Saturday 8 November 2014

German publisher caves to Google News after massive traffic drop

By Colin Lecher, @colinlecher

Publishers worldwide have been complaining about Google News since its launch, arguing that story excerpts appearing in search are a way for Google to capitalize on others' work. Last year, after a legal battle, Google News essentially became opt-in for German publishers: if they didn't like the way Google News was doing business, they could leave. Many large publishers in Germany didn't take Google up on the offer until two weeks ago, when about 200 publishers opted out. Axel Springer, the country's largest news publisher, is now walking back that decision.
Rather than risk paying licensing fees for using snippets of Axel Springer's stories, Google removed everything except the headlines from their results. After that, Axel Springer's web traffic fell off a cliff: visitors from web search fell 40 percent; from Google News, they fell 80 percent. The company's chief executive said they would have "shot ourselves out of the market" if they'd continued with the policy, according to Reuters. This isn't a tiny company fighting a monolithic corporation, either: Axel Springer publishes Europe's top-selling daily paper, Bild.

The German law is part of a wider push to reign in Google across the EU. There was a similar stand-off in France last year, which ended with Google shelling out about $82 million USD for a "Digital Publishing Innovation Fund." As recently as last week, a similar law was passed in Spain. But if the result in Germany is any indication, news publishers may be too hooked on Google News to quit.


From The Verge

Monday 19 May 2014

Bowie's takedown of Hadfield's ISS "Space Oddity" highlights copyright's absurdity

at 4:00 pm Sun, May 18, 2014


Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's cover of Bowie's Space Oddity was a worldwide hit, and now it has been disappeared from the Internet, thanks to a copyright claim from David Bowie. Ironically, if Hadfield had recorded the song and sold it on CD or as an MP3, there would have been no need for him to get a license from Bowie, and no way for Bowie to remove it, because there's a compulsory license for cover songs that sets out how much the performer has to pay the songwriter for each copy sold, but does not give the songwriter the power to veto individual covers (that's why Sid Vicious was able to record "My Way").
As Blayne Haggart's Ottawa Citizen editorial points out, it's hard to make a utilitarian argument for copyright that lets musicians determine who can make Youtube videos from their songs, given that covers are such an accepted part of musical practice. As Haggart writes, "Is the world a better place now that this piece of art has officially been scrubbed from existence?"
Sometimes, the law is an ass. And copyright law, as it’s metastasized over 300 years, definitely possesses ass-like qualities.
The Hadfield Space Oddity takedown is the perfect example of how copyright, which is supposed to promote creativity and increase our access to knowledge and culture, all too often ends up doing the exact opposite. Instead, it becomes a way for copyright owners – usually large multinationals, not actual creators – to control what gets created and seen.
Most people lucky enough not to spend every waking moment thinking about copyright may think that’s just fair – it is their stuff, after all. But what this completely understandable, instinctive response misses is that this will to control often ends up being a veto over the future creation of knowledge and culture.

Op-Ed: Bad copyright rules killed Hadfield's Space Oddity [Blayne Haggart/Ottawa Citizen] 

[via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2014/05/18/bowies-takedown-of-hadfield.html]

Tuesday 25 February 2014

Huge rise in intensely sexualised pictures of women... but not men


By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
The number of intensely sexualised images of women in the media has soared in recent years.
Pictures of women have increasingly become hyper-sexualised, research has found. But the same is not true of the portrayal of men.

Images of women on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine were 89 per cent more likely to be sexualised and even 'pornified' in the 2000s than in the 1960s, the study by the University of Buffalo revealed.
Enlarge 
Bringing sexy back: The study examines the covers of Rolling Stone magazine from 1967 to 2009
Bringing sexy back: The study examines the covers of Rolling Stone magazine from 1967 to 2009

After analysing more than 1,000 images of men and women on Rolling Stone covers over the course of 43 years, the authors concluded that though images of both men and women have become more sexual, sexualised images are more frequent with women.  At the same time, the number of intensely sexualised images of women -- but not men -- have surged.
 
In the 1960s they found that 11 per cent of men and 44 per cent of women on the covers of Rolling Stone were sexualised. In the 2000s, 17 per cent of men were sexualised (an increase of 55 per cent from the 1960s), and 83 per cent of women were sexualised (an increase of 89 per cent). Among those images that were sexualised, 2 percent of men and 61 per cent of women were hyper-sexualised.

Assistant Professor of Sociology at Buffalo University, Erin Hatton, one of the study's authors
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Buffalo University, Erin Hatton, one of the study's authors
Hatton said: 'In the 2000s there were 10 times more hyper-sexualised images of women than men, and 11 times more non-sexualised images of men than of women. 'What we conclude from this is that popular media outlets such as Rolling Stone are not depicting women as sexy musicians or actors; they are depicting women musicians and actors as ready and available for sex.

Previous research has found highly sexualised images of women to have far-reaching negative consequences for both men and women. 
Hatton said it was 'problematic' 'because it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women. She added: 'We don't necessarily think it's problematic for women to be portrayed as 'sexy.' But we do think it is problematic when nearly all images of women depict them not simply as 'sexy women' but as passive objects for someone else's sexual pleasure. 
'Sexualised portrayals of women have been found to legitimise or exacerbate violence against women and girls, as well as sexual harassment and anti-women attitudes among men and boys.

'Such images also have been shown to increase rates of body dissatisfaction and/or eating disorders among men, women and girls; and they have even been shown to decrease sexual satisfaction among both men and women.'
In order to measure the intensity of sexualised representations of men and women, the authors developed a 'scale of sexualisation.' An image was given "points" for being sexualised if, for example, the subject's lips were parted or his/her tongue was showing, the subject was only partially clad or naked, or the text describing the subject used explicitly sexual language. 
The study, 'Equal Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualisation of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone', will be published in the September issue of the journal Sexuality & Culture.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2025930/Huge-rise-intensely-sexualised-pictures-women--men.html#ixzz2uIEAKEGh
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23 Women's Magazines, Then And Now

posted on 




From ptticoats to pleasure tips. Compare the earliest issues of Cosmo, Vogue,Ms., and more to their most recent.


1. 1867:


(Right: November 2012)
(Right: November 2012)















(Left: 1883 Right: November 2012)

3. 1886:

(Right: November 2012)

(Right: December 2012)




















(Left: 1887 Right: December 2012)

5. 1892:

(Right: December 2012)

(Right: November 201




















(Left: 1903 Right: November 2012)

7. 1922:

(Right: December 2012)

(Right: November 2012)




















(Left 1939 Right: December 2012)

9. 1944:

(Right: November 2012)

(Right: November 2012)




















(Left 1870 Right: December 2012)

11. 1972:


(Right: November 2012)























(Left 1903 Right: November 2012)

13. 1981:

(Right: November 2012)

(Right: November 2012)





















(Left 1935 Right: December 2012)

See the rest here