A Judge Defends Property Against Google-ization

March 30, 2011

As an author, I own the copyright to this commentary. Google, with my knowledge and approval, will show you an excerpt, but will send you to my company’s website (or an authorized republisher) if you want to read the whole thing. What Google cannot do is take this work and sell it without my permission, even if Google, or I, or a publisher, were to assemble the past 21 months’ …

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When Bosses Collude Against Their Talent

October 20, 2010

Back in the 1980s, Major League Baseball owners were unhappy about having to match other teams’ lucrative offers to free-agent stars. They made what they thought was a gentleman’s agreement to shut down the talent market. It worked, though only for awhile. There were 62 free agents after the 1985 season. Only four changed teams. There was a similarly peculiar lack of demand for top-tier players following the 1986 and …

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Protecting Internet Freedom In Friendly Countries

March 4, 2010

In late 2006 some schoolchildren in Turin, Italy, filmed themselves bullying an autistic classmate. They then uploaded the clip to Google Video. No one at Google knew these children. No one at the company saw the video before it was posted. When Google was notified of the video’s existence, it immediately took it down and worked with the police to identify who had uploaded it. But last month, four Google …

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Time For A SecureNet

January 21, 2010

On an early spring day in north-central China two years ago, the People’s Liberation Army held a ceremony to mark the establishment of an information warfare militia unit. Local dignitaries were invited, and the county government noted on its Web site that the militia’s peacetime mission would be to “extensively collect information from adversary networks and establish databases of adversary network data.” In wartime, the militia’s assignment would be to …

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News Sites Erect Walls Against Google

December 4, 2009

According to a fictional study cited in the popular humor paper, The Onion, the majority of print newspapers are now purchased by kidnappers seeking to prove the date. The article reports that, “In an effort to cater to their sole remaining customer base, many newspapers have started to run features and advertising targeted at the ruthless abductors.” Things are not really that bad in the newspaper business — not yet, …

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Copyright Holders Get Googled

September 29, 2009

The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have agreed to settle their class-action lawsuit against Google on behalf of copyright owners whose rights Google allegedly violated. Run-of-the-mill stuff for the American legal system, except for one detail: This settlement would not just correct past copyright violations; it would give Google the right to continue violating copyrights. I happen to own one of those copyrights, and I am not …

Microsoft, Google, Lewis And Clark

July 17, 2009

Hungry, wet and freezing, the Lewis and Clark party stumbled through the Bitterroot Mountains in September 1805 searching for the Columbia River and its outlet to the sea. “To our inexpressible joy,” wrote Meriwether Lewis on Sept. 19, they finally spied the prairies of the river basin where they would find food and salvation. I know how he felt. Off in the distance, I think I see the edge of …

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