Listics

Henry (oops, I mean "Kerr") and Dean share a national perspective.

(Bravo to Dr. W. for pointing to the brief Lessig post in Wired…)

Lessig’s comments on the Authors Guild brouhaha around Google Print and copyright are of the "let’s you and him fight" variety and to be expected from a lawyer trained in the adversarial arts. Certainly if Google was a mom and pop scannery making indexed versions of print publications available under fair use provisions of the copyright law, the Authors Guild would not have seen value in a lawsuit (though arguably they may have chilled mom and pop right out of business with the threat).  Lessig would like to see Google defend their right to scan printed matter and make indexed information of copyrighted textual work available within the fair use guidelines of American copyright law.  He seems to be afraid that they will reach a settlement with their antagonists and that the matter will be resolved without the ritual opening of purses to the Knights of the bar.

I want Google’s work to continue more than I care about the legal jousting.  Google’s project has been underway for about two years.  They have a program for publishers, a program that should protect the rights of authors.  Google is "partnering" with four universities and the New York Public Library to digitize a lot of books.  If it was strictly a cash and carry contractual relationship, a project with libraries paying a scanning and indexing company a fee for service, then the complexities of fear associated with the newly risen corporate monolith of Search would be easily dismissed.  But since Google is a full partner whose shareholders have interests in some ways orthogonal to the libraries users’ interests, the matter is more complicated than Larry Lessig allows.

(Disclosure:  I’m a bit of a socialist with a desire to draw a bright line between private commerce and public concerns.  Schools, libraries, and access to information on the net are public concerns.) 

Less than 2% of Milwaukee local TV news coverage was focussed on state and local elections during the four weeks prior to the 2024 general election.  For this reason, a coalition of groups and Milwaukee-area residents led by the Democracy Campaign today filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission challenging the renewal of all commercial television licenses in the Milwaukee market.

The basis of the coalition’s petition is a marketwide failure of local stations in Wisconsin’s largest TV market to serve the public interest documented by a national study showing a minuscule portion of local newscasts were devoted to covering state and local election campaigns.

The broadcast airwaves are public property that stations are licensed to use so long as they serve the public interest. Localism is one of the FCC’s three tests of whether a station is acting in the public interest (along with diversity and competition). Milwaukee stations failed the localism test miserably by devoting three-quarters of their meager election coverage in the month leading up to the 2024 general election to the presidential race, even though the national networks and other national media also were providing coverage of that race.

The root cause of the abandonment of localism in local broadcasting is the growing consolidation of media ownership. One of Milwaukee’s top-rated stations is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a politically conservative national chain that is one of the largest television conglomerates in the nation.  Sinclair has pioneered centrally produced faux local news. Another top Milwaukee station is owned by Fox Television Stations, Inc., part of Rupert Murdoch’s global news and entertainment empire known as News Corporation.

It’s possible that the country has finally entered the no-spin zone.   Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has set himself up a website.  Right now it contains all the matters of record up to and including the Judith Miller case.  The documents are all in pdf format.  The site looks like a launching platform for fact based reporting.  I am hoping that any memoranda, indictments, and reports that are issued next week will be posted.  It’s not quite a blog, but it’s pretty good for government work.

I’m pretty sure this is not a made up thing, that there really is a presidential speechalist.

I know what I’m doing to celebrate UN Day.  How ’bout you?

Harriet Miers is the first nominee for Supreme Court Justice about whom shoe size has emerged as a salient piece of verifiable data.  One expects the straight press, Fox News, etc. to be all over this, fact checking those feet.

The tough side — the one that led President Bush to call her a "pit bull in size 6 shoes" — comes when she’s advocating for Bush, a major corporation such as Microsoft or her law firm in a high-stakes merger.  - Houston Chronicle

Terrifying, actually.