The International Herald Tribune reports that “a few prominent figures in high technology are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.
According to the Financial Times, “last week’s announcement by Apple and EMI that the UK record company will start selling its catalogue without copyright protection on iTunes, the digital music retailer, has split the industry in two”, with “some music executives [worrying] that raising prices could stifle the digital download market which still only accounts for less than 12 per cent of the whole music market.”
In an interesting article on CNetNews.com entitled “Why Microsoft is under assault from all corners”, attorney Lars Liebeler writes that “[a]t first glance, the FSF and the Commission attacks on Microsoft appear to be unrelated. But the common thread is this: the attacks are based on a lack of faith that consumer demand will lead a market to where consumers want it to be. It is based on a faulty assumption that a company can use its intellectual property to harm competition rather than fuel it.” Liebeler goes on to point out that “[t]his position is directly contrary to a central premise of free-market economics: IP protections will encourage investment and result in a wider breadth and depth of innovation.”
In a different article, CNetNews asks, “Is the ‘Web OS’ just a geek’s dream?”
The International Herald Tribune reports that “the protracted fight over royalty payments by Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, to Qualcomm, a U.S. company that is one of the biggest makers of the computer chips they use, appears likely to extend beyond a deadline of Monday.” However, “executives at both companies said the dispute should have no immediate effect on the companies or the phone industry.”