Cody Taylor

Miracle Jones writes “In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding “orphan books,” he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems “inappropriate” from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these “inappropriate” titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to “opt out” of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google’s settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick’s estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue.” In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it’s attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The NYTimes is running a piece on the dilemma faced by Web entrepreneurs, particularly in social media companies: the developing world is spiking traffic but not contributing much to revenues. The basic disconnect when Web 2.0 business models meet Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East is that countries there are not good prospects for the advertisers who pay the bills. “Call it the International Paradox. Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results. … Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there. ‘I believe in free, open communications,’ Dmitry Shapiro, the company’s chief executive, said. ‘But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it.’ … Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which [an analyst] recently estimated could lose 0 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will further its endorsement of YouTube and open video standards by building support for the Google-owned video sharing service into one of its flagship applications due to ship later this summer as part of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.