Couldn’t Help But Notice (060707)
Brian Wesbury on the economy (last para at link):
We remain optimistic that the economy has moved through the worst of the housing correction, and forecast a real GDP growth rate of 3.5% in the second quarter, and 3%+ for the second half of 2007 and into 2008.
The Business Roundtable is predicting 2.6% for the year, which after figuring in the 0.6% first quarter (before final revision) is about the same as Wesbury.
I think the possible inventory bounce-back alluded to here (see “Worth Asking, Not Answerable” at link) may move those growth figures a bit higher.
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I find little to cheer in the news (HT Techdirt) that The Associated Press “will subscribe to a service developed by Attributor Corp. to track how its stories are distributed across thousands of Web sites. The monitoring tools eventually will be expanded so the news cooperative will be able to keep tabs on the use of its photos and videos on the Internet, too.”
Given the fact that The AP has the following at the end of its reports, they clearly have never accepted the concept of fair use:
The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
The h*ll it can’t.
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More evidence that the press doesn’t “get” fair use (HT Techdirt):
From ROGER MOORE: While I applaud Neil Henry’s column on the need for Google and other web news aggregators taking a hard look at what they’re doing to American democracy by taking news content and providing it for free without paying for it, I have to say it doesn’t go far enough. We can’t hope that they will have this discussion without some prodding. Lawyerly prodding.
Mike Masnick at Techdirt has to belabor the obvious to make a valid point:
(That) is flat out false. Google isn’t taking news and it isn’t providing it for free. It’s driving more traffic to the news that newspapers already provide for free. Google giving them traffic benefits those newspaper sites by giving them more traffic to monetize. To claim that somehow this takes away from those sites isn’t just incorrect, it’s strategically backwards.
This guy is in the clueless club like Mr. Moore above:
….. the time has come for corporations such as Google to accept more responsibility for the future of American journalism, in recognition of the threat “computer science” poses to journalism’s place in a democratic society.
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A Chinese tax lesson we should take to heart:
Chinese stocks fell again on Tuesday, continuing heavy losses since the government tripled its tax on share trading last week.
Any direct tax on capital such as this will lower valuations by a large multiple of the amount of the tax.
Tom, on your post More evidence that the press doesn’t get fair use. Oh, I think they get it, what they are really worrying about is the aggregation promotes non sole source reading of the news. In order for a bias to be effective, the reader must only get their information consistently from one source, otherwise reading a few articles on the same subject from multiple sources exposes the multiple directions/angles in which one can view a subject. A well rounded person knows there is always three sides to a coin which includes the edge.
Comment by dscott — June 7, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
dscott, good points. If we can’t quote or even refer to them (as Gannett has done to FreeRepublic; you can’t even cite ‘em), then our ability to pick them apart is limited. Since AP, Reuters, and a few others currently have a virtual viewpoint monopoly on original content, they would get their take heard and first and foremost with minimal challenge. Horsecrap.
Comment by TBlumer — June 7, 2007 @ 1:36 pm