News Round-Up – Week Ending January 30, 2009

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The New York Times, owners of Boston.com, and GateHouse Media agreed on the eve of trial to settle their copyright lawsuit. As part of the settlement, the complete details of which aren’t available, the headlines and first sentences from GateHouse articles will be removed from listings on Boston.com, although Boston.com will continue to link to GateHouse. While the settlement appears to be a victory for GateHouse, some are questioning whether GateHouse’s objections to the content in the links made business sense as Boston.com was sending traffic to GateHouse. The new restrictions may cause Boston.com to think twice about doing that in the future. Other smaller media and content sites may want to consider these ramifications in raising similar issues. Read here for more on the dispute.
Controversy is already brewing at the President’s virtual home regarding privacy issues. In what some called a “YouTube exemption” to the privacy policy at WhiteHouse.gov, YouTube was apparently permitted to plant tracking cookies on the computers of visitors to the White House site. When objections were raised, the policy was quickly amended to limit the placement of cookies only on machines that actually click on the video. The debate seems to point to the tricky nature of balancing the optimal privacy policy with the transparency of the actual terms of that policy. More on the issue is here.
In what may be the first of its kind corporate policy, Ireland’s largest ISP, Eircom, has agreed to implement a “three strikes and you’re shut down” policy for P2P file sharers. The policy is the result of a settlement in a lawsuit against Eircom that was broght by the Irish branches of EMI, Warner, Universal and Sony. While the concept of a graduated response has been debated before (it was actually specifically rejected by the European Parliament last year), Eircom now appears to be set to be the first ISP in the world to voluntarily cut off P2P users without court orders. For more on this issue, read here.
North Carolina joins a list of states now considering charging sales tax on digital downloads to help raise revenue for the state – a move that could deter customers who are already facing tough times. More details here.
In a move that is being widely criticized, Cox Communications, the third-largest cable company, has announced plans to test a system to manage Internet congestion by rating traffic based on its urgency and importance. Coincidentally, Google released a new set of tools to enable users to find out if their ISPs are hindering traffic. Read here for more.

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News Round-Up – Week Ending January 30, 2009