My Dots for Tuesday, March 06, 2007

A Canadian writer, the author of “Life of Pi,” was asked not to read from Mein Kampf on CBC Radio during “Freedom to Read” week.

Quoted: “It’s a horrible book, but a horribly important book, because you get in the brain of one of the monsters of the 20th century,” Martel said.

Jean Baudrillard has passed away.

Quoted: The French critic and provocateur Jean Baudrillard, whose theories about consumer culture and the manufactured nature of reality were intensely discussed both in rarefied philosophical circles and in blockbuster movies like “The Matrix,” died yesterday in Paris. He was 77.

Here’s one of his provocative moments:

Quoted: His comments often sparked controversy, as when he said in 1991 that the gulf war “did not take place” — arguing that it was more of a media event than a war.

Google is being taken to task for scanning copyrighted material and making the insides searchable. Nowhere in this whole piece, however, does it ever mention that only small snippets of copyrighted material are made availabel to indivdual users. The piece willingly lets readers believe that Google is stealing all the material, which is simply not true.

Here is what the Microsoft lawyer says:

Quoted: “Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs,” Mr Rubin will tell a meeting of the Association of American publishers in New York on Tuesday.

Ummm, yeah, I’d say it’s a crock of sh*% if you believe that Google has created no content of their own. Software doesn’t magically appear out of thin air.

Quoted: “Google takes the position that everything may be freely copied unless the copyright owner notifies Google and tells it to stop.”

Google also takes the position that they limit the amount of copyrighted material shown from any one work to any individual seeking it out.