Cody Taylor

Gov IT writes with this excerpt from NextGov: “Just days after President Obama signed a law giving billions of dollars to develop electronic health records, a university technology professor submitted a paper showing that he was able to uncover tens of thousands of medical files containing names, addresses and Social Security numbers for patients seeking treatment for conditions ranging from AIDS to mental health problems. … The basic technology that runs peer-to-peer networks inadvertently exposed the files probably without the computer user’s knowledge, Johnson said. A health care worker might have loaded patient files onto a laptop, for example, and taken it home where a son or daughter could have downloaded a peer-to-peer client onto the laptop to share music.”

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commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they’re not trying to develop “some enormous new revenue opportunity,” but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free. “They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. … People aren’t yet cutting the cord en masse – the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. … The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn’t to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone’s business intact.”

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Apple this week kicked its eco-friendly MacBook campaign into overdrive with new placements on network television and top-tier internet properties; meanwhile, Research in Motion considered taking a shot at Apple in a new television commercial but ultimately couldn’t bring itself to pull the trigger.

Techdirt points out an interesting query in Slate asking why book publishers appear to be making the same mistake that record labels did with the iTunes service with DRM, and single-vendor lock-in. “Back in 2005, we noted that Apple’s dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously, was actually the record labels’ own fault for demanding DRM. That single demand created massive lock-in and network effects that allowed Apple to completely dominate the market. If the record labels had, instead, pushed for an open solution, then anyone else could have built stores/players to work as well, and it could have minimized Apple’s ability to control the market. Yes, everyone is now opening up (including Apple), but it took a long time, and Apple had already established its dominant position. So why are book publishers doing the same thing?”

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