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Will the next generation read news reports? It looks like it. Some 62% of US internet users aged 12 to 17 are going online for news and political information or find out about current events, said a study conducted by the Pew Research Center published yesterday. During special events such as general elections news consumption rose to 77%.

"A federal court policy-making body is belatedly entering the internet age by proposing that judges clearly inform jurors they must not electronically discuss cases they are hearing."

Fending criticisms from multiple parties, Google once again made the case for digitizing millions of orphaned books before the U.S. District Court Southern District Court of New York, in a fairness hearing held Thursday. A total of 27 different parties requested to speak before the court. Five were in favor, including Sony, the National Federation of the Blind and the Center for Democracy and Technology. The rest -- 22 in total -- opposed the settlement, including Amazon, Microsoft, the Open Book Alliance, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Those in favor praised the idea of rendering hard-to-find books in electronic form, because they could be accessible to a much larger group of readers, and not be lost to the ages. The objectors, however, voiced strong concerns that the settlement case preempts U.S. copyright law altogether. Others voiced privacy and antitrust concerns.

Current fair use law is hazy by design; instead of laying out specific use cases, the law relies on the famous "four factors" about the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount borrowed, and the effect on the value of the original work. This can be maddening in many situations, because it is impossible to know in advance if a particular use qualifies. On the other hand, it gives a fair use incredible flexibility to adapt to new circumstances like the advent of the VCR. But in the paragraph that comes just before the four factors, Congress did see fit to lay down a nonexclusive list of fair uses: "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research." Is it time for more list items? The new Copyright Reform Act, proposed by Public Knowledge, would make a deceptively simple change to bring fair use into the 21st century-add seven words to this list. The CRA is a new project from Public Knowledge, with much of the heavy lifting being done by the Cyberlaw Clinic at Stanford and the Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC-Berkeley. While Berkeley's noted copyright scholar Pam Samuelson works up a new "model statute" for copyright law in the digital age, Public Knowledge hopes to make smaller interim fixes to copyright law that won't require the same dramatic reworking.

In this age, we are constantly being flooded information, so we simply don't have time to commit to reading newspapers. This piece focuses on the future of newspapers, considering time as the ultimate enemy, rather than the Internet or other media outlets. Nice angle.

Blog post about a media center that may forever change the way we consume media. "Boxee is a media center for the age of broadband and social networking. It doesn't just play media stored on your computer; it indexes hundreds (possibly thousands) of streaming videos from, amongst others: ABC, NBC, Comedy Central, and (thanks to a little browser-based trickery) Hulu. It's also a platform for widgets and apps that can pull in additional content from services like Pandora, Netflix, and MLB.TV. Plus, like any piece of software worth its digital weight in bytes, Boxee integrates with social networks like Twitter and Facebook for sharing what your watching with others."

If twitter is a new way to spread news in this digital age, how should we measure impact? This article poses some interesting ideas.

A decade-old legal battle comes to an end as 17 major networks and production studios, along with seven talent agencies, agree to pay $70 million to thousands of writers.

Ever bought something online from a reputable dealer and then unexpectedly find yourself hit with fees, account charges and bills for programs you never knew you'd signed up for?

The Wall Street Journal will introduce a New York metro section in April, which will compete with the New York Times for advertising dollars.

Article discussing the complexities of content produced on the web, and how quality and standards have changed in order to adapt to the internet marketplace.

AOL is developing a website that compiles user-generated news stories on important, hot-button issues like "The Best Twitter Backgrounds" and "The Top 6 Things Snuck into Space."

Explores the economic angle of google's potential withdraw from China, and offers a competing argument that the firm's threats to leave may in fact be a face saving measure driven by the bottom line.

The Apple iPad doesn't support Adobe Flash, which means that many online advertisements won't reach people using the Apple iPad. Seems like the iPad will really change the advertising game, and not sure how it will unfold. I also wonder if Apple will incorporate adobe flash in the next version.

This article talks about how local news programming shouldn't blame Jay Leno for losing viewers, but instead to look at their programming and realize that local news has "become a faceless commodity."

Part of a large-scale set of projects at USC Annenberg School/Knight Digital Media Center, looking at current conditions and possible future business models for newspapers.

Interesting assertion that loss of Network prestige is part of the reason that TBS is part of the NCAA basketball deal.