Of Wild West business models and pirates financed by far-right politicians

In an interesting CNetNews.com article, Jim Brock points out that “[d]espite its rapid growth, the online-content economy still lacks attributes that all successful economies have: transparency and accountability.”  Right now, says Brock, “[w]e’re in the Wild West stage of the content economy”, which is problematic because “[m]edia companies cannot compete when they must bear all costs of production while others profit from it.”

In an article entitled “Real ID Revolt,” WSJ.com reports that “[s]o far, seven states have enacted statutes or resolutions opposing the implementation of Real ID, and Oklahoma is on the verge of becoming the eighth.”

According to the Register, “[t]he Brussels vote on capping mobile phone roaming charges has been postponed until the next plenary session, scheduled for 21 to 24 May.”

In a different article, the Register reports that “[a] spokesman for the Swedish torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, has admitted on Swedish tv that their servers and broadband bandwidth were financed by Carl Lundström, one of the alleged sponsors of Swedish far-right political party Sweden Democrats.”  In more troubling news for the operators of Pirate Bay, “a Swedish prosecutor last week announced that he intends to press charges against the individuals behind the file-sharing site for violating copyright.”

Finally, the Mercury News writes that “[t]he latest version of Microsoft’s free Web-based e-mail is now widely available to the public in 36 languages.”