Today, a victory was won for privacy advocates and bloggers everywhere, as a school board member failed to convince New York State courts that Google should be required to hand over details about anonymous commenters on a Blogger blog.
Recently, a lot of flak has been tossed in a lot of different directions, much of it towards Google and Yahoo (but of course we can’t forget Facebook) in regards to their various and often conflicting stances on privacy. Today, though, Google took a position on privacy that was commendable in that they refused to hand over anonymized data unless the person to whom the data belonged to consented to its release.
Marcy Friedman, the Supreme Court Justice presiding over the case, ultimately agreed, stating that a decision against Google would have a “chilling effect on protected speech.”
The whole ordeal seems to be over anonymous comments on a blog post regarding how public funds should be dispersed. The original blog post is fairly straightforward, but the comments were accusations baseless and ad hominem. Those that have been on the internet for more than twenty minutes or so know that this is not out of the ordinary, and it reminds me of the immortal words from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: “The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to [complain] about movies and share pornography with one another.”
We wouldn’t want to lose that, now would we?
[via WebProNews]
Visit here to subscribe to these commentsUser comment: By: Advice NetworkThe better thing would be if nobody HAD the information about the anonymous posters, so it could not be turned over no matter how the courts decided.
Placely, which we took a look at a few months ago while the service was still in alpha test mode, has officially launched its public beta with two major new features. The first of which allows groups to track and coordinate with member for travel.
You may remember that Placely is a tool for tracking your travels. It has some social features to this end, letting you keep up with your friends’ journey, or even that of your coworker. With group tracking capability, this may be useful for business teams or sports clubs that may have members traveling together or individually.
The other new feature is comprised of a dashboard for summary information regarding the location of their friends. This means that you can see who’s available to meet immediately, or when they’ll be in town again for meeting up at that time. I like the dashboard function, and feel that this alone could be turned into a useful application for Facebook, OpenSocial, or any of the other networks’ platforms. It would even make a great widget for personal start pages. Coupled with Placely’s basic event-coordinating options, and integrated with iCal, and this could be very handy.
Comcast got into some hot water after it was uncovered that the cable company and broadband provider was blocking p2p service BitTorrent, among others. And now Comcast is being taken to court.
Hart is requesting that the court to force Comcast to stop interfering with traffic, and is trying to get this case to be certified as a class action lawsuit in the state of California.
This from the suit:
Defendants have disseminated and continues to disseminate advertising, that they know or should reasonably know is false and misleading. This conduct includes, but is not limited to, promoting and advertising the fast speeds that apply to the Service without limitation, when, in fact, Defendants severely limit the speed of the Service for certain applications.
It further includes Defendant’s misrepresentations that their customers will enjoy “unfettered access” to all internet applications, when, in fact, Defendants not only fetter certain applications, but completely block them. Defendants know or reasonably should know that this advertising is false and misleading.
Comcast still has not offered up the specifics on how it handles traffic from p2p sites, and that makes the situation look even more questionable. Of course this ties in with the issues swimming around net neutrality. And thanks to this little shenanegan that Comcast has pulled, the company is now in knee-deep. See more on Comcast’s troubles here.
[via wired]
User comment: By: MartinAwesome. Who do I send the bill to when Comcast raises their prices?
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Dawdle is a new kind of auction site. It lets the buyers and sellers do what they need to do (buy items and list items), and Dawdle will do the rest for you. It’s like eHarmony or Zopa for auctions.
I got a chance to meet Dawdle’s founder last week, and as all good startup founders do, he told me the story of how Dawdle came to be. After being frustrated with trying to sell an item on eBay and having to re-list items, deal with buyer filters that only limit your reach, and scam artists contacting him on Craiglist and Amazon, he decided to create his own auction site where the buyers and sellers set terms, and everyone gets what they want. A byproduct of this concept is a very hands-off approach to online auctions.
So a seller can list items that they’re willing to unload. These items will show on Dawdle’s website as being available for purchase. For buyers, you can search for what you need, set your terms, and Dawdle will match you up with a seller. For the terms that a buyer can select, this includes a seller’s rating, the price of the item, and the condition of the item.
Dawdle will tell you right away if you’ve got any matches. If not, you can still “buy” the item. And by this I mean that you can let Dawdle know that you want a coral pink Nintendo DS Lite for $100. Once a buyer lists this item within the parameters of your terms, the transaction will go through immediately and you’ve got yourself a new Nintendo DS Lite on the way.
If you don’t get any matches right away, there are a couple of things you can do: resubmit your request, or create an open bid. This lets the seller know you’re interested, and may be a good option for those that think automatic transactions are a bit creepy. One thing I’d add to this is a “favorites” option, so you can save potential items to your list to consider for purchase later. As this isn’t an auction site where the time runs out, per say, the necessity for this particular option is minimized.
Another useful feature on Dawdle is the price history. I’m glad Dawdle added this feature, because starting out on the sight, you may not know what price to input for an item that you want. Unless you’ve already done your research, you’re just pulling a number out of thin air. The current downfall to this feature is that it seems to be based on internal site data, meaning you’ll need to wait for the site to gain a bit of traction and get a lot of transactions under its belt before it can offer up price history for all of its available items. Right now Dawdle is focusing on video game consoles, but will be expanding to incorporate more products in the near future.
[...] Original post by Kristen Nicole [...]
Visit here to subscribe to these commentsUser comment: By: Dawdle is eHarmony for Auctions »TechAddress[...] Source:Mashable! Dawdle is a new kind of auction site. It lets the buyers and sellers do what they need to do (buy items and list items), and Dawdle will do the rest for you. It's like eHarmony or Zopa for auctions. I got a chance to meet Dawdle's founder last […] Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
McCartney Nearly Promises Beatles’ Digital Release Next Year - SendMeRSS
Posted by elveston priory at 2:33 am
The Beatles’ catalog will be digital, soon enough. The long-awaited collection of music from the ever-popular band is slated to be available in digital format sometime next year. Paul McCartney has indicated that the hold up is due to “maybe one little sticking point left” and is currently in the process of being cleared up.
What’s the Holdup?
That sticking point, in case you were wondering, seems to be contractual. There are a lot of parties involved, and as we very well know, everyone involved in the music industry wants to get their cut. And apparently, there’s a lot of planning going on as well, and based on McCartney’s comment that you don’t want to do something that seems cool now, but isn’t cool later, the plans are big, and go beyond the simple offering of the Beatles’ digital offerings.
Could this have something to do with the actual music, or perhaps its distribution methods? Could we see some tactics similar to those used by Radiohead or Trent Reznor? Perhaps. That could certainly create some red tape in terms of needing to keep all parties happy. All the Beatles’ solo albums are available digitally, with George Harrison’s becoming the most recent to become available.
[via billboard bzz]
