Category: Technology

Internet OS

The State of the Internet Operating System – O’Reilly Radar.

I like the way that O’Reilly ties together all of the things that make the Internet of today so different from the Internet of 5 years ago (positioning, voice recognition, etc).  I think he’s put his finger on the reason why I knew I had to get a smart phone–something new is afoot.

It’s unfortunate that he sees many of these things that should be standardized as “battlefronts.” A bit of agreement on open standards for things like directory info and status updates would increase competition and enable innovation (on top of the common standard).

I’ve been busy with work lately, but I hope to get back to regular blogging…

Lessig chat hit with automatic censorship

Bogus Copyright Claim Silences Yet Another Larry Lessig YouTube Presentation | Techdirt.

Lessig recently gave a “webside chat” on the usual issues of copyright and fair use that was posted to YouTube.  The video included clips of music that is covered under copyright, but in this context appear to be fair use. The details aren’t immediately clear, but it seems that Google’s automatic copyright filters stripped the audio track from the video (though it is now available again — with a link to purchase the music featured in the video).

This is an incredibly timely coincidence with my last post about the censorship of digital speech. In this case, there wasn’t even a button to push–an automatic filter indiscriminately altered what Lessig had to say.

The democratization of web publishing, I believe, is an inherently good thing. It would be shameful if speech gets quashed because of a business extending its power over any medium it touches.

Techdirt isn’t usually a source I like to cite, but when Lessig tweets a story about himself, you know it must be legit.