SABIP and the Digital Consumer

Today, after an intense three month research phase, which might justify the spotty posts on Around Robin recently, we're going to present our findings to a closed workshop organised by SABIP, the Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property Policy, in the UK. We've looked at a lot of academic data, industry research; conducted interviews and gone and had a good look at the worlds of file sharing, downloading, copying and storage. Should be interesting. Our research will be published shortly.

New Capa, Taro & Chim

...the rolls turned out to be in remarkably good shape despite being almost untouched for 70 years. And so began a painstaking process of unfurling, scanning and trying to make sense of some 4,300 negatives taken by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, groundbreaking work that was long thought to be lost but resurfaced several years ago in Mexico City

From the NYT

Opening His Heart

The new journalism will be more transparent, accountable, responsive, will have the humility to admit mistakes - and will be open source, showing workings, methods, sources and footnotes.


The Guardian reports on its own editor-in-chief.

"We are describing something that has a far greater joint authority that comes about through shared information and through a shared idea about what the community needs," he said.

"If this is a form of journalism of which people feel they are a part, which people trust, believe in and and feel involved with, then we are halfway there towards this question of a business model. It's a reason to be immensely cheerful amongst the gloom about our industry and if we can get over this question about our economic model - it's a big if - it's possible we are not going into an obituary for journalism but something like a golden age for journalism."

Alan Rusbridger at Queen Mary, the University of London

Writers vs Google (part 9)

I met some of the Internet Archive guys and girls in Oxford recently, and shared some beers and thoughts. Nice gang: based in SF. How ironic that it is paper that they are turning to in the prelims to the Google Book Settlement. Here for the motion online.


News here.


The battle begins.

So no one database...

The Home Office will... ask communications companies - from internet service providers to mobile phone networks - to extend the range of information they currently hold on their subscribers and organise it so that it can be better used by the police, MI5 and other public bodies investigating crime and terrorism.

"What we are talking about is who is at one end [of a communication] and who is at the other - and how they are communicating."


Jacqui Smith on new plans for monitoring the Internet, because doing nothing is 'not an option'.

Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications data and its use in law enforcement, Jacqui Smith said there would be no single government-run database.

From the BBC.