When Politico says the Netroots matters...

Politico's Charles Mahtesian gets it right. It was a rather amazing vibe at this year's conference. It had the same energy I felt at our first conference five years ago. No, people aren't terribly excited about Congress or the administration, but rather, just a general excitement about the Netroots overall. This article accurately reflect that, I think.

In five years, the annual convention of progressive bloggers known as Netroots Nation has grown to become one of the premier events on the Democratic calendar.

It’s also turned into a leading event on the Democratic candidate circuit, a showcase of political talent and a prerequisite for aspiring politicians who are looking to catch the attention of some of the most important and influential voices on the left — and hopefully tap into the vein of Internet fundraising.

The halls of the Rio Hotel here in Sin City aren’t exactly choked with pols running for office. But it’s not uncommon to find candidates from some of the top races in the nation quietly huddling with bloggers and activists over coffee, holding small fundraisers or showing up at after-hours events where they can get acquainted with online activists who stand to have a powerful effect on their races by virtue of their blogging platforms and broad, politically-inclined readerships.

Dozens of candidates have made the rounds of this progressive meet market over the past two days, ranging from House and Senate candidates to those running for state legislature and even for the Texas state board of education.

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Anti-Net Neutrality Senators wading in anti-competition funding

How long before the Republicans apologize to AT&T; for the FCC promoting net neutrality which will help consumers? There's a great comment inside the link about the idea of politicians wearing "sponsorship patches" to highlight who gave them money. Wouldn't that be interesting to see? The "sponsorship patch" should be larger or smaller depending on the size of the contributions from particular interest groups.

Senate Republicans are attempting to promote a bill that is completely dishonest in its name. The "Freedom for Consumer Choice Act (FCC Act)" has nothing to do with protecting consumers. It's all about protecting AT&T; and other corporate powerhouses from competition. What's with the GOP and their love affair with screwing consumers? By doing so they are killing real competition which used to be a cornerstone of the US economy.

Just sayin' from TechDirt.

So, let's see. The bill's main sponsor is Senator Jim DeMint. Over the course of his career... AT&T; is the second largest contributor to his campaigns. Ditto for Senator Tom Coburn. John Cornryn no doubt knows that AT&T; is the 4th biggest contributor to his campaigns over the years, and Orrin Hatch must be happy that AT&T; is the fifth largest contributor to his campaigns over the years (amusingly, AT&T; is the only non-healthcare company in the top 8 on Hatch's list).

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China makes it official: Google license renewed

What kind of a deal was cut to allow this to happen? The Independent:

"We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China," Google's top lawyer, David Drummond, said in a statement.

The one-sentence statement gave no details. A Google spokeswoman, Courtney Hohne, said information on what services Google will offer in China would be released in coming weeks.

There was no immediate statement on the website of China's Internet regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Google had to make concessions to get its license renewed, opting not to leave China completely so it could pursue its commercial ambitions — a music service, its mobile phone business, a Beijing development center and a staff to sell ads for the Chinese-language version of its U.S. search engine.

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Do you believe young people don't care about privacy?

It's an interesting debate down in Australia. With so much personal data willingly published online, it doesn't sound like a stretch to make the claim that younger people have less of an interest in personal privacy. A younger (~30 years old) colleague posts almost everything online about his life including his specific location via Google. Maybe it's the older generation who worry too much about it? What's your take?

YOUNG people do not care about their privacy and there is little reason to protect it, according to the former Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon.

They use Twitter and Facebook, she said. They appear on Big Brother. There has been a generational shift.

''Young people don't seem to be bothered,'' she said at last night's IQ2 debate, organised by the St James Ethics Centre and sponsored by the Herald. ''These arguments about protecting people's privacy: in many cases people don't care about their privacy being protected.''

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Google expects China license to be renewed

So maybe the recent PR storm was all just PR after all. BBC:

Google boss Eric Schmidt has said he expects the internet giant to be granted a new licence to operate in China.

There had been speculation China would revoke the licence after Google began redirecting Chinese users to its unfiltered search site in Hong Kong.

This was in protest at China's stringent censorship laws.

But last month, Google said it would no longer automatically redirect users in a conciliatory move towards Beijing.

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Broadband now a legal right in Finland

This is easy enough in Helsinki but Finland is not the most densely populated country in the world. Coverage in this wide area with few inhabitants (compared to Europe or say, the East Coast in the US) makes this very interesting.

Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right for every citizen.

From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection.

Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.

In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law.

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Is it better or worse off knowing my biases?

I remember years ago watching Ted Koppel on TV, talking to an audience about journalism. Koppel challenged the audience to guess who he voted for President. He said no one could, with any proof. I believe the implication was that this was a good thing.

I remember thinking at the time that covering national politics for so long, Koppel must have had strong political views. So why was it better for me, and better for his objectivity, for me not to know Koppel's political bias? And, switching things around, why would I, as a consumer of news, be worse off KNOWING Koppel's biases? Whether I knew them or not, he would still have them. Wouldn't more information per se better permit me to judge the news that Koppel disseminated?

Fast forward to today. We've had a brouhaha brewing all day in online politics land. Sam Stein sums up what happened, and concludes with something related to what I wrote above.

When he arrived at a party on the Huffington Post's D.C. office roof-deck on Thursday evening, Washington Post reporter/blogger David Weigel felt secure in his job. Earlier in the day, the media-focused site FishbowlDC had published a series of off-the-record emails written by Weigel in which he had disparaged members of the conservative movement that he covers.

Long story short: Weigel is gone.

Undoubtedly, there were other reporters in the newsroom there that felt the exact same way as Weigel. Their fortune had been simply not putting their thoughts in an email chain, or, simply, not having their personal emails leaked. For political observers, it was a somewhat depressing reflection of the limits of the new media universe -- where the traditional powers have not quite yet reached a level of comfort with journalists who are transparent with their biases but, nevertheless, fair and accurate in their reporting.

I was talking to some Youth in Government kids the other day about blogging, and I mentioned FOX News, and why, at its core, it's bad for America. The difference between FOX and me, at least one difference, I said, is that they call themselves Fair and Balanced. I'm a partisan blogger and admit it up front. Now, in spite of that, I certainly strive to be fair, but I never strive to be balanced. I run a Demcoratic blog. I'm not here to help Republicans. But I'm still not going to lie to pursue my goals.

FOX News isn't only here to help Republicans, they're doing it in a way that isn't fair, balanced, or even disclosed. Yet somehow FOX is "news" and Weigel is out. Huh. Read More......

Court throws out Viacom's copyright suit against YouTube

We'll have to wait for the copyright experts to weigh in, but I suspect that this is good news for YouTube fans.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has just granted YouTube’s motion for summary judgment against Viacom, meaning that the site is off the hook in Viacom’s billion-dollar copyright infringement case.

Both sides had filed motions for summary judgment in March, which is essentially a way to expedite the court case without going to a jury. YouTube had once again invoked protection under the DMCA’s Safe Harbor provisions in its filing, and the court apparently agreed.

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Utah Supreme Court validates use of e-signatures for elections

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Newsweek kills coolest part of its Web site

From Geek.com:

Programmers for Newsweek’s website, though, might have pulled off the best implementation of the Konami Code ever. Up until Monday, if you typed in the Konami Code on the Newsweek website, all of the front page stories would become about zombies.

The lead headline, “Zombies Attack!” was followed by an article telling readers that large portions of the East Coast had been invaded by the flesh-slavering undead. Other headlines traced the infection back to a mysterious Patient Zero or advised Newsweek readers to aim for the head.

On their part, Newsweek didn’t seem to know about it until the feature became popular. ” “Now that we’ve all had a laugh, we will be removing it,” a joyless Newsweeks spokesperson said.

I'm told this was the code - it doesn't work any more: up up down down left right left right B A enter Read More......

Starbucks to offer free wifi

i agree with those who fear that Starbucks may end up looking like a branch of the local library, full of laptops. I'm not sure how they're going to stop people from camping out there all day, and not buying more than a cup of coffee. Still, glad they're doing it. There our to be much more free wifi, worldwide, than there is to date. Going to McDonald's for free wifi just doesn't cut it. Read More......

Has the Internet made you impatient?

I don't mean to dismiss articles like this out of hand, but it seems to be the same things we heard 40 years ago about the evils of television (or, the idiot box, as mom used to call it). In the early 70s, my brother and I used to go through the TV Guide and plot out of our tv watching for the week, lest we miss anything. I'm not going to argue that I came out totally normal, but still... I just sometimes wonder if all this concern about the time we spend online isn't time we'd have spent doing something equally useless. Not to mention, for all the talk of people staying up too late to be online, when I do that, I'm often reading tomorrow's NYT, researching dog training, or searching for things I need to buy. That's hardly wasted time, and hardly akin to an alcoholic's drinking impeding on his workday. Read More......

BP purchasing prime location on leading search engine sites

For those who have had it with BP's spin, here's a bit more. Who really believes this is BP trying to make it easy for those impacted by the disaster? Probably the same people that thought BP had all of the answers. Read More......

AT&T; to cut off unlimited Internet to new iPhone users

Apple, please get rid of these people. Read More......

GOP uses public money for Internet site to collect 'new ideas'

What a bunch of complete frauds who insist on sponging off of taxpayer dollars yet again. Doesn't the free market work? Is this really a good use of public money during an economic crisis? Remember this the next time they start crying about the lack of money to fund whatever project they don't like.

Republicans by law cannot use the americaspeakingout.com website for political purposes, since they established it with taxpayer money.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, who is in charge of the effort, said it would not cost much more than an average website for a congressional office.

Using the information gained, Republicans hope to develop legislative priorities for Congress based on their conservative principles by September, two months before the November 2 elections. Boehner said an agenda for congressional candidates is being developed on a separate track.

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Harold Ford, Jr. attacks net neutrality - plays the 'market uncertainty' card

Is there any reason why any Democrat likes this guy? More likely, this week, he's whoring himself for the telecom industry, because they're about as fearful of reform as Wall Street. Harold Ford, Jr has to be among the most nauseating excuses for a Democrat who is out there. He always gives the impression that anything he says is dictated by whoever is paying him this week or perhaps next week. All he does is put on a nice suit and pitch whatever nonsense industry wants. This week Ford is all about those unknown consequences of net neutrality and how dangerous it can be. Uh uh. Dangerous to Harold Ford, Jr's paycheck for lobbying. Doesn't he have some Wall Street lobbying to do today or maybe another CNBC session? Or is this the week he goes back to gay bashing? Read More......

Google debating releasing facial recognition technology

Take a photo of a stranger, upload it to Google, and find out everything about the person. That's what we're talking about. It's incredibly cool, and incredibly creepy. But even if Google holds off, others are already working on the same thing. The only thing that could truly stop such technology from going public would be national laws against privacy, like they have in Europe - and like we do NOT have in the United States. Read More......

European Commission: China's firewall a WTO issue

Oh no. Someone is standing up to the bullies in Beijing. The Independent:

China's internet "firewall" is a trade barrier and needs to be tackled within the framework of the World Trade Organization, Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, told reporters in Shanghai today.

Dutch-born Kroes, who is also in charge of Europe's digital agenda, said the firewall was a trade barrier as long as it blocked communication for internet users, preventing the free flow of information.

"It is one of those issues that needs to be tackled within the WTO," said Kroes, who served as European Commissioner for competition until 2009.

Kroes spoke at the China headquarters of video-sharing company Tudou, a rival of Google's internationally popular video-sharing platform YouTube that is blocked in China.

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Tens of thousands of people to be sued for illegally downloading 'Hurt Locker' movie

They're talking 50,000 people. Via Boing Boing:

After filing the lawsuits, the plaintiffs must subpoena ISP records in an effort to match IP addresses with illicit behavior on BitTorrent. According to lawyers at Dunlap's firm, 75 percent of ISPs have cooperated fully. Those that have resisted are mostly doing so, they say, because of the amount of work involved in handing over thousands of names. But the clock may be ticking. For example, in the lawsuit over "Far Cry," Comcast has until next Wednesday to file motions to quash subpoenas. (Here's the stipulation by the parties.) By the end of next week, thousands of Comcast subscribers could be turned over.

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Kiss the phone book goodbye

Good riddance. When I was five years old in the late 1960s, the phone book made a great high chair. Now, calling it a door stop is being generous. I haven't used a phone book in a good ten years. It's long since time that they retired it, or at least stopped delivering it to every household unless someone specifically requests it, then it should be available for those without Internet access, people who don't like dealing with computers, etc. NYT:

The residential White Pages, those inches-thick tomes of fine-print telephone listings that may be most useful as doorstops, could stop landing with a thud on doorsteps across New York later this year.

Verizon, the dominant local phone company in the state, asked regulators on Friday to allow it to end the annual delivery of millions of White Pages to all of its customers in New York. The company estimates that it would save nearly 5,000 tons of paper by ending the automatic distribution of the books.

Only about one of every nine households uses the hard-copy listings anymore, according to Verizon, which cited a 2008 Gallup survey. Most have switched to looking up numbers online or calling directory assistance. The phone book for many people, it seems, has gone from indispensable tool to unavoidable nuisance.

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