September 2008

Quick Links: Vice and Virtue On the Net

September 5th 2008

Give Food to the Hungry by Answering Vocabulary Questions The World Food Programme has recognized the website Free Rice for generating enough support to feed two million people per day. The ad-driven site offers a range of games, but instead of scoring points, participants score grains of rice to be donated by the site’s sponsors. […]

Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit – ADA Linked to Websites in California

September 4th 2008

Target has settled a class action lawsuit from the The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) by agreeing to pay $6 million in damages, and to pay the organization to supervise efforts to make its website more accessible to the visually impaired. Previous court rulings had established that that ADA did not extend to stores’ […]

Manufacturer Price Fixing and Its Discontents: Online Stores Get Creative

September 3rd 2008

A recent Supreme Court ruling has emboldened manufacturers of goods ranging from baby food to clothing to set minimum pricing requirements of their distributors. The case has inspired protest from most states’ attorneys general, as well as economists who identify such agreements as a cause of inflation. The Wall Street Journal‘s political blog reports: Attorneys […]

Google’s Chrome Browser and IE8 Take On User Privacy

September 2nd 2008

Yesterday, Google introduced its browser, Chrome. Yes, Firefox may have seemed to already be Google’s. But Google has designed its own new browser, which will be distributed as Open Source software. “What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set […]

Aaron Sorkin to Write Facebook Movie

September 2nd 2008

Last week, a seemingly fake Facebook group called Aaron Sorkin & the Facebook Movie popped up. Though there was initial skepticism, New York Magazine confirmed that really was him, and yes, he’s writing a movie about Facebook. Reuters and The Christian Science Monitor have covered it. He’s asked visitors to share their experiences and story […]

More Propaganda: MPAA’s Respecting Copyright “Merit Patch” for Scouts

September 1st 2008

LA’s Boy Scout Council has teamed with the MPAA to offer Scouts a patch for learning just how much it costs to make a film and how many people get hurt if you download it without paying. Really, take a look. Notice that the concepts of fair use and public domain are completely absent from […]