the contents of the internet to establish an index for anyone at all. Sanford and Brown, however, contend that search engines are not libraries, so fair use does not apply.

Sanford and Brown argue that two distinctions separate search engines from the library model. Search engines not only copy text, they reproduce it in their results as snippets. Rights of reproduction are protected for copyright holders. Second, search engines sell advertising, and the sale of advertising is contingent on their ability to copy, store and reproduce copyrighted material. These distinctions, argue Sanford and Brown, disqualify search engines from the safe harbor of any exemption made for libraries. Their remedy: legislation.

The problem is, search engines don’t find safe harbor in the library model, and legislation is not the answer. Yes, a library applies fair use in its practices, and search engines have been compared to them in the past, but not all applications of fair use are found in the confines a library. This may be why they are so quick to demand legislation to expand copyright, even though expanding copyright may drive more business to the lawyers who protect it than the websites involved.

The Ninth Circuit court framed a four factor test for fair use in the case of Perfect 10 v. Google, et al in May 2007. The test would distinguish between copyright infringement and fair use in the case of Google’s use of Perfect 10 material in its search results. The four factors comprise: the purpose and character of the use; the nature of the work, ie fact-based or creative; the amount of the work used; and the effect on the market for the work. None of them invoke the metaphor of the library used by Sanford and Brown.

When Google displayed the Perfect 10 images, the Circuit determined that all four factors weigh in its favor. The images may have been highly original, but the results incorporate “an original work into a new work, namely an electronic reference tool,” and this is highly transformative: “a search engine may be more transformative than a parody because a search engine provides an entirely new use for the original work, while a parody typically has the same entertainment purpose as the original work.” Though Google would use a degraded thumbnail version of the image, its “use of the entire photographic image [is] reasonable in light of the purpose of a search engine.” The Ninth Circuit, therefore, reasoned that Google’s use of Perfect 10 thumbnails would be considered fair use. Though it didn’t provide a decision, it did suffice to vacate Perfect 10’s preliminary injunction against Google.

Sanford and Brown mistake the metaphor of a library as the only example of fair use when alternatives, such as the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, are perfectly acceptable. Perhaps this is why, having fleshed out their metaphor, they seize on legislation as a solution. Indeed, they would have Congress assert, “once the cache is monetized for the benefit of a search engine, the line of copyright infringement is crossed.” Isn’t this a sort of Hail Mary pass to rights-holders?
Legislation could make it illegal to monetize a cache without permission, but it’s not the panacea that Sanford and Brown are driving at. If the legislation mandated payments for rights-holders, it would, but this is probably not a suggestion that would be found in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. More likely, it would not, and it would leave websites in the position of the prisoner’s dilemma. If everyone cooperates and insists on payment, it will be to their mutual advantage, but the search engines direct so much traffic that each website has an incentive to break ranks; hence, everyone reluctantly opts in for fear that they’ll be the lone hold-out. In effect, it’s as though the legislation never happened, with one important distinction: there’s a new law on the books that requires a few good lawyers to understand. Perhaps that’s what’s really driving Sanford and Brown’s comment.

There is an exception, however. Not all players are equal in this game. Some may wager that holding-out is viable regardless of legislation or whether others do. That’s exactly what News Corp has done. They have begun negotiating a possible payment from Microsoft for the exclusive right to index their content. Though derided by many on the internet, should they find an agreement, their example will prove an important experiment in the question of paying for content.

We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. —Marcus Brauchli...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:21:22 -0500

We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience.

—Marcus Brauchli on the Washington Post

He has to convey the fact that his strategy is not an open-ended one for an indefinite war. In...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:05:20 -0500

He has to convey the fact that his strategy is not an open-ended one for an indefinite war. In different ways he’s going to have a hard sell with both Republicans and Democrats, simply because the country is in a kind of state of unease.

—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter

there’s a real chance that, soon enough, Chinese economic weakness will be a bigger problem than...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:29:57 -0500

there’s a real chance that, soon enough, Chinese economic weakness will be a bigger problem than was Chinese economic strength.

—Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, via Economic View: NYT