Facebook, Google & Intellectual property

slashdot: “Scott Jaschik sends us to Inside Higher Ed, where a librarian explains why the tradeoffs we’re facing with social networking sites — e.g. privacy vs. a space to build one’s personal “brand” — echo issues faced years ago by academics who publish in journals that their institutions’ libraries can not then afford. The author argues that, as the Open Access movement is busily restructuring academic publishing, we need to find a way of retaining the personal value to the individual of social networking and Web 2.0 sites, and not allow that value to be eclipsed by the commercial worth of the data the sites obtain about us. In the author’s view, the tension is in “…the fundamental relationship between the individual’s desire to share their thoughts and experiences with others and the commercial entities that provide the distribution channel for that act of sharing.”

 

Doubletwist Desktop: Say Goodbye to DRM

nanocr: “After a lot of hard work, we’ve finally released doubleTwist desktop. The goal of doubleTwist is to simplify the flow of media across devices and social networks. To give an example: say you shot a video with your Nokia N95 cellphone. How do you send that video to your friend and make sure he’ll be able to play it on his iPod or Sony PSP? Yesterday, the easiest solution was to give up. As of today, the answer is doubleTwist. With doubleTwist, you’ll be able to share and sync digital media without worrying about codecs and bitrates.”

Court TV…uh…I mean court live blogging

The trial of linux programmer turned wife murderer is being live blogged by two reporters:

“The Hans Reiser trial has been underway for some time now, the prosecution is moving towards the end of its case. For those interested, not only in the outcome of the trial, but a detailed description of the trial, including some insights into police methods, two reporters are live-blogging. One report is by Henry K. Lee for the San Francisco Chronicle and the other is by David Kravets and published by Wired

The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage

nettime: “Matteo Pasquinelli’s recent article “The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage” examines recent practices concerned with licensing as an anti-capitalist tactic and its broader ideological
ramifications for dialogs about file sharing and freedom of information, using the ideas of the parasite, cognitive capitalism and offering a strategy of sabotage.”

link 

Surprise of the century: Facebook releases too much user info

Researchers from the University of Virginia recently announced that in a study of the top 150 Facebook applications, more than 90% were given access to information that was not needed to function correctly. That Scrabble or Superpoke application you really like? Its developers get access to your religion, sexuality and home town. Facebook’s position was summed up by Georgetown Law Professor Dan Solove, ‘They seem to be going on the assumption that if someone uses Facebook, they really have no privacy concerns.’ Do Facebook users deserve privacy?