According to Reuters, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said on Tuesday that “
The International Herald Tribune writes that “Youku.com, which is trying to position itself as China’s YouTube, foresees a possible shakeout among video-sharing Web sites after the central government’s latest clampdown on what it deems unsavory Internet content. In a bid to curb pornography and politically sensitive online subjects, the authorities said late last month that only state-owned companies may apply for licenses to share videos and audio online. While this may help the sector in the long term, some of the scores of smaller video-sharing concerns trying to gain a following in the China’s Internet arena may be forced out of the market, said Victor Koo, Youku’s chief executive, who had been president of Sohu.com, a major Web portal in China. ‘I’m quite sure of a shakeout,’ Koo said in an interview Wednesday. ‘There are an increasing amount of barriers in the market.’ He added that the rules ‘will become another barrier that will make it more difficult for smaller players to survive in the market.’”
In a different article, the International Herald Tribune reveals that “[i]n a move that could profoundly reshape the media landscape in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday proposed banning commercials from public television and making up for some of the lost revenue with a first-of-its-kind tax on the Internet and mobile phones. A government tax on Internet connections would be virtually without precedent and could be politically controversial, given that public policy experts say that Internet access drives a country’s economic growth and productivity. […] Analysts point out that the Internet and mobile phones are relatively new and still-developing economic and communications tools, while traditional television and other mass media are drawing fewer and fewer viewers. ‘This could be seen as drawing on new technology to fund old technology,’ said Taylor Reynolds, economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris.”
InfoWorld reports that “[t]he One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday. ‘We are working with them very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that’s up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it’s very, very successful. We’re working very hard to do both,’ said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC. It’s a brand-new development for the XO laptops, as the low-cost notebooks are known, and came about because of Microsoft’s friendlier attitude toward open source software. Microsoft has embraced the open source community over the past few years in a very different way than before, Negroponte said. ‘And that really helps, because it’s become a little bit less religious than it was a few years ago and that’s really good. In the end, I think, the more people that have software and hardware out there, the better.’”
The Financial Times today has a worthwhile article by FT associate editor and chief economic commentator Martin Wolf in which Wolf points out that “the health of the global economy demands the survival of a peaceful, co-operative and open world. Yet friction seems likely to grow over access to markets and raw materials, particularly energy. Whether the present financial crisis proves a blip or the end of an era depends, above all, on whether openness survives the slowdown. That is the big challenge.”