greve reconduite sur ebay, corruption à la RIAA, incroyables photos de torture en iraq, etc.

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Feb 28, 2008, 11:41:06 AM2/28/08
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    RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue



    "

    Despite collecting an estimated several hundred million dollars in P2P related settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, prominent artists’ managers are complaining that so far, they haven’t received any compensation. According to a lawyer, some are considering legal action.


    cash


    When EMI, Universal Music and Warner music reached settlement agreements with the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, they collected hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation - money that was supposed to go to artists whose rights had been allegedly infringed upon when the networks were operating with unlicensed music.


    Now, according to an article, the managers of some major artists are getting very impatient, as it appears the very people who were supposed to be compensated - the artists - haven’t received anything from the massive settlements. They say the cash - estimated to be as much as $400m - hasn’t filtered through to their clients and understandably they’re getting very impatient.


    Lawyer John Branca, who has represented the likes of The Rolling Stones and Korn, said: “Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for.”


    Indicating the levels of impatience with the big labels holding the money he added: “Some of them are even talking about filing lawsuits if they don’t get paid soon.”


    Of course, EMI, Universal and Warner have a different take on the delay, with sources suggesting that it’s down to the difficulties in deciding who gets what money, based on the levels of copyright infringement for each individual group or artist.


    A recording industry on the back foot having spent most of its time fighting the digital revolution rather than becoming part of it, is clearly trying to hang on to every penny, even when it comes to compensating the artists who they claim they were defending by taking legal action in the first place.


    Irving Azoff, who manages Christina Aguilera, The Eagles, Van Halen, REO Speedwagon and Seal (amongst others) says it’s hard for artists to get what they deserve from the labels: “They will play hide and seek, but eventually will be forced to pay something,” he said. “The record companies have even tried to credit unrecouped accounts. It’s never easy for an artist to get paid their fair share.”


    Typically, the labels see it a different way. An EMI spokeperson said that it was “sharing proceeds from the Napster and Kazaa settlements with artists and writers whose work was infringed upon” while Warner’s said the label is “sharing the Napster settlement with its recording artists and songwriters, and at this stage nearly all settlement monies have been disbursed.”


    The Universal spokesman spoke only of the label’s ‘policy’ of sharing “its portion of various settlements with its artists, regardless of whether their contracts require it” with no mention of whether it had actually done this or not.


    But typically, when money is involved, things start to get murky. The same sources who suggested the reasons for the delay in making payments are also suggesting that there might not be much money to even give to the artists.


    It’s being claimed that after legal bills were subtracted from the hundreds of millions in settlements, there wasn’t much left over to hand out.


    This is an article from: TorrentFreak


    RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue





    "

    Voir en ligne : RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue

    8 Glasses a Day



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    Keeps you reg-a-lah.



    1


    [Cross-eyed] Slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp


    2



    -a-dee-durp. + tiny tongue lashing + human reflection in glass


    S640x480



    Paul P., that kitteh is gonna be hogging the bathroom pretty soon-like.

    "

    Voir en ligne : 8 Glasses a Day

    Some Stats, Post-Free eBook



    "

    I was curious whether releasing Old Man’s War as part of Tor’s free eBook series would have any sort of immediate impact on sales of my books, so I had a friend with access to BookScan check out if there was any sort of significant movement in the last week. So, according to BookScan, in mass-market paperback:


    The Ghost Brigades sales are up 33% from the week prior;


    Old Man’s War sales are up 20% from the week prior;


    The Android’s Dream sales are up 9% from the week prior.


    Now, percentages are not impressive if you’re not selling huge numbers (if you sold three books last week and this week you sold four, that’s a 33% jump, after all), but each of these books is still selling hundreds of copies weekly, so the increase this week is not insignificant in terms of sales numbers.


    The real question is whether these sales bumps are due to the eBook release or to some other factor(s). And, well, I have no idea. I asked my friend if science fiction sales in general were up last week; he said that BookScan noted a 6% bump from the week before in the entire category. TAD might be part of the general movement, but OMW and TGB are significantly outside that. The last week has been busy around here, thanks to various topics and links in from Boing Boing and Instapundit among others, so that might have been a factor as well. But ultimately the biggest news in terms of my books in the last week was the free eBook release of OMW.


    My thought on the matter is that while I don’t think there’s definitive proof of this, I do suspect that the free eBook release did have an immediate impact on sales, and that the impact was positive. Now what will be interesting to see is how the books — and particularly the mass market paperback of OMW — do over time.


    So there’s some data for you folks to chew on.

    "

    Voir en ligne : Some Stats, Post-Free eBook

    Réseaux sociaux : la lutte fait rage



    "

    social-networks-global-chart.png


    Dans la course mondiale pour devenir le premier réseau social, MySpace et Facebook sont au coude à coude. En Janvier 2008, MySpace était encore en tête avec 109 millions de visiteurs uniques par mois selon comScore.


    Derrière la course pour la première place, la lutte bat son plein pour les places qui suivent. Le tableau ci-dessus présente les chiffres des 6 premiers. Hi5 (No 3, rouge) et Friendster (No4, bleu) se détachent légèrement de Google Orkut (No 5, vert) et de Bebo (No 6 jaune) . Imeem (No7, violet) arrive aussi derrière à grande vitesse et dépasse Multiply. Imeem qui ne figure pas possédait 17,8 millions de visiteurs en Janvier 2008.


    Pour Hi5 et Friendster réussir mondialement fait partie d’une strategie. Friendster discret aux Etats-unis est devenu le plus gros réseau social en Asie. Ses cinq premiers pays sont les Philippines, l’Indonesie, la Malaysie, Etats-unis et Singapoure.


    Friendster a rencontré la bas un vif succès grâce aux pages de profils créées pour les chanteurs pop asiatiques et lance maintenant de nouveaux langages (Chinois, Japonais, coréen et espagnol). Friendster permet aussi aux développeurs de creer des applications pour le site.


    Friendster et Hi5 valent-ils plus que le milliard de Bebo? Pas forcément. Cela dépend de la composition des membres, du taux des clics et d’autres aspects financiers. Généralement, les publicitaires aiment cibler des campagnes géographiquement et payer moins pour des publicités ciblant des populations avec un pouvoir d’achat plus faible qu’en Europe, Japon ou Etats-unis. Mais avec un marche “social” américain de plus en plus saturé, beaucoup vont commencer à se tourner vers de nouveaux horizons.


    sns_global_growth_jan08.gif

    Promo: Gagnez une XBox et 200 euros sur Zlio





    "

    Voir en ligne : Réseaux sociaux: la lutte fait rage

    More Abu Ghraib torture photos



    "Wired has gotten hold of an incredibly disturbing set of photos from the US torture crimes at Abu Ghraib. Does anyone really believe that this was just a couple of rogue operators? If I wanted to reduce the number of jihadis in the world, I'd start by making sure that stuff like this didn't happen -- I can think of no better recruiting boost for Al Quaeda than prisons like Abu Ghraib.




    As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard who was court-martialed, psychologist Philip Zimbardo had access to many of the images of abuse that were taken by the guards themselves. For a presentation at the TED conference in Monterey, California, Zimbardo assembled some of these pictures into a short video. Wired.com obtained the video from Zimbardo's talk, and is publishing some of the stills from that video here. Many of the images are explicit and gruesome, depicting nudity, degradation, simulated sex acts and guards posing with decaying corpses. Viewer discretion is advised.


    Link







    "

    Voir en ligne : More Abu Ghraib torture photos

    Getty Images Sold for $2.4 Billion



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    gettyimages-l.png


    Getty Images, the giant image wire and archive library service, as entered into final sell-out stages with Hellman and Friedman with an agreed upon pricetag of $2.4 billion. Hellman & Friedman are private equity investors out of New York City, with recent acquisitions of non-tech companies like Saipem SA, an oil and gas related organization, and a number of smaller private equity firms.



    Getty is no stranger to buying out Web 2.0 companies, themselves, having purchased Pump Audio last summer, and bought Scoopt about a year ago. They’re solidly in the music and citizen journalism business with both acquisitions, as well as being a solid friend to the independent and freelance journalist with their wire service (try hitting up any red carpet event without running into a Getty photographer).


    Certainly, the acquisition by this large PE firm puts these web units in with strange bedfellows, but almost assures their continued existence, given the virtually limitless funding now behind them.


    PEhub is reporting that Getty Images shareholders will receive $34 in cash for each common share of stock outstanding, and the purchase represents a premium of about 55% over the closing price on January 18th.


    ShareThis







    "

    Voir en ligne : Getty Images Sold for $2.4 Billion

    ACLU and EFF intervene in the Wikileaks lawsuit



    "






    The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and the EFF have filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that led a federal district judge to order the shutdown of Wikileaks.org, according to this ACLU press release.

    The motion is on behalf of organizations and individuals that have accessed and used documents on the Wikileaks.org website in their work and want to continue to be able to do so.


    “The court’s order shuts down and locks up the domain name Wikileaks.org permanently, effectively interfering with the public’s ability to access the materials on the website as easily as possible,” said Aden Fine, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The public has a right to receive information and ideas, especially ones concerning the public interest. This injunction ignores that vital First Amendment principle.”



    The Wikileaks website was established to allow participants to anonymously disclose documents of public interest, including materials discussing such issues of national importance as U.S. Army operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, human rights abuses in China, and political corruption in Kenya. Earlier this month, Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California ordered domain registrar Dynadot, LLC to shut down the domain name Wikileaks.org based on allegations that a former employee of Swiss Bank Julius Baer posted documents on the website that highlighted the bank’s dealings in the Cayman Islands.



    (thanks, Ravi Garla)


    Previously on BB:

  • California judge shuts down wikileaks







    • "

    Voir en ligne : ACLU and EFF intervene in the Wikileaks lawsuit

    New Obama campaign logo to debut

    Starbucks’ formula has changed, let us count the (three) ways.



    "


    Paul Boutin writes,




    I went to my local Starbucks and asked the barista to walk me through exactly what's different from yesterday in their drinks.


    She showed me three changes: A richer mix on the espresso machine, smaller steamer pitchers, and shot glasses into which all espresso is now poured first, so they can check it before serving it into a cup.




    (And I have to brag: I can't find anyone else who actually REPORTED the story and got all 3 changes.)



    Link to Paul's post at Valleywag. Photo of Starbusian signage by miskan.







    "

    Voir en ligne : Starbucks' formula has changed, let us count the (three) ways.

    Obama Fights False Links to Islam



    "

    WASHINGTON — For Barack Obama, it is an ember that he has doused time and again, only to see it flicker anew: links to Islam fanned by false rumors, innuendo and association. Obama and his campaign reacted strongly this week when a photo of him in Kenyan tribal garb began spreading on the Internet.



    And the praise he received Sunday from Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan prompted pointed questions _ during Tuesday night's presidential debate and also in a private meeting over the weekend with Jewish leaders in Cleveland.


    During the debate, Obama repeated his denunciation of Farrakhan's views, which have included numerous anti-Semitic comments. And, after being pressed, he rejected Farrakhan's support in the presidential race.



    The Democratic candidate says repeatedly that he's a Christian who took the oath of office on a family Bible. Yet on the Internet and on talk radio _ and in a campaign introduction for John McCain this week _ he is often depicted, falsely, as a Muslim with shadowy ties and his middle name, Hussein, is emphasized as a reminder of Iraq's former leader.



    "If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim," he told the Jewish leaders in Cleveland, according to a transcript of the private session.



    The photo of Obama wearing Kenyan tribal raiments _ taken by an Associated Press photographer during his visit in 2006 to the country where his father was born _ resurfaced on the Internet amid unsubstantiated claims that it was being circulated by members of Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. Clinton and her aides said they had nothing to do with it. The Obama campaign accused them of "shameful, offensive fear-mongering."



    On Tuesday Republican candidate McCain denounced the introduction he got in Cincinnati that criticized Obama in vivid terms. Talk show host Bill Cunningham referred to Obama three times as "Barack Hussein Obama" and called him a "hack, Chicago-style" politician during the introduction of McCain.



    The Obama campaign is closely attuned to the rumors and insinuations. Information on Obama's Christian faith is prominently available on the "Know the facts" page of his Web site. The campaign has distributed flyers to churches in states with presidential contests. And it encourages supporters to flag any attack that may make its way into cyberspace.



    "Our campaign is vigilant in quickly responding to any information about Senator Obama that surfaces, be it on the Internet, in the media or from our opponents," spokesman Bill Burton said Wednesday.



    If there is confusion _ and opportunity for political mischief _ it derives at least in part from Obama's rich cultural background. His mother was a white woman from Kansas, his father was Kenyan and he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, a largely Muslim country.



    "My grandfather, who was Kenyan, converted to Christianity, then converted to Islam," Obama said Sunday. "My father never practiced; he was basically agnostic. So, other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for four years when I was a child, I have very little connection to the Islamic religion."



    Obama has become careful in denouncing the links, lately noting that some rumors about him also have been insulting to Muslims. Jim Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, said many Arab Americans are drawn to Obama because of his cultural background.



    "It is clear he wants to have a broader relationship with the Muslim world," Zogby said. "He has a biography that connects him to the Muslim world."



    Obama, though in the presidential limelight now for more than a year, is still introducing himself to voters. An AP-Yahoo poll in January asked people to volunteer the first few words that came to mind about each of the candidates, and 4 percent of the respondents, unprompted, mentioned the word Muslim when describing Obama.



    Some of the rumors and allegations about Obama are clearly not true, yet still spread, often anonymously:



    _ A debunked chain e-mail circulating widely on the Internet suggests he is hiding his Islamic roots. It says he was sworn into the Senate on the Quran and turns his back on the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance.



    He took his Senate oath with his hand on a family Bible, and he says, "Whenever I'm in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America." In fact, no candidate could survive if he publicly spurned the pledge.



    _ Another false report says he attended a Muslim madrassa school as a child in Jakarta. Obama was born in Hawaii and moved to Indonesia when he was 6 to live with his mother and stepfather. He returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents. Interviews last year by The Associated Press at the elementary school in Jakarta found that it is a public and secular institution and has been open to students of all faiths since before Obama attended in the late 1960s. Said vice principal Akmad Solichin: "Yes, most of our students are Muslim, but there are Christians as well. Everyone's welcome here."



    _ Obama also has faced questions about his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he has been a member for 20 years. Trinity calls itself "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." But it accepts non-black congregants. The United Church of Christ's president and general minister, the Rev. John H. Thomas, was quoted in a church publication as pointing out that the Rev. Jane Fisler-Hoffman, Illinois Conference Minister, who is white, "has been a member of the congregation for years."



    _ Obama has been asked about Farrakhan's words of praise and Farrakhan's receipt of an award from "Trumpet Newsmagazine," a Trinity church publication last month. Obama told Jewish leaders Sunday: "An award was given to Farrakhan for his work on behalf of ex-offenders completely unrelated to his controversial statements. And I believe that was a mistake and showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community and I said so."



    Farrakhan did not endorse Obama but said Sunday: "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better." Asked Tuesday night whether he would accept support from Farrakhan, Obama said: "I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I've been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him."



    Following an exchange with Clinton, he then added: "There's no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word 'reject' Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word 'denounce,' then I'm happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce."



    (This version CORRECTS to show that elementary school in Jakarta was not Catholic.))





    "

    Voir en ligne : Obama Fights False Links to Islam

    Computational Journalism Symposium



    "

    computational_journalism.jpg

    welcome to the longest post on infosthetics. the best written, the most informational & the post with the most images. this is Brad Stenger's guest blog report of the Computational Journalism Symposium.





    "The Journalism 3G Symposium on Computation + Journalism took place February 22-23 at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Going in, we the organizers called it the most technically substantial conversation ever to take place between a group of journalists and computing professionals this large (200+ attendees). Not knowing exactly what would happen we crammed the panels full of programmers and journalists, as well as designers, entrepreneurs, managers, among all sorts of experts and thinkers. By all accounts, attendees were glad for the time they gave the meeting.



    One thread running through the program, explicitly and implicitly, was Information Visualization. There was underlying intent for this. The data literacy, communication skill, and intellectual rigor required to practice coherent, understandable info viz make it a template for how computation can impact journalism, even though, as currently practiced, that impact occurs mostly at the margins of the news.



    The Opening Keynotes from Krishna Bharat, creator of Google News, and Michael Skoler, creator of American Public Media's Public Insight Network, introduced the two communities to each other. And the implicit Info Viz program with the program started with the first panel discussion, one called Ubiquitous Journalism. The very first speaker, Mark Hansen, ranks among the most data literate people on Earth. A former Bell Labs statistician he holds joint appointments in the Statistics, Electrical Engineering, and Design departments at UCLA."



    continue reading after the break.

    "

    Voir en ligne : Computational Journalism Symposium

    EBay PowerSeller Boycott Extended



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    ebay


    I haven’t weighed in on the EBay boycott with a heavy-handed opinion yet, because frankly, I haven’t used the system enough recently and researched the proposed changes to really say what the changes are and how they’d affect the normal occasional user, or someone like me. I can tell you now from some recent experiences, though, that I’m personally not particularly pleased with the removal of the Negative Feedback option - I guess it’s as they say: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.


    Here’s been the story thus far: EBay decided to change the system so that if conflicts during the sales process arise, sellers will be required to file tedious complaints with eBay’s Security & Resolution Center. EBay sellers became angered over the auction giant’s planned changes to feedback system. So angered that they decided to ’strike’ (that is, not sell or list anything) during the whole five-day week of February 19-25.


    It was widely reported that the decrease in sales and listings reached a measurable percentage for the week - 3%. The problem with this measureable percentage was that it coincided with a week containing a national American holiday, and thus was easily explainable to be partly due to that, instead of the strikage by the top sellers. Several Mashable tipsters sent us an article the other day in the USA Today saying that the decrease in listings had reached lowered levels of 13%, or down to 13 million items.


    Given the differing reports, we’re not sure if it’s because of the dubious nature of the numbers (the 3%) or that the strike is effective but still eliciting no response from EBay (the 13%), but word is from AppScouts’ Chloe Albanesius that the Power Sellers are extending the boycott to March 9th.


    ShareThis







    "

    Voir en ligne : EBay PowerSeller Boycott Extended

    Web-Hit "quarterlife" Flops On NBC



    "

    MySpace and producer Marshall Herskovitz say that "Quarterlife", the TV-like Web show, is a hit. But when the show jumped to an actual TV network last night, it flopped. NBC drew 3.9 million viewers for the show's national TV debut Tuesday night -- 43% and 48% less than CBS and ABC, respectively, drew during the same 10 pm slot (Fox doesn't broadcast nationally during that hour).






    "

    Voir en ligne : Web-Hit "quarterlife" Flops On NBC

    Kids forced to eat whale in school (10 tons of unsold meat for "traditional school lunch week")



    "Source: [b]Daily Telegraph[/b]



    [div class=excerpt]JAPAN'S whaling researchers dumped 10 tonnes of unsold whale meat into primary school lunches last month, labelling the event "traditional school lunch week".



    In a desperate attempt to revive the flagging market, the Institute for Cetacean Resear..."

    Voir en ligne : Kids forced to eat whale in school (10 tons of unsold meat for "traditional school lunch week")

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