A pretty fascinating column has been posted here discussing some of the theoretical issues that copyright law and new media might battle in the coming years – and these go well beyond the current debate about online file-sharing of music and movies. Part of the column is devoted to discussion about a short flash movie presents the following scenario:
The year 2007 sees the advent of a service – the Microsoft-owned, Friendster-derived Newsbotster – that “”ranks and sorts news, based on what each user’s friends and colleagues are reading and viewing and ‚Ķ allows everyone to comment on what they see.”"
But as of 2008, Newsboster has a competitor: Googlezon, formed by the merger of Google and Amazon. To form this titan, Google supplies (among other things) “”unparalled search technology,”" while Amazon supplies “”the social recommendation engine and its huge commercial infrastructure.”"
Googlezon uses this combined “”detailed knowledge of every user’s social network, demographics, consumption habits and interests to provide total customization of content — and advertising.”" (Presumably, this “”content”" includes content from the superior future version of the current day, real-life Google News.)
In 2010, Googlezon wins its fight with Newsbotser by inventing a clever new technique that further tailors content to the user: “”Googlezon’s computers construct news stories dynamically, stripping sentences and facts from all content sources and recombining them. The computer writes a [personalized] news story for every user.”"
… in 2011, the New York Times and other media whose content is not customized to the user go the Supreme Court, “”claiming that [Googlezon's] fact-stripping robots are a violation of copyright law.”"
… One legal issue here is obvious: the issue of “”fact-stripping robots”" and copyright infringement, which [the creators of the film] predict the Supreme Court will resolve in 2011.
Read the entire article here…
- That snippet from the column is a bit unwieldy as it is attempting to capture information that the author is relaying from a transcript to a movie. It will make much more sense if you read the entire column.
