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Last year, Google announced its intention to digitize millions of books from the collections of five major libraries in the U.S. and Britain. Last week, the Authors Guild announced its intention to sue the internet behemoth for copyright infringement. Is the so-called Google Print Library project fair use or theft? Bob puts the question to NYU communications professor Siva Vaidhyanathan.
Whether browsng our website, listening to OTM on the radio or enjoying our podcast, you're engaged in media consumption - an activity that takes more of your time than eating or sleeping. That according to "Middletown Media Studies II," a study of media behavior conducted by Ball State University's Center for Media Design. Bob Papper, co-author of the report, chats with Bob about some of the Center's findings.
While one journalist may have lost his job for refusing to report from a war zone, another is making a virtual career of it. For its first venture into original journalism, Yahoo! has teamed up with battle-hardened correspondent Kevin Sites, who will travel the world's war zones for one year and post his dispatches. Sites spoke with Bob the day before he shipped out.
As authorities scrambled in the wake of Katrina, media technology was being harnessed by ordinary citizens to assist the displaced. With no official mandate, central organizing principle, or pay, Internet users compiled lists, message boards, and lists of lists and message boards. BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis tells Bob about Recovery 2.0, an effort to consolidate the relief efforts and prepare better for the future.
Early in the week, discussions began online about the way much of the TV coverage of Katrina's impact was ignoring obvious questions of race and class. On Wednesday, Slate media critic Jack Shafer accused TV news of skirting one of the most visually clear aspects of the story – that blacks in New Orleans were more directly hurt than whites. Mark Jurkowitz, media analyst for the Boston Phoenix speaks to Bob about the questions left largely unasked and unanswered.
What's in a name? For the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), domain names are the way to organize a chaotic global internet. But when ICANN proposed a .XXX domain for adult-content, it sparked a political fight. Those debating the new .XXX suffix are an uneasy alliance of pornographers, the Christian right, conservative countries and the U.S. government. Brooke speaks to Bret Fausett, a lawyer and advisor to ICANN, about how names can hurt you.
Earlier this year, Business 2.0 writer Om Malik noticed that Google was buying up surplus fiber optic cable all over the country. It got him to wondering what Google was up to, and whether the company may be quietly building a parallel Internet of its very own. Malik tells Bob about the vast competitive advantages that the creation of a "GoogleNet" would make possible for Google.
PayPal, the online financier, did what few of its contemporaries were able to do. It weathered the dot-com boom and bust, and become the most popular choice for websites looking to do business with the public. But its success and sale to eBay gave it a newfound muscle that PayPal has increasingly used to police the content of sites it's affiliated with. Bob speaks with Eric Jackson, author of The PayPal Wars.
