November 2012

Twitter’s Uneasy Role in Guarding the Truth

Everybody lies. Children lie about brushing their teeth. Politicians stretch the truth in the heat of a campaign. Newspaper reporters have been caught lying, as have best-selling book authors; corporations; spouses and, of course, government officials. And so have lots of people on Twitter. It might seem that lies on social networks have become as common as the truth. Fabrications and sham pictures spread via Twitter during Hurricane Sandy and propaganda during the presidential campaign. But is it a cause for worry? I don’t think so.

Booksellers Resisting Amazon’s Disruption

Amazon prides itself on unraveling the established order. This fall, signs of Amazon-inspired disruption are everywhere. There is the slow-motion crackup of electronics showroom Best Buy. There is Amazon’s rumored entry into the wine business, which is already agitating competitors. And there is the merger of Random House and Penguin, an effort to create a mega-publisher sufficiently hefty to negotiate with the retailer on equal terms. Amazon inspires anxiety just about everywhere, but its publishing arm is getting pushback from all sorts of booksellers, who are scorning the imprint’s most prominent title, Timothy Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Chef.” That book is coming out just before Thanksgiving into a fragmented book-selling landscape that Amazon has done much to create but that eludes its control.

Publishers Abroad Take On Google

[Commentary] They say you should never take on people who spill ink by the barrel, but your odds are better when you traffic in terabytes of data. In the United States, Google and big media went at it for several years over Google News and Google won, taking its argument for a free and open Internet all the way to the bank. It’s a little counterintuitive, but large newspapers believed that Google was hurting them by generating a page of links — with headlines and a short summary — to articles that the newspapers had paid to create. Publishers said that what was supposed to be an index of the news had become the news, and was a disincentive for people to click through to the source. American publishers eventually decided that the only thing worse than being aggregated by Google News was not being aggregated at all, but the fight has been joined anew in other countries by publishers who argue that the giant American search company is picking their pockets every time it links to articles. There’s a large boycott under way in Brazil, punishing legislation is gaining momentum in Germany, and there is talk of a similar effort in France.

Copyright on Imported Works

[Commentary] Supap Kirtsaeng bought textbooks published overseas by John Wiley & Sons and resold them on eBay and other Web sites for a profit in the United States. The publisher sued Mr. Kirtsaeng for violating its copyright, and the case went before the Supreme Court. At stake in this important and knotty case is whether copyright holders — publishers, filmmakers, musicians and creative artists of all sorts — can sell their copyrighted works abroad at prices different from what they charge in the American market and rely on copyright law to help maintain the separate pricing without having importers profit from the difference.

The justices should rule that the Copyright Act and a revision to it that Congress made in 1976 prohibit such resales. This case requires a difficult interpretation of the Copyright Act, but that is made easier by understanding the intent of Congress when it revised the law in 1976. It did so to broaden protection against unauthorized imports of copyrighted works by so-called gray-market sellers, and to make easier the kind of market segmentation by geography and price that Mr. Kirtsaeng’s resales subverted. With segmentation, book publishers can offer cheaper editions of their works in less-developed countries, without concern that those copies will be resold in the United States and unfairly undercut sales here.

China’s ‘Manhattan’ becomes censorship capital

A city run by one of China’s incoming political leaders that has billed itself as a future international financial center is instead becoming the country’s internet censorship capital.

Tianjin, whose Communist party secretary Zhang Gaoli is one of the seven men most likely to get a seat on the new politburo standing committee due to be unveiled at the 18th party congress starting on Nov 8, is developing a replica of Manhattan to which it aims to attract global banks. But local government officials explaining a mock-up of Yujiapu, the new district on the site of a former fishing village, last week said they did not know of any foreign bank that had committed to coming. Meanwhile, some of China’s leading internet companies are relocating their censorship operations to Tianjin as they battle soaring labor costs.

Apple paid only 1.9 percent income tax on $36.8 billion in earnings outside US in fiscal 2012

Apple paid an income tax rate of only 1.9 percent on its earnings outside the U.S. in its latest fiscal year, a regulatory filing by the company shows.

The world’s most valuable company paid $713 million in tax on foreign earnings of $36.8 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 29, according to the financial statement filed on Oct. 31. The foreign earnings were up 53 percent from fiscal 2011, when Apple earned $24 billion outside the U.S. and paid income tax of 2.5 percent on it. The tech giant’s foreign tax rate compares with the general U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Apple may pay some income taxes on its profit to the country in which it sells its products, but it minimizes them by using various accounting moves to shift profits to countries with low tax rates. For example the strategy known as “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” routes profits through Irish and Dutch subsidiaries and then to the Caribbean. Other multinational corporations also use such tax techniques, which are legal.

Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Web Sites

Regulators in the United States and Europe are conducting sweeping inquiries of Google, the dominant Internet search and advertising company. Google rose by technological innovation and business acumen; in the United States, it has 67 percent of the search market and collects 75 percent of search ad dollars. Being big is no crime, but if a powerful company uses market muscle to stifle competition, that is an antitrust violation.

So the government is focusing on life in Google’s world for the sprawling economic ecosystem of Web sites that depend on their ranking in search results. What is it like to live this way, in a giant’s shadow? The experience of its inhabitants is nuanced and complex, a blend of admiration and fear. The relationship between Google and Web sites, publishers and advertisers often seems lopsided, if not unfair. Yet Google has also provided and nurtured a landscape of opportunity. Its ecosystem generates $80 billion a year in revenue for 1.8 million businesses, Web sites and nonprofit organizations in the United States alone, it estimates. The government’s scrutiny of Google is the most exhaustive investigation of a major corporation since the pursuit of Microsoft in the late 1990s.

On Google, a Political Mystery That's All Numbers

Google’s quest to guess what we want before we want it has produced an unusual side effect: a disparity in the results the company presents about the presidential candidates.

A Wall Street Journal examination found that the search engine often customizes the results of people who have recently searched for "Obama"—but not those who have recently searched for "Romney." Here's how it works: When a user searches for the name Obama, Google includes links about President Barack Obama in subsequent searches on terms such as "Iran," "Medicare" and "gay marriage." The altered results are labeled in gray type: "you recently searched for Obama." Testers searching for "Romney," however, didn't see customized links containing Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney's name in their subsequent search results. The search links are altered only for a short period, and there is no indication that Google is intentionally biasing its results. Nor does the pattern affect only political topics: Searches for words such as "iPhone," "sports," "health," "social security" and "twilight" also can trigger customized results in subsequent searches.

Journalists open wallets for Obama and Romney

Reporters for Romney? Editors for Obama? Numerous journalists — self-identified reporters, editors and photographers affiliated with established news organizations — contributed money in September and October to the campaigns of President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. Some equate their contributions to free speech or cite the right to act on personal political views during an increasingly tight election’s most critical stage. Others say they’re driven by history, or offer no explanation at all.

How New Yorkers Adjusted to Sudden Smartphone Withdrawal

While Hurricane Sandy left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers without electricity or heat, the loss of one utility left some especially bewildered: cellphone service.

“Not having hot water is one thing,” said Kartik Sankar, 29, a technology consultant who lives in the East Village. “But not having a phone? Forget about it.” With only sporadic access to text messaging, Facebook or even landline phone calls, Sankar and others like him in Manhattan’s no-power zone quickly cobbled together more primitive systems for passing along information and arranging when and where to meet, so they could take comfort in each other’s company in the dark. On the scale of hardships suffered in the storm and its aftermath, these were more like minor annoyances. But the experience of being suddenly smartphoneless caused some to realize just how dependent on the technology they had become.

Benton

Search