Business: June 2007 Archive Page

WATCH out YouTube lovers - the online video service are trialling new technology to prevent people posting unauthorised material they don't have the copyright for.

YouTube will trial the new technology with two of the world's largest media companies, Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co. --YouTube no longer yours (Sunday Telegraph)

Sony Corp. apologized Friday to the Church of England for a violent computer game that features a bloody shootout inside an Anglican cathedral. --Jill Lawless --Sony: Sorry for Cathedral Shootout Game (Brietbart)

The New York premiere of the film, on Wednesday, was held to support the organisation Reporters Without Borders, which defends journalists against persecution and combats censorship and laws that undermine press freedom.

But several journalists covering the premiere objected when Jolie's lawyer demanded they sign pre-interview contracts limiting exactly what they could and could not ask her. --Catherine Elsworth --Jolie accused of hypocrisy over press 'gag' (Telegraph)

Bravo to the reporters who refused to sign the contract and declined the opportunity to promote the movie.

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language." --100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know (Houghton Mifflin Books)

Hmm... the editors' description of the list is very different from the way it's being marketed. Simply knowing the definition of these words won't suddenly make you more intelligent.

Someone who doesn't know words like "euro" or "suffragist" probably has other important gaps in his or her education. Most citizens probably get through their days without much chance of encountering "moiety" or "ziggurat."

All these words are in my reading vocabulary, but I don't believe I have ever used "abjure" or "abrogate" in a written or spoken sentence, and I wouldn't have been able to explain the difference if I hadn't looked it up just now. Because I never took French, I would never use "gauche" in speech (even though I finally know how to pronounce it, since I just looked it up now), unless perhaps I was creating dialogue for a character who either 1) knew French well enough to be influenced by its vocabulary or 2) wanted people to think that he or she was the kind of cultured person who was used to being around people who dropped French terms. I would have described "jejune" as "immature" or "dull," rather than recognize its Latin root as meaning "meager" or "hungry," or its more technical sense as "lacking nutritious value." I sort of recognized "quotidian" as meaning something like "average" or "typical," but until just now, I never recognized the Latin roots that make its specific meaning "everyday."

In the second line of King Lear, Gloucester says:

It did always seem so to us: but now, in the
division of the kingdom, it appears not which of
the dukes he values most; for equalities are so
weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice
of either's moiety.

That certainly gives sufficient context to guess that "moiety" means something like "division" or "share," though its more precise definition -- "half" -- is less clear. (The very first line in the play indicates the choice is between two dukes -- Albany and Cornwall.)

Publishers want to sell dictionaries, but the skill of being able to figure out a workable definition of a word based on its context is actually more important to literacy than the ability to memorize words on a list.

News emerged over the weekend that Church authorities have complained to Sony about the depiction of Manchester Cathedral in the game. Some reports have stated that the Church may pursue legal action against the company.

But according to Alex Chapman of Campbell Hooper solicitors,"The Church will have an uphill battle in a legal claim against Sony, and indeed it is likely that there is no basis for a claim." --Church will face ''uphill battle'' if suing Sony, says legal expert (Games Industry Biz)

I've been following this story about Resistance: The Fall of Man.

I'm reminded of when sculptor Frederick Hart was surprised to discover that that a copy of a sculpture he had created for the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. was featured for about 20 minutes in the movie Devil's Advocate, and that the filmmakers had actually animated the sculpture to turn it into what the Anglican church leaders called a distortion of a religious sculpture.

Sony was forced to re-edit the film before they could release it on DVD and video (after agreeing to put disclaimer stickers on the copies of the movie that had already been produced).

The National Cathedral case involved a living artist, who still owned the copyright to a work that was commissioned for a religious purpose. The Manchester Cathedral case probably doesn't involve much recently-produced art, and the leaders object to the fact that the digital re-creation of the church is the setting for a gunfight.

It will be interesting to see how the mainstream media represent the Manchester case, since it involves a video game. (We've already seen that even the very edgy indie Slamdance Film Festival is not a safe place for envelope-pushing videogames.)

According to the Courier-Journal, staff blogger Brian Bennett was approached by NCAA officials in the fifth inning of a game between the University of Lousville and Oklahoma State, told that blogging "from an NCAA championship event 'is against NCAA policies (and) we're revoking the (press) credential and need to ask you to leave the stadium.'"

In its article, the Courier-Journal quoted its executive editor, Bennie Ivory, as saying, "It's clearly a First Amendment issue. This is part of the evolution of how we present the news to our readers. It's what we did during the Orange Bowl. It's what we did during the NCAA basketball tournament. It's what we do." --Blogger removed from NCAA baseball game for blogging (C|Net)

This is a great find. I'm a student (with a full time job), who uses the web a lot in my research. I've found that there are many insightful comments out there, but failed to use them due to 1) fear of not properly citing them 2) fear that they will be rejected as credible sources. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized that my current paper really needs to cite a few comments in order to make some points. Thanks again![Submitted Comment] (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

The above is the text of a comment that someone submitted to an old blog entry about how to cite weblog comments in MLA style.

I didn't publish it, because the URL supplied by the poster was the home page of a company that offers search-engine optimization services. In the space where the name was supposed to be, the poster added some Google-friendly keywords.

A hand-made personalized commercial message may not fit the strict definition of spam, but it's still an unwelcome submission.