Business
Still using Facebook? Really? The social network is going to start adding your “likes” and “check-ins” to advertisements in users’ news feeds. And it’s not optional, according to Irina Slutsky writing for Advertising Age. Facebook might be on to something if it placed a “FAIL” button next to that “like” button. Remember, if you’re not paying for the service, you’re the product.
The US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found that the 2008 financial crisis in the United States was avoidable and caused by widespread government regulation failures, Wall Street risk-taking, and corporate greed and incompetence. According to Sewell Chan, writing for the New York Times, the report’s conclusion states, “The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done. If we accept this notion, it will happen again.” The full report is a 576-page book. Six Democrats and four Republicans make up the commission. Three of the Republicans published a dissent “focusing on a narrower set of causes,” according to Chan. A fourth Republican wrote his own dissent “calling policies to promote homeownership the major culprit,” writes Chan.
ESRD
Shortly after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ACT (PPACA) was signed into law by President Obama, lawsuits seeking to block the provisions mandating health insurance were filed. The lawsuits argue that the US Constitution doesn’t authorize the federal government to mandate health insurance. Turns out there’s precedent for mandatory health coverage. Rick Ungar, writing for Forbes, reports that “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen” passed by the US Congress in 1798 “authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.” Ungar notes that this fifth US Congress didn’t question the intent of the drafters of the Constitution, “as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.”
[scribd id=39344827] [scribd id=29099806]Almost half of dialysis technicians in California are failing the competency test newly required by the US federal government. “The California Dialysis Council, which has administered its test to about 1,200 people so far, is seeing a pass rate of about 56 percent, according to the group’s executive director,” reports Christina Jewett, writing for California Watch. The April 2010 competency deadline resulted in a drop in the number of dialysis technicians in California from 5,200 to about 3,800 — a 27 percent reduction. While the competency test is mandatory, technicians who fail are allowed to continue working under supervision. And they’re allowed to take the test as many times as necessary. An executive director of a large California-based testing organization told Jewett that the national pass-fail competency rate of dialysis technicians is not tracked by any single organization.
Intellectual property
President Obama has nominated Donald Verrilli, Jr., the attorney for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as the US solicitor general. The solicitor general’s main job is to defend the federal government before the US Supreme Court and, as a prosecutor, to determine which cases to submit to the Supreme Court. Verrilli is known mostly for going after Grokster on behalf of the RIAA, arguing that service providers are liable for their users’ actions. Verrilli was also lead attorney for Viacom in its US$1 billion copyright infringement case against YouTube. As Charlie Savage, writing for the New York Times, notes, Verrilli is less widely known as one of the non-lead lawyers who filed an amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief supporting the due process rights of Jose Padilla, a US citizen accused of being a terrorist.
Internet
Cory Doctorow has written a thoroughly delightful response to Evgney Morozov’s The Net Delusion for the Guardian. It’s a meticulous and well-thought-out takedown and call to activism.
Law
US Representative Darrell Issa (R-California), as chair of the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has sent a letter (.pdf; 205KB) to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officers at 181 federal agencies requesting the names of people who have made FOIA requests, the date of their requests, and a description of the information requested during the last five years. Issa’s spokesperson says this is all about transparency. “Our interest is not in the private citizens who make the requests,” Kurt Bardella, Issa’s spokesperson, told Eric Lipton, writing for the New York Times. “We are looking at government responses to these Freedom of Information requests and the only way to measure that is to tally all that information.” If that’s not shocking enough — “sort of creepy” is what David Cuillier, a University of Arizona journalism professor and chair of the Freedom of Information Committee at the Society of Professional Journalists, called it — Lipton reports that of the roughly 600,000 FOIA requests the federal government receives each year, “a vast majority [come] from corporate executives seeking information on competitors that might do business with the government.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published an analysis of some 2,500 pages of US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents it obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The EFF found vast violations — more than 40,000 since September 2001 — of the civil liberties of US citizens.
Media
Because it’s a nonprofit, MinnPost.com can’t turn a profit. But it can turn a surplus, and that’s just what it’s done for the first time in its brief, three-year history. The online news publication spent US$1.261 million and had a surplus of US$17,594 to end 2010. Publisher Joel Kramer wrote, “But this is a tremendous vindication of our business model, because it resulted from 18 percent growth, not budget-cutting.” By way of comparison, the publication ran deficits of US$605,000 in 2008 and US$126,915 in 2009. Advertising and sponsorship revenue rose an impressive 42 percent on the year. Minnesota-based traffic rose by 18 percent in 2010, averaging about 450,000 visits and 850,000 pageviews per month.
President Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act, repealing restrictions on low-power FM (LPFM) radio stations and paving the way for the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to grant many more 100-watt LPFM licenses. The LPFM restrictions were long supported by commercial and public radio, citing interference concerns.
After severing the country’s internet and cellular connections, the Egyptian government — still not satisfied — has ordered television satellite channel Al Jazeera to cease operations, according to a Reuters report by Andrew Hammond. The Egyptian government also cancelled the network’s licenses, forced the closure of Al Jazeera’s Cairo bureau, and withdrew accreditation of Al Jazeera journalists. It’s fascinating to watch the perception of Al Jazeera in the US begin to shift from propagandist organ of “the terrorists” to the most reliable Arab news organization in the region.
Privacy
Google and Mozilla have announced support for do-not-track mechanismd in their respective Chrome and Firefox browsers. The do-not-track mechanism allows users to opt-out of being tracked online by advertisers. Mozilla’s version of the do-not-track mechanism relies on flags in the HTTP header and advertiser agreement to honor the flag. Google’s version of the technology uses a browser extension, Keep My Opt-Outs, allowing users to opt-out of being tracked by advertisers who comply with self regulation programs. Microsoft’s Tracking Protection for Internet Explorer 9, announced last month, allows users to define lists to indicate websites they don’t want tracking them. Of the three options, Mozilla’s is clearly the best, and would be even better if advertisers were required to honor the do-not-track HTTP header flag. Predictably, advertisers have a strong preference for Google’s solution. Rainey Reitman, writing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), explores why do-not-track is needed and why Mozilla’s approach is better.
Publishing
Periodical publishers really only need two things from a platform: The ability to sell subscriptions as friction-free as possible and the ability to singularly control subscriber information. Steve Jobs knows this and denies publishers these two things on the iPad and other iOS devices. Zinio, on the other hand has been doing these two things really well for almost 10 years. Philip Elmer-DeWitt, writing for Fortune, reports that Zinio’s 2010 digital revenues are up 350 percent over 2009. And Zinio’s titles — The Economist, the Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone, among many others — are seeing similar increases. Zinio’s secret is that it didn’t require publishers to change their editorial and production workflows to produce digital editions and, even more importantly, didn’t require any changes to their business methodologies. As Elmer-DeWitt notes, “Zinio looked on their books like any other distributor.” With Apple changing its iOS subscription rules midstream it remains to be seen what will happen with Zinio.
Ongo — a paid news aggregation service — received a lot of undeserved attention this week. News publishers including the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post, hope — desperately — that the service will convince users to pay for their content. Matthew Ingram, writing for GigaOm, has the best analysis: “… Ongo seems like yet another Hail Mary pass aimed at trying to rewind the clock and impose scarcity on media content, and one that will likely fail just as quickly as others have.” Ongo doesn’t provide the full content of the participating publishers; the New York Times, for example provides only its top 20 stories. Ongo does nothing that even the most basic RSS reader can’t do better. At least for now.
Gavin Dunaway, writing for Adotas about the Demand Media initial public offering (IPO), argues that the entire web is a content farm and that investors were just following the numbers. “But I’ll argue again the problem isn’t just with content farms — content on the web is growing increasingly crappier because it’s just churned out,” writes Dunaway. “Increasingly the internet is a gigantic content farm. There’s little editing, no quality control —- it’d be understandable if this was user-generated content, but the junk is coming from major media companies, ones with paid content producers. They’re throwing any crap they can online to get those treasured pageviews.”
Technology
Well, sure. Three months after I buy our iPhones, they’re available on a better carrier with a US$30 unlimited data plan. Roger Cheng, writing for the Wall Street Journal, reports that Verizon will indeed announce a US$30 unlimited data plan. Cheng quotes Lowell McAdam, Verizon’s chief executive as saying, “‘I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot,’ he said. Not offering an unlimited plan would put up a barrier for customers who might otherwise switch from AT&T, he said.” Oh, but wait. In an update, Cheng notes McAdam said publicly that Verizon’s unlimited data plan would be a temporary offer and that tiered pricing would follow “in the not too distant future.” Damn. I was hoping this would force AT&T back to a US$30 per month all-you-can-eat data plan.
It’s a safe bet that some future version of Apple’s iOS devices will be capable of near-field communication (NFC) for sending and receiving information wirelessly from up to four inches. Olga Kharif, writing for Bloomberg, says the technology is coming as soon as this year citing Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group who, in turn, cited “engineers who are working on hardware for the Apple project.” Kharif notes that the timing is right with the recent passage of US Congressional limits on debit-card fees and Apple’s capabilities to deliver personalized ads on its iAd network. Google’s Android is already capable of reading NFC tags.
Related articles:
- The blotter: Week ending 13 March 2011
Business According to Nelson D. Schwartz, writing for the New York - The blotter: Week ending 15 May 2011
Business Charles Koch, the ultra-right-wing nutbag who opposes government and holds - The blotter: Week ending 6 March 2011
Business The US Supreme Court has ruled (.pdf; 139KB) that corporations - The blotter: Week ending 23 January 2011
Business Apple's net income in the last three months of 2010 - The blotter: Week ending 4 September 2011
Business Richard Florida calls it the Great Reset. Others call it
Use of the ARTS & FARCES internet RSS and Atom feeds are subject to syndication and copyright policies and are provided for individual, noncommercial use without license or fee. All other uses are prohibited without an appropriate license.
The blotter: Week ending 30 January 2011 was originally published by ARTS & FARCES internet on Sunday, 30 January 2011 at 3:33 PM CDT. Copyright © ARTS & FARCES LLC. All rights reserved. | ISSN: 1535-8119 | OCLC: 48219498 | Digital fingerprint: 974a89ee1284e6e92dd256bbfbef3751 (64.237.45.114)