Authors slap Google, Dell slaps itself (and spam 'shop curse)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at the Authors' Guild lawsuit against Google and Ditty, Dell's new tiny-but-ugly MP3 player. Not to mention the spam curse of Photoshop...

Google sued by Authors' Guild, alleging copyright infringement. Mike Madison says it's because, "Google Print would scan the entire contents of several major libraries (including the University of Michigan's), including works still covered by copyright; store the contents on Google servers; and enable full-text searches of the entire database that would return results limited to excerpts of the full books." Eric Goldman brings an interesting perspective: "The risks to Google of seeing this litigation to conclusion are potentially business-altering. It's possible that a court, when presented with the differences between the robotic collection of digital content and the scanning of dead trees content, will not be able to articulate any difference at all ... Google could be faced with ... having a court opining that its core search business is infringing." Google's response was made in its blog by Susan Wojcicki: "Google respects copyright. The use we make of all the books we scan through the Library Project is fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself." John Battelle finds it refreshing: "Google makes its case clearly, and the writing seems to be driven by conviction and passion."

Dell launches MP3 player, world yawns. John Gruber sums it up for us: "[I] suspect that even Dell is not very proud of this device ... vague resemblance to a 50-cent Bic lighter ... [people with] profoundly bad taste in industrial design [will] consider purchasing this device ... [I remember] a decade’s worth of tech industry punditry holding that superior design would never get Apple anywhere, and that Apple should ... be more like Dell." Raghavan Srinivasan believes that Dell's "main selling point was going to be 'we have 1 inch screen for playlists and Shuffle has none.' Well I don’t think Dell’s Ditty is going to kill any iPod any time in the near future." Ozguru rants, "Now that Apple have introduced something even better than the iPod Shuffle, it is time for the idjits to try cloning the shuffle - just to demonstrate that they are waaaaaaay behind the times." Gerson Goldberg (designer for the Rio Carbon): "Ditty looks like another landfill bound wallet drainer!" Tom Coates sighs, "It's just a bit rubbish. It's all so dull. Why won't someone do something good. Surely it can't be that hard!?"

Kevin Burton unveils TailRank, peeping though the kimono on his blog: "my new startup ... is a next-generation weblog ranking system which takes into consideration a lot of lessons learned from other Web 2.0 products and services." (Kevin was the author of the NewsMonster RSS aggregator and a co-Founder of Rojo Networks.) Matthew Hurst gushes, "sounds like just the thing needed in the blogosphere." But Brian Dennis bemoans that it's, "in that terminally annoying invite-only phase (thanks for reminding me to forget about your product until later) ... Not to pick on Kevin, but if Web 2.0 crashes and burns spectacularly, I'm sure invite-only betas will be a highly mocked archetype of the era."

Buffer overflow:

• Network Storage Devices
• Skype scalability problems?
• Mozilla issues firefox update
• Not completely in the dark with my trusty laptop…
• Blog search spam
• Setting up a Linux terminal server
• Replacement strategy for Public Folders (and network shares)?
• DEMOfall: Phone home
• Here, there: WiFi is everywhere!

And finally... Curso de PHOTOSHOP (another "poorly-drawn cartoon inspired by actual spam subject lines")

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk.