Friday, July 27, 2007
Web Notes
From George Orwell to Webcasters
Britain used a license plate recognition system originally started to combat the terrorist threats from the Irish Republican Army. The system is used to check license plates of vehicles driving in London to determine if they have paid the access fee to the metro area. The fee was imposed to combat traffic congestion. The system can process up to 50 million license plates a day.
With the equivalent of an all points bulletin out on a doctor whose phone number was found on one of the cell phones found in the cars planted with bombs, the system discovered the car on the road. The police were able to stop the vehicle and detain the suspect.
This system has come under criticism from the public in the past. When it results in the rapid capture of a suspect, there are few voices heard in protest.
This is another case of reality exceeding the vision of George Orwell when he created the classic novel “1984.” We can only hope that such intrusive technology will always be in the hands of responsible public officials. At the very least, it should serve notice that the public must be even more vigilant than ever. We cannot sit back and assume our elected officials will always do the right thing.
The Internet continues to display growing pains as a medium of information distribution. It is obvious that it is reaching into areas formerly restricted to other media.
You now can get text, audio and video piped into your home via the Internet. New hardware makes it possible to download and view television shows and full-length movies into your home media centers.
This explosion of possibilities is causing ripples throughout a wide variety of industries who previously had a lock on the distribution of various forms of entertainment. Copyright protection of material from songs to movies is causing headaches for many.
In recent years online radio stations have become popular. They could be an online version of an existing station or a station unique to the Web. Earlier this year the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board ruled that Webcasters (as Internet-based radio stations are called) must pay fees based on the number of listeners for use of copyrighted material. On top of that it was ruled they should pay some of the fees retro through last year.
Webcasters argued that would put most of them out of business.
The new rate structure was set to go into effect last week. There was a hastily scheduled hearing set in Washington. SoundExchange, which is the royalty collection body for the recording industry, blinked. They suspended imposition of the new fees for the time being.
We hope that some solution can be made that will allow for compensation to creators of copyrighted material without destroying the distribution system (Webcasters).
There will be more growing pains as the use of the Internet further evolves.
We have a new poll question up. I’m interested to know what you think about driver courtesy. I ask the question “Do you feel that drivers are more or less courteous than they were 10 years ago?”
So far drivers are getting low marks.
What do you think?
With the equivalent of an all points bulletin out on a doctor whose phone number was found on one of the cell phones found in the cars planted with bombs, the system discovered the car on the road. The police were able to stop the vehicle and detain the suspect.
This system has come under criticism from the public in the past. When it results in the rapid capture of a suspect, there are few voices heard in protest.
This is another case of reality exceeding the vision of George Orwell when he created the classic novel “1984.” We can only hope that such intrusive technology will always be in the hands of responsible public officials. At the very least, it should serve notice that the public must be even more vigilant than ever. We cannot sit back and assume our elected officials will always do the right thing.
The Internet continues to display growing pains as a medium of information distribution. It is obvious that it is reaching into areas formerly restricted to other media.
You now can get text, audio and video piped into your home via the Internet. New hardware makes it possible to download and view television shows and full-length movies into your home media centers.
This explosion of possibilities is causing ripples throughout a wide variety of industries who previously had a lock on the distribution of various forms of entertainment. Copyright protection of material from songs to movies is causing headaches for many.
In recent years online radio stations have become popular. They could be an online version of an existing station or a station unique to the Web. Earlier this year the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board ruled that Webcasters (as Internet-based radio stations are called) must pay fees based on the number of listeners for use of copyrighted material. On top of that it was ruled they should pay some of the fees retro through last year.
Webcasters argued that would put most of them out of business.
The new rate structure was set to go into effect last week. There was a hastily scheduled hearing set in Washington. SoundExchange, which is the royalty collection body for the recording industry, blinked. They suspended imposition of the new fees for the time being.
We hope that some solution can be made that will allow for compensation to creators of copyrighted material without destroying the distribution system (Webcasters).
There will be more growing pains as the use of the Internet further evolves.
We have a new poll question up. I’m interested to know what you think about driver courtesy. I ask the question “Do you feel that drivers are more or less courteous than they were 10 years ago?”
So far drivers are getting low marks.
What do you think?
# posted by Richard Polk @ 9:28 AM 
