A case between the Associated Press and All Headline News is moving forward based on a 90-year-old legal doctrine which may no longer be applicable in the Internet age. A federal judge ruled that the AP can sue AHN for stealing its “hot news.”
The AP’s beef against AHN appears to have more merit than when it tried to go after bloggers for merely linking to its stories without changing the headlines. AHN itself sells news feeds and headlines to other Websites, newspapers, and digital signage companies. The AP alleges that AHN simply copies the AP’s headlines and news without permission and without paying a syndication fee, and then resells those headlines and news stories as part of its own feeds with all AP accreditation stripped out.
If that is what happened, it does sound like pure theft. But rather than simply sue AHN for copyright infringement, the AP is also invoking the “hot news” doctrine, which treat news scoops as a form of property. Hot news is defined as time-sensitive news that is gathered at a cost, which a competitor then reproduces, free-riding on the original news-gathering organization’s efforts.
Basically, the judge says the AP can try to prove AHN stole it’s “hot news”. But what constitutes “hot news” in an age of instant communications? And how long does it last. In 1918, “hot news” traveled by mail and telegraph. It could last hours or even days. Today, a true scoop lasts for about a minute. The AP would have to show instances of articles where not only the AP broke the news, but was the only outlet to get the original story—something rarer and rarer when anyone can publish news over the Internet. → Read More
http://boostmobile.mobilerider.com/embed/small_wide/454/14205/ Boost Mobile recently unveiled their $50 unlimited plan that includes nationwide talk, text, web and walkie-talkie. With that new plan comes a marketing blitz and what Boost calls the Unwronged campaign. The first ad in this campaign was kind of revolting, but I’m not keen on hirsute women. Check out the exclusive “Coroner” spot that’s set to air starting tomorrow after the jump. I guess these are better than the George Washington spots. → Read More
People generally love sharing things, and Twitter has made broadcasting updates to anyone who cares to care on what you’re doing, wearing, reading, commenting on, eating, using, etc. a breeze; in 140 characters or less, even. It’s only natural to see so many users also share which music they are listening to at any given moment on Twitter, as this has been a fairly popular use of status feeds on other social networking and communication services for years (Facebook, Skype and Windows Live Messenger leap to mind).
After the jump, a number of ways to use Twitter for just about anything related to music. → Read More
Palm’s upcoming Pre has me all hot and bothered, so this emulator from TealOS sure looks enticing. It’s basically a skin that overlays on PalmOS devices like the Centro and gives it the feel of webOS. It seems to do a good job of replicating the things we’ve all seen of webOS, but it’s still PalmOS.
Anyone up for trying it out? It costs about $15. I would but I don’t have any Palm devices around the office. → Read More
I never got a chance to play the first Mass Effect, but I’m told it’s very popular. Hit the jump for ME2′s teaser trailer. → Read More
Spoilers ahead! Well, maybe not, but I’ve vowed not to watch any and all trailers or videos from the upcoming sequel.
You may also be interested to know that Bay was given exclusive access to GM’s design studio to handpick new cars for the film. GM Vice President of Global Design Ed Wellburn gives an interesting tidbit about how Trax and Beat will somehow “work together in some way”, whatever that means. Maybe one of you can decipher what he means. → Read More
A bill that was introduced last week by two Texas Republicans would require all ISPs and anyone providing Internet access otherwise (that’s you and me, reader, if you have a Wi-Fi router) to keep logs of activity for up to two years. This bill aims to seek out those sick individuals who are trafficking child porn. The Internet SAFETY (Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act) Act, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith and Sen. John Cornyn, threw out some numbers that are quite startling. → Read More
The good folks at Popular Mechanics worked with the Center of UFO Studies and constructed a map showing the hottest of the UFO hotspots spots. This list and map might not be Agent Mulder approved but it’s enough to confirm suspicions that LA is certainly home to some unusual creatures and probably house their crafts. → Read More
If Facebook has one standout application it has to be Photos. Measured on its own, it is the largest photo site on the Web. A full 69 percent of Facebook’s monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos, based on comScore data. And more than 10 billion photos have been uploaded to the site.
And it’s been pulling away from its competitors. As can be seen in the comScore chart above, as recently as last September the top three photo sites in the U.S. were running neck-and-neck, with Facebook Photos at 23.9 million unique visitors, followed by Photobucket at 21.3 million uniques, and Flickr at 19.5 million uniques. But by January, the number of monthly U.S. visitors going to Facebook Photos shot up 41 percent to 33.6 million. Meanwhile, Photobucket is up only 7 percent to 22.8 million, while Flickr is up 12 percent to 21.9 million. (Picasa is a distant fourth in the U.S. with 8.1 million).
In other words, Facebook increased the gap between its closest competitor (Photobucket in the U.S.) from 2.6 million monthly unique visitors to 10.8 million. On a worldwide basis, the gap between Facebook Photos and Flickr (which is the No. 2 site globally, and looks like it is about to pass Photobucket in the U.S.) went from 41.2 million unique monthly visitors in September to 87 million in December (the most recent data available, see chart below).
What accounts for Facebook’s advantage in the photo department? → Read More
Casio Japan announced the PRX-2000T [JP], the newest addition to it series of Protrek watches, which are geared towards sports and trekking enthusiasts. The new model is just 11.3mm thick and features a titanium with carbide coating band and bezel (weight: 105g). → Read More
This is what you get when you use a slick tool like Wordle (try it!) to run all the words used to make up the Terms of Service agreements of seven notable internet companies: cool visualizations that somewhat capture the essence of their content.
Pointless? Very. Cool? Definitely. → Read More
At a time when many people are saying innovation is dead along with the economy as we knew it, I can’t help but feel the hot breath of a surge in the power of the network. As Marc Andreessen reminds in his fascinating conversation with Charlie Rose, the Internet didn’t take off until the browser. The infrastructure was in place for some time already, but when the browser appeared, the TV generation sat up and took notice. Now we’re at the threshold of the realtime moment, and history seems to be repeating itself. For some of us, the advent of a reasonably realtime message bus over public networks has changed something about the existing infrastructure in ways that are not yet important to a broad section of Internet dwellers. The numbers are adding up — 175 million Facebook users, tens of thousands of instant Twitter followers, constant texting and video chats among the teenage crowd — a semi-secret economy of interactive media that is sucking the chewy chocolate center out of the one-way broadcast sector. The standard attack on realtime is that it is the new crack. We’re all addicted to our devices, to the flow of alerts, messages, and bite-sized information chunks. We no longer have time for blog posts, refreshing our Twitter streams for pointers to what our friends think is important. It’s the revenge of the short attention span brought on by 30-second television ads — the myth of multi-tasking spread across a sea of factoids that Nick Carr fears will destroy scholarship and ultimately thinking. Of course this is true and also completely irrelevant. My daughter told her mother today that her boyfriend was spending too much time on IM and video-chat, and not enough on getting his homework done. She actually said these words: “I told him you have to get away from the computer sometimes, turn it off, give yourself time to think.” This is the same daughter who will give up anything – makeup, TV, food — just as long as I don’t take her computer or iPhone away. So realtime is the new crack, and even the naivest of our culture realizes it can eat our brains. But does that mean we will stop moving faster and faster? No. Does that mean we will give up our blackberries when we become president? No. Then what will happen to us? The browser brought → Read More
The first prototypes were showcased during CES 2008, but now Kenwood has presented an advanced piece of hardware that incorporates DTS Surround Sensation, meaning you will get surround sound over two-channel audio systems (headphones or stereo speakers). → Read More
Japan (and the US) are using biometric fingerprint readers to prevent terrorists and illegal immigrants from entering the country. Last month, it came to light that several South Koreans passed through the biometric immigration screening despite previous deportation records by using special tape on their fingers.
Video after the jump. → Read More
Apparently NASA needs help coming up with an appropriate moniker for an International Space Station module. No, they don’t want to name it after your dog. They want to follow the boring naming pattern already established by the two previous modules: Unity and Harmony. The unit will be an observation location and also the spot where the robotic arm will be controlled. Got any ideas? → Read More
Talk about adding insult to injury. Apparently Microsoft has inadvertently overpaid severance to some of its recently laid off employees, and is now asking for some of the money back. It’s unclear how many of the 1,400 employees laid off last month were affected, but we’ve confirmed that it wasn’t a single isolated incident (we’ve contacted Microsoft for a response). We’re also hearing that some employees may have been underpaid as well.
While the payroll error must be irritating in and of itself to these laid off workers (severance is a sensitive subject), it appears that Microsoft HR isn’t even bothering to explain how it happened (employees are instructed to call the office, which is closed for the weekend, if they want to know the details). Given that it was Microsoft HR that screwed this up in the first place, you’d think they’d at least include the calculations they made and point out where the error took place. → Read More
Well done, sir. Well done. Click here for a complete guiding to hacking your Dell Mini 9 to run OS X. → Read More
So you don’t like Twitter, huh? Lots of pablum, not much content? No real human-to-human connectedness? Well you’re wrong, Mr. Ludd, because Twitter helped two guys meet Shaq.
Jesse Bearden was following The Real Shaq on Twitter and saw that he was at a diner near his home. Instead of saying “Twitter is not a uniter, it is an egocasting system designed for infantile neophiliacs who have little to offer the world except search engine optimization snake oil and web marketing consulting,” Jesse and his buddy went down to the diner and saw Le Shaq sitting in a booth getting his feed on. → Read More
Hewlett Packard isn’t doing so well like ever other consumer electronic company. Profit and sales are down, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill. Anyway, instead of laying off the 20,000 people like the financials indicate, the company is issuing company wide pay cuts starting at the top. → Read More
