Group of Net, Media Companies Agree on Copyright Guidelines

As reported by the Wall Street Journal > The companies supporting the principles include CBS Corp., Dailymotion, Microsoft Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox and MySpace units, Viacom Inc., Veoh Networks Inc., and Walt Disney Co. Notably absent is Google Inc., which had been in discussions about possibly joining the group. The guidelines are meant to address copyright-related issues that have flared up as user posting of content -- particularly video -- to the Web has boomed.

The agreed-upon principles include using technology to eliminate copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and blocking any infringing material before it is publicly accessible. Google on Monday unveiled technology it has been testing to automate the identification of copyrighted material on its YouTube video-sharing service. It said the technology cannot yet prevent infringing content from being posted initially, though it can pull flagged content off the site "in a matter of a few minutes."

Google Gives Few Hints About Social Network Plan

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google said “People don’t appreciate how many page views on the Internet are in social networks,” at a two-day gathering of an eclectic mix of Google partners, competitors, social activists and politicians. Social networks, he said, account for an “enormous proportion” of Internet usage, he added. “It is very real. It’s a very real phenomenon.”

Mr. Schmidt did say that over the next year, Google is planning to use information it has about the connections between its users, something techies call the “social graph,” to improve searches and other Google services. He said the company would like to sell advertising for Facebook, a position currently enjoyed by Microsoft. And he highlighted the Google’s existing social network service, Orkut, and its deal to sell ads on behalf of MySpace, the largest social networking site.

Mr. Schmidt’s comments came amid intense debate in the tech world about the value of Facebook, which has reportedly discussed taking an investment from Yahoo, Google, and despite Mr. Ballmer’s qualms Microsoft. There have also been reports that Google will not only use its social graph information for its own services but it will create an system for other companies to use the same data, in other words, to “out-open Facebook.” Mr. Schmidt was closed mouthed about that. Article

Google Book Search gets new look

> Google has put a new detailed face on the Google Book Search home page. The goal is to drive browsing both casual and targeted, the page now features a selection of "shelves" of small covers under such tags as Interesting, Classics, Highly Cited, and Random Subject. They've also added a broader set of category tags on the left-hand side of the page.

The followig in commentary by Michael Cader of PublishersLunch, "While the goal of creating "jumping off points" driven by both algorithms and random selection is an interesting one, for now it mostly demonstrates how hard it is leave things like this entirely up to the computer and seems to make transparent the weaknesses and holes in Book Search." http://books.google.com/