News of note today:
1.Ebay CEO Meg Whitman downplays the rivalry between Internet Champions Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay saying all four will focus their core activities rather taking each other head-on.
2. CNN Story discusses Slashdot’s plan to take on the likes of Digg with better features. In the works: a spanking new moderating system.
3. Google’s controversial new computer-to-computer Search feature could provide a stepping stone for Google to distribute a wide variety of digital media, including music and video, to mobile devices as well as to other computers, according to the Kelsey Group.
4. Research by British Video Association suggests that piracy doesn’t hurt DVD sales.
From the report,
...(our)UK research shows that, on average, downloaders are film fans who view the same number of legitimate films (cinema, rented and bought DVDs) as the average active DVD consumer (24).
5. Boing Boing thinks Yahoo & AOL’s email tax will hurt free speech as,
“The system has no way to distinguish between ordinary mail and bulk mail, spam and non-spam, personal and commercial mail. It just gives preference to people who pay.”
6. A Day In The Life Of A Chinese Net Cop.His daily duties include monitoring the Internet bars through closed-circuit television, training Internet unit administrators, and more.
7. A leading US academic backs Google Book plan, calling Google Book Search “legal, ethical and noble”
