Photographers protest against police stop and search

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From the Guardian.

Thousands of photographers have staged a mass protest against the ‘malicious’ use of anti-terrorism laws to stop them taking pictures in public places.

Trafalgar Square in central London was lit up by flash bulbs as part of the demonstration against photographers being unfairly targeted by police after taking photos. They are usually questioned under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows officers to stop and search without the need for ‘suspicion’ within designated areas in the UK.

More than 2,000 professional and amateur photographers took part in the protest organised by the group I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!, many carrying placards bearing its name.

Onlookers were handed stop and search cards by organisers outlining their rights.

Freelance photographer and Guardian contributor Marc Vallee, who helped organise the protest with appeals on Twitter and Facebook, said he was “delighted” by the turnout.

“It’s quite obvious that professional photographers across the country are being searched because they are photographers not because they are suspicious,” he said.

“It’s a common-law right to take pictures in public places and we are here to show that.”

So is this it?

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From VentureBeat.

We’ll know for sure tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the New York Times thinks that old media are seeing the device as a time machine that will enable them to unravel the nightmare of the Web:

With the widely anticipated introduction of a tablet computer at an event here on Wednesday morning, Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine — a chance to undo mistakes of the past.

Almost all media companies have run aground in the Internet Age as they gave away their print and video content on the Web and watched paying customers drift away as a result.

People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.

This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Steven P. Jobs.

‘Larry and Sergey’ to offload 10m Google shares

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From The Register.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each plan to sell 5 million shares of their common stock in the company over the next five years.

According to an SEC filing, this is part of their respective “long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity.”

Larry and Sergey – as the filing actually refers to them – currently hold 57.7 million shares of Class B Google common stock. That represents roughly 59 per cent of the voting power of the company’s outstanding capital stock.

After selling 10 million shares, their voting power would drop to 49 per cent. But when you toss in the stock held by CEO Eric Schmidt, the Google holy trinity – who have vowed to work together until 2024 – will still control the majority of the company's voting shares.

I like that phrase “long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity”. Wonder if it’d work with my bank manager. He might, of course, ask what “assets” I possessed that might require “diversification”.

Just checked the Google share price. It’s currently $550.01. That makes 5 million shares worth, now,… let me see, $2.75 billion.

Google and China: from drama to crisis in one easy step

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This morning’s Observer column.

ONE USEFUL spin-off from the developing story of Google’s difficulties with the Chinese communist regime is that it may finally spur the west to discard the rose-tinted spectacles through which it has chosen to view China in the past decade – and not before time.

The west’s response to China’s rapid industrialisation was determined by a recipe blending three parts greed with one part naivety. The greed was understandable: the stupendous rate of Chinese economic growth triggered a desperate desire for a slice of the action. Everywhere, whether in companies or universities, one found a palpable determination to “get into China”. In the political world, we saw western governments scramble to out-do one another in fawning upon visiting Chinese potentates.

Still, greed is part of human nature; we have to make a living, and often behave reprehensibly while doing so. What was less forgivable about the west’s approach was the implicit naivety. It was a product of wishful thinking brought about by market triumphalism, the belief that, in the end, it is impossible to have a capitalist economy without also having liberal political institutions…

FOOTNOTES:

  • Full text of Hilary Clinton’s speech on Internet Freedom is here. And Clay Shirky has done a useful abridged version.
  • Microsoft, of course, has no problems with Chinese censorship. Indeed Steve Ballmer thinks the Google view is nuts, at least according to this report:

    At a conference in Houston on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke critically of Google’s recent decision to stop censoring its search results in China. Paraphrasing some of Ballmer’s statements, Forbes says Ballmer called it an “irrational business decision” on Google’s part.

    Ballmer suggested that Google’s decision to no longer filter out internet searches objectionable to the Chinese government was an irrational business decision. After all, Ballmer said, the U.S. imports oil from Saudi Arabia despite the censorship that goes on in that country.

    “The U.S. is the most extreme when it comes to free speech,” said Ballmer, noting however that even the U.S. bans child pornography, while France bans internet access to Nazi imagery.

    Forbes says Ballmer made the statements during the Q&A session after a speech to oil company executives. Ballmer also said that Bing will comply with requests to censor its search results “if the Chinese government gives us proper legal notice.”

  • Perry Anderson has a terrific piece about Sinomania in the current issue of the London Review of Books.

    • The National Security State

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    When I opened this morning’s Guardian I had a fleeting thought that it must be April 1st. But it isn’t. This crazed stampede into ubiquitous surveillance is really scary. The big question now is whether a Tory administration would pull back from this precipice. I’m not holding my breath.

    And the lead contractor, BAE Systems, is the company that Tony Blair decided should not be prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office on ‘national security’ grounds.

    The Google-China fracas gets serious

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    On Thursday, Hilary Clinton made an extraordinary speech in Washington about Internet freedom in which she set out the “freedom to connect” as a new human right. This really got under the skin of the Beijing regime, as GMSV reports.

    This morning, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu basically told the U.S. to butt out. “Regarding comments that contradict facts and harm China-U.S. relations, we are firmly opposed,” he said. “We urge the U.S. side to respect facts and stop using the so-called freedom of the Internet to make unjustified accusations against China. … The Chinese Internet is open and China is the country witnessing the most active development of the Internet.”

    The real zingers came in an editorial in the Global Times, an English-language newspaper published by the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, which accused the U.S. of practicing “information imperialism.” “The hard fact that Clinton has failed to highlight in her speech is that bulk of the information flowing from the U.S. and other Western countries is loaded with aggressive rhetoric against those countries that do not follow their lead. … Countries disadvantaged by the unequal and undemocratic information flow have to protect their national interest, and take steps toward this,” the paper said. “Unlike advanced Western countries, Chinese society is still vulnerable to the effect of multifarious information flowing in, especially when it is for creating disorder. Western countries have long indoctrinated non-Western nations on the issue of freedom of speech. It is an aggressive political and diplomatic strategy, rather than a desire for moral values, that has led them to do so.”

    As I say, Clinton’s speech is really interesting, and worth reading in full. But, as the old saying goes, fine words butter no parsnips. And as I was reading it I was wondering what the US proposes to do about its technology companies (step up Cisco, for example) which sell China the kit it needs to implement its censorship of the Net.

    What we will lose — and gain

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    Thoughtful essay by Terry McDermott in the Columbia Journalism Review.

    The point is that newspapers have been killing themselves slowly for a long time. So long as the monopoly profits rolled in, the death by a thousand cuts wasn’t paid any attention. When the Internet arrived to eliminate the advertising monopolies, the newspapers already had a foot in the grave.

    That said, it wouldn’t hurt the Web triumphalists to acknowledge that there is something more than jobs being lost in the process of newspapers dying. Whether you liked the way they did it or not, monopoly newspapers often performed civic functions.

    The real power of a big paper is most apparent in a couple of specific circumstances. The first is when something really big happens, usually a disaster, causing huge portions of the paper’s resources to be thrown at the story. This is a sort of a reserve power, there when you need it but invisible when you don’t. I often was assigned to rewrite on these stories. It was a frustrating, exhilarating job. I could sit at my desk for the whole day, watching the inanity of cable news and waiting for reporters in the field to file. Then, as deadline for the day’s first edition approached, I would suddenly be overwhelmed with more great reporting than I could possibly use. Reporters I’d never heard of were giving me incredible stuff.

    The second circumstance is when breathtaking stories you knew nothing about, but that people had been working on for months or years, suddenly appear in the paper. The depth of the newspaper’s staff allows for this relative luxury.

    These two quite different kinds of reporting power are both threatened as newspapers decline. Because of their irregular, episodic nature, readers will not necessarily know they are gone, but their absence will make a community’s news culture considerably poorer.

    Business, Chinese style?

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    In a recent post I mentioned Mark Anderson’s criticisms of China which were posted on his Bright Fire blog.

    Here’s an update:

    I want to thank all of our posters on “What is China?” for their postings. I will note that our servers were attacked and brought down for a few minutes today, Friday, and that our tech team had the servers back up and running within minutes. Why do I mention this? Yesterday, an LA law firm which had filed a $2.2B suit against China for stealing the IP of a California company also found their servers attacked, just a day or so after the suit was filed.

    Is this how we do business now?

    I think it is very important, and enlightening for the rest of the world, that those who suffer cyber attacks after crticizing China, should go public IMMEDIATELY.

    Like Google, and like SNS, the effect of this should be obvious: depriving China of the cyberattack tool it has recently deployed. Google claims that 34 other corporations were also hacked.

    OK, CEOs of these corporations, it is time for you to step forward. We already have a human rights student from Stanford willing to stand up and say NO. Are you CEOs more afraid than she is?

    The future according to Deloitte

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    The Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice at Deloitte has announced its predictions for the media sector in 2010. Main headings are:

    Video-on-demand takes off – but not how you expect
    In 2010, the greatest revenue growth in this space will come from a surprising source: the vending machine. Although the web has already become the most efficient means of distributing short-form content, the volume of DVDs distributed via vending machine is expected to double in 2010.

    Linear TV survives a bit longer
    Though 2010 has been viewed as the beginning of the end for the linear schedule, the gap between linear and non-linear usage will remain substantial. Despite the growing range of non-linear options, most content will continue to be consumed according to broadcasters’ programming schedules, with over 90 per cent of television and 80 per cent of audio, respectively, being consumed in this manner.

    TV and the web belong together, but not necessarily on the same screen
    Melding web content with television programmes should intensify as concurrent use of the web and TV takes off in 2010. But don’t expect a surge in internet-enabled television sales or an explosion in the use of television widgets; converged web and television consumption is likely to be more pragmatic.

    Publishing fights back: pay walls and micropayments
    In 2010, the newspaper and magazine industry will continue to threaten to charge readers for online content, however that talk is unlikely to be matched by action. Publishers rumoured to be thinking about pay walls may ultimately decide against it, or are choosing hybrid models where most content is free, while charging only for a limited quantity of premium content. Publishers who use pay walls need to maintain and publicise the premium nature of their content. Excessive cost-cutting could devalue the brand. Online readers might be willing to become micropayment customers, but only if the content is good enough and worth the effort. For some, acquiring an article for 30 cents online may not justify the time taken to enter credit card details. Also, the value of the micropayment strategy to the content provider requires volume: one micropayment per customer every two weeks might result in transaction costs exceeding gross margins