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Internet Holdouts Upset At Newspapers For Moving Content Online
Romenesko points us to an article by the Baltimore Sun's public editor about people who don't use the internet. Apparently, they're growing increasingly upset at newspapers that are moving more content online and cutting back on what they include in the print edition. Many newspapers have realized that they can save a lot of money by not printing things like tv listings or stock listings in the actual paper, knowing that it's often much easier for most people to find that information online or through other sources. That's absolutely true, but apparently it's upsetting those who aren't caught up on the latest technology trends and have no interest in finding their way online to check the tv listings. While you can understand how they feel, it's really difficult to feel too much sympathy. Things definitely do change over time, but it's hard to justify newspapers spending so much on newsprint and ink when only a tiny percentage of people actually uses that section of the...

Patent Battles Now More About Lobbying Than What's Best For Innovation
Patents are supposed to be about promoting innovation. But these days it's clear that the original purpose of patents has long since been disconnected from the program. In fact, if you want to see how bad it's become, here are two separate stories that highlight how decisions over patents are increasingly all about lobbyists, rather than actually figuring out what's best for innovation (though, I guess you could say that for all politics these days). However, read this Washington Post article on the silly Qualcomm/Broadcom patent fight, that we've covered before, where apparently both sides knew that the whole fight was about hiring lobbyists to get Congressional Representatives to support its side. Nowhere in that discussion do they bring up what's actually right and what's best for the country (in fact, the article notes that Broadcom's win will probably mean new mobile phones are about to get more expensive), but it's all about whose lobbyists were more effective. Meanwhile...

NTP's Back, And It's Brought More Lawsuits
Everybody's favorite patent troll, NTP, is back. It, of course, was the company that managed to wring $612.5 million out of RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, for patent infringement -- despite the patents in question being on their way to being rejected by the USPTO after a bunch of prior art came to light. NTP has now sued AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, as well as T-Mobile, for infringing on the same patents. RIM's settlement with NTP was widely believed to protect its carrier customers from infringement suits, but it's likely such protection extended only to their use of RIM products, not other mobile email systems. It's not too surprising that NTP sued, since it's a patent troll and that's what they do, though it's slightly curious since the suits were filed in the same Virginia court, with the same judge, as its previous cases. This includes its earlier suit against Palm, which the judge put on hold until after the validity of NTP's patents is finally assessed. It's likely...

Pump-And-Dump Stock Spammers Made $20 Million
Well, we already knew that pump-and-dump stock spam scams worked for the spammers, but we weren't aware of just how well they worked. Apparently a group of pump-and-dump spammers made out to the tune of $20 million before they were caught. Of course, unlike in some cases, these scammers involved the executives of the companies they were hyping up -- though, it's unclear to what extent those executives understood what the scammers were planning to do.

Yet Another Example Of Innovation Without Patent Protection
Lately, there's been a growing body of research on industries like fashion and restaurants that thrive without the aid of patent or copyright protections. In these industries, the lack of legal barriers allows innovative ideas to spread rapidly within the industry, while informal social mechanisms like reputation ensure that innovators get proper credit for their creativity. Ed Felten points out a paper by Yale law student Jacob Loshin that explains how the magic industry has thrived without resorting to legal protections for new inventions. Instead, the magic community uses social norms to reward those who discover new magic tricks and punishes those who disclose them to non-magicians. Because magicians rely so much on their professional network of other magicians to learn about new tricks, new equipment, and new performance opportunities, maintaining a good reputation within the magic community is essential to the career of a successful magician. A magician who uses another...

More Misplaced Google Ad Lawsuits... This Time In Australia
Just as Google has settled the longstanding keyword trademark lawsuit from American Blinds (and as a new one starts up from American Airlines) in the US, it appears that Google is facing a similar challenge down under. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission is suing Google for supposedly deceptive ad practices, but the details suggest that perhaps the ACCC is a bit confused. It seems to be complaining about a few different things, and it's worth separating those out. First, it appears that an organization named Trading Post, which appears to be an online classifieds site, bought deceptive ads on Google, pretending to be local Australian car dealerships. This can absolutely be seen as trademark infringement if the ads were (as the ACCC accuses) made to look as if they pointed directly to the dealership websites, rather than a Trading Post page. However, the infringement is by Trading Post -- not Google. ACCC is suing both, but it's hard to see why Google should...

Turns Out Those Six Thousand People Who Are Your 'Friends' On MySpace Aren't Really Your Friends
This seems unlikely to come as a surprise to most people, but despite the number of tools and applications such as social networks for getting people to network with each other, the number of close friends that most people have hasn't really changed -- and it almost always involves people who have gotten to know each other face-to-face rather than online. This isn't particularly surprising or new, nor does it suggest that there's anything less real about online friends. It just confirms what pretty much everyone knows: while it's certainly possible to meet and get to know people quite well through online venues, meeting in person still has plenty of benefits -- especially for reaching a closer level of friendship.

Canadian Newspaper Gives Away Free Music Downloads
Earlier this year, there was a huge fuss over the UK's Daily Mail newspaper's promotion giving away the new Prince CD for free with a copy of the newspaper. It seemed like a pretty good way of dealing with the troubles facing both the newspaper industry and the recording industry -- offering a new way of financing music combined with a new way to promote and distribute music, all the while helping give people a reason to actually buy a newspaper. It was so reasonable that it freaked out the recording industry, music stores and even other newspapers. However, it appears that some newspapers have decided to go even further. Michael Geist lets us know that over the weekend, the Vancouver Sun put up a freely downloadable compilation of songs from Nettwerk Music. You may recall Nettwerk as being the Canadian record label that seems to actually understand that the trick isn't in fighting against consumers (or in suing them), but in giving them what they want. Thus, it's not...

Cheap Storage, Digital Pack Rats... Opening Up New Possibilities
Back when Google first launched Gmail, the big revolution wasn't necessarily in the interface, but the fact that it was offering 1 Gb of storage for online email, with the announcement noting that you should never have to delete email again. It turns out they were a little hasty in that claim, and even though the company has added a lot more storage, some people still found themselves running out of room and deleting stuff (and now even Google is charging extra for additional storage). However, it certainly is reaching the point where digital storage is so cheap that many companies are finding it easier to just save everything possible. There's no reason to throw out data any more. This has certainly resulted in some problems, such as when companies leak data -- but it's also leading to new potential tools and services, such as much better computer learning systems, that can simply process tons and tons of stored data to figure things out. So, perhaps the quest for better...

Big Publishers Increasingly Experimenting With Free Academic Journals
For many years there's been a push to create free research journals in various academic and scientific fields. The reasoning was that the high expense of the traditional journals made new breakthroughs and research much more difficult and expensive, potentially slowing down important advances. There was also some concern about publicly funded research not being available to the public. For a while, the traditional publishers acted horrified at the idea of free journals, but it appears that they're finally realizing the idea might not be so bad. Publishing giant Reed Elsevier is launching a new free medical journal online for oncologists that it hopes to support with advertising. It hopes to sign up a bunch of doctors to use it and may launch other free journals in other medical areas. It's definitely an experiment -- and appears to be driven in part by the growing number of free sources online -- but it's still good to see the big publishing houses not just bashing the...