THING 3

As I was searching, adding, and reading articles from RSS feeds, I came across this article. Now that dozens of enticing articles from science, media reform, nature, and news will be downloaded every day, I will have even less time for home maintenance.


Photo source: mvdg.wordpress.com
RSS feeds will expose me to much more news than I take time for on a daily basis, but how much exposure do I really want? I have a stack of unread magazines going back years, even though I recycle regularly. I predict Google Reader will become another chore to keep up with. Good thing I'm retired.

Here is my take on one finding:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/03/google.ruling

Happy Independence Day. Today we are even less independent than at anytime in the last eight years, now that U.S. district judge Louis Stanton has ruled all records of all videos watched on YouTube must be turned over to Viacom. Web addresses, usernames, and IP addresses of computers comprise what will be turned over unless this decision--ostensibly to prevent copyright infringement but with far-reaching ramifications in terms of loss of privacy--is overturned.

Interesting to me that this decision comes so soon before the election. While there is no good time for such a flagrant violation of privacy, it may cause the grassroots activist who wants to get the news out to large numbers of people quickly to hesitate. Especially if they have been paying attention to how our administration has abbrogated the rights of citizens in other ways.

Let's say that such an activist posts a video clip of a candidate saying something outrageous with the intent to expose the candidate's true beliefs, but the clip came from a copyrighted source--let's say a major network owned by Rupert Murdock. Who posts and watches that video will be part of data to be turned over. Who is to say that only that data pertaining to copyright infringement will be used and that the rest won't be released to someone with a vendetta or at least an agenda?

Thankfully, I am enrolled in 23 Things on a Stick and will soon understand better how to reach people to create a stampede of action against this ruling.

Update 7/6: I have yet to check Google Reader for my RSS feeds. If quantum physics extensions into theories of time have any validity, however, I may ultimately have all the time in the world to read them.