Group items tagged

Twitter follows Google in issuing a report on governments requests for user account information.

"If copying is the sincerest form of flattery, then journals are publishing a lot of amazingly flattering science. Of course to most of us, the authors of such reports would best be labeled plagiarists - and warrant censure, not praise."

JAMA tries to hush up a scientist whistle-blower reporting on a conflict of interest involving an investigator and a sponsoring company.

TechCrunch is reporting that Flipper is a visual version of Google News, enabling people to see images of publications . . .

This is all just speculation at this point, but maybe Google Flipper will mend the relationship that Google has had with some newspaper publishers. We'll see . . .

Murdoch's News of the World pays out $1.6 million in out-of-court settlements to silence people whose phones and personal information was hacked by reporters.

Libyans are celebrating the freedom to read whatever they want in a post-Gaddafi world. Last week, bagpipers and VIPs congregated in the library of the Italianate Royal Palace for a ceremony marking the unbanning of books, the Toronto Star reported.

In what could be a boon to competitors Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Borders, the book chain, may close its doors for good this week. The Wall Street Journal reports that a bankruptcy auction is scheduled for the chain on Tuesday after the deadline for bids on the chain passed Sunday. Unless a buyer emerges, Borders will liquidate its assets and close its 399 stores. The chain also employs about 11,000 people

By Rachel Kaufman on July 21, 2011 10:20 AM New York Times Company CEO Janet Robinson said today in the company's earnings report she is "pleased" with how the New York Times' paywall has been working with consumers, and says the paywall will have a significant effect on the company's finances in the second half of the year.

Government interference with journalism is a problem, but how do you address it in countries with different forms of government and views on freedom?

Publishers fail again at basic fact-checking.  The assumption must be that the reading public doesn't care about the truth when something is called a memoir.

A federal judge ruled in favor of a defendant who reposted an entire article in a copyright case on Monday, Wired reports. The lawsuit was brought by Righthaven, a Las Vegas-based "copyright litigation factory," according to Wired, that has sued more than 200 websites, bloggers, and commenters for copyright infringement. This particular lawsuit targeted Wayne Hoehn, who posted an entire editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its headline, "Public Employee Pensions: We Can't Afford Them" on a website medjacksports.com.

A heavily corrected unfinished draft of an early Jane Austen manuscript sold at auction at Sotheby's in London on Thursday for almost 1 million pounds ($1.6 million), three times the estimated presale price, The Associated Press reported. The draft of "The Watsons" went to an unidentified buyer; Sotheby's said it is the only major manuscript by Austen still in private hands.