Eric Goldman, a Marquette Law professor who was formerly the Epinions.com general counsel, weighs in on the Google Toolbar:

From a legal standpoint, AutoLink looks questionable. The tool modifies publisher's web pages by adding hypertext links without the publisher's consent. While this modification isn't a huge change, I could still see some (many?) courts treating them as unauthorized derivative works. Honestly, it seems like a fairly routine copyright infringement.

Publishing · 2005/03/05 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

ESPN.Com and other Web sites published by the Walt Disney Internet Group have terms of use.

The Restrictions on Use of Materials section appears to forbid users from running remix software like the Google Toolbar on their sites (emphasis mine):

No material from any WDIG Site or any Internet site owned, operated, licensed, or controlled by us may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the materials on any single computer for your personal, noncommercial home use only, provided that (i) you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices, (ii) you make no modifications to the materials ...

Publishing · 2005/03/05 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

Democratic Podcast: We're in Bush's Debt

Today's Democratic response to the presidential radio address was delivered by Sen. Kent Conrad, ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

Conrad takes President Bush to task for passing the cost of his huge borrow-and-spend budgets to future generations.

Deficit spending has become so reckless during the past four years that it's now being described, appropriately enough, as a birth tax. As a radio commercial produced by BuzzFlash puts it, "every man, woman, and child in this country owes the government $25,000 dollars."

The transcript of his remarks:

Hello. I'm Sen. Kent Conrad, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

In my home state of North Dakota, fiscal responsibility is more than a phrase. It's a way of life. We work hard, save what we can, and try not to live beyond our means.

That's why I am so concerned about our country's growing deficits and debt. In just four years, the country has moved from record surpluses to record shortfalls. Unfortunately, President Bush's budget will push our deficits and debt even higher.

The President's budget simply leaves out large costs to make the numbers look better. It leaves out any war cost past Sept. 30 of this year. It leaves out the cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax -- the old millionaires tax that is rapidly becoming a middle-class tax trap. It leaves out the full cost of his tax cuts. And remarkably, his budget contains not one dime to fund his Social Security privatization plan.

The President talks about not wanting to pass on burdens to future generations. But his budget does precisely that -- passing on a crippling and growing debt to our children and grandchildren.

These growing deficits and debt threaten our nation's long-term economic security. As deficits climb, we are borrowing more and more money from Japan, China, and even South Korea. That makes us weaker, not stronger.

We need to stop piling up money we owe to foreigners and start facing up to our nation's dramatically growing debt dependence.

The President says Social Security is headed for trouble. He is right. The Congressional Budget Office tells us by 2052, Social Security could meet only 78 percent of its obligations. Medicare is in even worse shape. The shortfall in Medicare is eight times the deficit in Social Security. But the President has no plan to deal with that. The truth is, we need to confront all these challenges sooner rather than later.

But the President's budget makes dealing with the Social Security problem even more difficult. Here's why:

In the President's budget he takes trillions of dollars of Social Security money to pay for other things. Then he takes trillions more to create private accounts. Those changes only dig the hole deeper.

Although the President doesn't talk about it, his plan would also cut Social Security benefits by 46 percent. Slashing benefits and hoping to make up the difference in the stock market is risky.

And your private account? There's a twist to that too. If you set aside $1,000 a year for 30 years and earn 6 1/2 percent on your money, you will have $99,000 at the end of that period. But wait. That's not yours free and clear. Why? Because the President's plan assumes the Social Security trust fund loaned you that money. And you have to pay it back with interest. That's $86,000 you will have to pay back, not out of your personal account but through more cuts to your already-reduced Social Security benefit.

I'm not making this up. That's the way the president's plan works.

This nation is about to be hit with a tidal wave of new retirees. In just three years, the baby boomers will begin to retire. The demands on Social Security and Medicare will be dramatically increased. We as a nation must make hard choices to build our economic security. We must be honest about our deficits. We must return to budget discipline and prepare for the future.

We've got to save and invest now to strengthen the economy for the future, keep Social Security and Medicare solvent, and prevent more difficult choices down the road. When we come together, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans, we can solve these problems and move this nation toward an even brighter future.

This is Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota. Thanks for listening.

Podcasts · Politics · 2005/03/05 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Jon Udell:

When my son was a bit younger, we noticed that when we asked him a question, he'd answer with a question. Inevitably this led to the following exchange:

Q: Why do you always answer a question with a question?

A: Why does everybody always ask me that?

2005/03/05 · Comment · Link

The Too-Much-Information Age

I'm extremely grateful that weblogs were not around when I was the caught in the perfect storm of raging hormones, youthful inexperience, and clumsy romantic yearning.

In 1986 I spent an entire semester obsessed with a red-haired nape perched inches in front of me in a cramped history class at Richland Junior College. I quietly plotted for months, finally asking the nape's owner for a study date in a nauseous mumble, and she shot me down before I got all of the words out.

Given a worldwide publishing medium and the right content management tools, I would have blogged about that future mother of my children for days on end. She could have printed it out to obtain a restraining order.

In an entry that was deleted after it had crossed the globe via the magic of syndication, a weblogger in college recently described his first sexual experience in a manner likely to prevent a second one.

The object of his affection, linked in the entry, was a blogger too. She was so angry that she berated his weblog readers for not telling him the obvious -- you really ought to think carefully before giving the complete play-by-play of a sexual encounter, especially on a site that's being read by her mother.

Unfortunately, the blogosphere is a harsh mistress. The entry has made it into two caches, another weblog, and countless aggregators.

There really is no more inopportune place for moments of ill-considered candor than a well-read weblog that supports syndication.

Publishing · 2005/03/05 · Comment · Link

My Content-Altering Experience

Brian Carnell writes:

Its amazing how quickly so many web publishers have turned into RIAA/MPAA-wannabes, locking down their wares and complaining about the users who dare to remix or modify content in their browser in ways that the user finds helpful.

I don't think it's that amazing, given the natural desire to preserve the integrity of your work or (cue horror music) decide who profits from it. Even the most remix-friendly Web publishers, those who have adopted a Creative Commons license, prefer the non-commercial attribution option.

In January, Carnell offered an objection that sounds like me talking about the Google Toolbar:

The advertising issue gets to the heart of the matter -- just how much altering of an RSS feed is an aggregator legally permitted to engage in? ... I would not want anyone taking my RSS feed(s) and inserting their own ads, or republishing a full article feed with their ads inserted, anymore than I appreciate the idiots at About.Com framing my content with their ads.

Some users seem to view all copyright holders as if they were the recording industry. I'm not clear on how Web publishers, a mostly amateur crowd offering their work at no cost for little profit, compare to a multibillion-dollar industry of price-fixing, artist-abusing monopolists who spend millions attacking fair use and suing their own customers.

The ContentAltering meta tag that set Carnell off is worded as a request -- "none: the web page author requests no client side content altering" -- and proposed in the hope that software developers will choose to adopt it. The broadcast flag is an order from a government agency that doles out six-figure fines for rule violations. Equating the two is like comparing the Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot to the BFG 9000.

Supporters of Google Toolbar are so wedded to the principle of user control that they don't even seem to care that the present implementation sucks.

You can't add your own autolink providers, visually distinguish between original and added content, examine the source code, or extend the architecture. You can't even stop the program from updating itself.

My favorite enhancement: The toolbar phones home to Google with every page request. On my computer, it can't find my active DSL connection, so every attempt opens another connect dialog.

If you're a privacy advocate or one of the people who believes that freedom zero matters, how can you possibly embrace this thing?

Though I'm not a fan of the toolbar, I am officially renouncing the argument that it represents a dire new precedent for the Web.

The incitement to dynamically remix content was created not by Google or Microsoft SmartTags but by the Document Object Model, a W3C standard for structuring Web content so that it may be manipulated easily by code.

The more I look at DOM, the more I understand why a Web page is being viewed as raw material for user agents to process into other forms. My conception of a page -- a flat file of markup and content that's hopelessly clumsy to parse -- has become dated.

Whether publishers like it or not, every one of our Web documents arrives at the browser with its own API that invites alteration by code.

I'm thinking about adopting the new meta tag, but not to demand the unfiltered browser I took for granted.

Instead, I may acknowledge that I can't reach an audience without dealing with one or more beloved butlers that can decide whether to let my message in the door:

Either that, or convert all of my Web pages to big-ass GIFs.

Publishing · 2005/03/05 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Tillie Fowler Left an Impression

When I moved to Jacksonville in 1997, my representative in Congress was Tillie Fowler, a Republican elected five years earlier during the term-limits craze, when numerous candidates pledged to serve a finite number of years.

These pledges, part of the GOP's Contract with America, were a terrific hammer to drop on incumbents, making them look like entrenched career politicians out of touch with the concerns of real Americans.

Fowler campaigned on an "eight is enough" pledge, vowing to leave the House after four terms.

Funny thing happened in those eight years. The Republicans won control of the House from Democrats in 1994 and Fowler rose to prominence. By the time the 2000 election came around, she was fifth in the GOP hierarchy and widely regarded as the most powerful woman in Congress. Several politicians broke their pledges, losing their enthusiasm for the concept when it meant their own ouster.

Though Fowler toyed with the idea of breaking her pledge and was derided as "Slick Tillie," she ultimately declined to run for re-election and left Washington with six other pledgers.

Fowler died today at age 62, two days after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

Though I voted against her every time I could, I became a big fan of Fowler the day she announced her departure from Congress. Regardless of how much pressure she was under from a term-limits group and other critics, Fowler would have sailed to re-election. Democrats didn't even field a candidate last year against Ander Crenshaw, who holds the district today. He won with 99 percent of the vote!

You don't see many examples of politicians who value their word more than a safe seat.

Politics · 2005/03/02 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

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