Teammate Blog

I recently found an interesting post on my teammate Kevin's blog. Kevin's blog post is about an individual suing Microsoft and Google for an ad concerning fraud in North Carolina appearing on the search engines. The court ruled that the ads are covered under free speech. Yesterday, in a post discussing the Viacom v. Google lawsuit, I talked about how internet technology creates new legal issues. This is another example the legal system to clarifying laws relating to the internet.

Healthcare and Blogs

While reading the class required blogs, I came across a blog post on Diva Marketing with an interesting subject. The article entitled Taking the Pulse of Healthcare Social Media Marketing discusses blogs covering healthcare information. This is one aspect of blogging which I have never considered. Clearly, the internet has provided consumers with more information than they know what to do with. This is generally a great thing as the more information we have at our fingertips, the better. When considering health, the internet has been both good and bad. People are more informed, and are able to find specialized information It has also allowed some to falsely believe that they are doctors. Reading an article about a particular illness or disease on WebMD does not provide enough information to diagnose and treat that illness or disease. This cases some people to not seek real medical healthcare. In other cases, people see prescription drug-related information on the internet (or television ads) and go to their doctor asking for an unneeded medicine. The internet does not replace live doctors.

The Diva Marketing Blog, however, presents another issue: health information taken from blogs. The article suggests that when looking for health information online consumers look for information with a "personal touch." A personal touch is exactly what blogs provide. According to the article, consumers are also put off by advertising (making them turn away from drug company web sites). The people behind the blogs, however, are not always impartial. No source of health information (blogs, government sites, or general sites) are impartial. People need to weigh all information taking into account where the information is coming from. The internet certainly allows for many outlooks on any given topic. Health related blogs will provide yet another outlook when it comes to health related issues. Hopefully, people will not substitute the personal touch offered by blogs for the personal touch offered by doctors.

Discussed in Class: Viacom v. Google

As discussed in class last week, Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion dollars. As owner of many popular television networks, including Comedy Central, many clips produced by Viacom appear on You Tube. Our class discussion involved a debate with half of the class arguing for Google and the other half arguing for Viacom. I can empathize with the position of both companies. Viacom is in the business of producing television shows. Viacom expects sole profit for the work they create, and Google is earning advertising profits (some of Viacom's shows are the most viewed clips on YouTube) on Viacom's copyrighted material. Google, however, is complying with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. You Tube must take clips of copyrighted material down, if asked to do so by the copyright holder. In the past, as Viacom asked Google to remove clips from YouTube, Google complied.

It is clear that problem is in the law. A copyright holder should be responsible for patrolling the internet to ensure that copyrighted material is not being used beyond fair use. The problem will likely only get worse as the web becomes more of a web 2.0. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act must keep up with changing technology. While reading the required blogs for class, I came across an article entitled Congress Must Make Clear Copyright Laws on Slashdot. The author of the article takes the stance that clips on YouTube are likely fair use, but agrees that Congress must clarify the law. It seems as if Google is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for now. The law will surely need to be clarified, however, as other internet related copyright suits will likely follow.

iPod Tax

According to an article on Slashdot (one of the required blogs), a Canadian Copyright group wants a tax to placed on iPods. This would mean a $75 dollar tax on devices over 30 GB! The tax would be smaller for devices with less memory, but is not limited to iPods. Items such as memory cards would also be taxed.

According to the Canadian Copyright group, the purpose is to compensate artist for "illegally" copied or transfered music. Although this has become a big issue for recording artists and labels in the digital age, a tax is not the way to solve the problem. First, not everyone who owns an iPod is "illegally" copying and transferring music. In fact, many of the features in place on iTunes, for example, make it difficult to do so. The recording industry should, in fact, be thanking Apple for the iPod instead of attempting to tax their product. Many iPod users, myself included, listen to music much more frequently upon owning an iPod. Since I listen to more music, I buy more music. Lastly, if anything, this tax would likely worsen the problem. People may believe that illegally copying or transferring music is justified having paid a tax on their newly purchased iPod.

Doesn't copyright law indicate legality in making copies of copyrighted material for personal use? (Such as burning a purchased CD so one copy can be used in the car.) I hope that this tax does not become a reality.

Editing Wikipedia

I just completed by second Wikipedia edit. This time, I chose to edit an article on Paderno del Grappa, Italy. I studied abroad in Italy in the Spring of 2006, and lived in Paderno del Grappa for the semester. The original Wikipedia article had very little information and was classified as a "stub." Paderno is an extremely small town, so there is a limited amount of information available, but I was able to add information based on personal experience. I added the following information making sure to link to other Wikipedia articles where possible:

"Paderno del Grappa is located at the base of Mount Grappa, a mountain located in the Dolomites.

Paderno del Grappa is home to Istituto Filipin, an Italian boarding school. The Instituto Filipin campus also serves as the undergraduate campus for the Consortium Universities for International Studies (also known as CIMBA)."

Once again, editing Wikipedia has proven to be very simple. My last Wikipedia edit generated only one minor change a few days later. The change involved "Wikilinking" the birth and death dates. I speculate that the articles that I have chosen to edit are not frequently viewed articles. In addition, the topics are far from controversial. This is likely why there was not a big response to my previous edits. It will be interesting to see what additional edits the Paderno del Grappa article generates.

YouTube Copyright Issues

While reading some of the required blogs, I found an article relating directly to today's class discussion. John Battelle's Searchblog has an interesting blog post entitled "Chill Out, Big Media, We're On It" about anti-piracy technology for YouTube. Google recently made the announcement that it will soon offer this technology to protect copyrighted material on YouTube.

The most interesting part, however, can be found in the comments. According to commenting bloggers, Google has had the ability and know-how to create this sort of technology for years. (One blogger suggested that he told Google to begin creating this technology five years ago!) The primary viewpoint among bloggers is as follows: Google should have had anti-piracy technology in place before purchasing YouTube.

Regardless, it seems as if Google will soon be protecting copyrighted material. Will Google next face copyright issues with its cached pages?