News summary for September 19th by Stefan Saroiu. The first two articles come from WSJ. The last one comes from NYT. 1. "Belgian newspaper wins lawsuit tied to copyright" Summary: ========= Google is facing a 0.5 million euros per day fine if it does not comply with an order to stop publishing content from two Belgian newspapers on Google News. Google routinely publishes a short abstract of news articles on Google News together with a link to the article's full contents. Rant: ===== There is a fundamental tussle of content control on the Internet. This is a short cycle that keeps repeating itself every two years or so. Five years ago, RIAA thought it will be able to stop mp3 file-sharing and it went after Napster. Two years ago, MPAA thought it will be able to stop video file-sharing and it went after Kazaa users, etc... Now, newspapers think they will be able to stop news aggregators. In my opinion, the biggest mistake these companies and associations make is to successfully shutdown their biggest target. Unfortunately, this has shown that it has a "nasty" side-effect: a new system springs up offerring that is much harder to shutdown that offers the same services. Idea: ====== Build a distributed news aggregator. 2. "YouTube Model is Compromise over Copyrights" Summary: ======== YouTube is releasing a program that automatically identifies copyrighted content. In this case, YouTube shares its revenue resulting from ads posted on that webpage with the content's owner. Warner Music has already signed up for this service. Other content owners continue to threaten YouTube with copyright laws. Again, this article revolves around the who-controls-the-content issue. Observation: ============ This will make it easier for a private person to ask for a share of revenue from YouTube. (i.e., post popular clips on YouTube to make money). This means that the next hard problem YouTube will have to solve is click-fraud. Google should sell its click-fraud algorithms as a service to other Websites. Idea: ===== Build a distributed YouTube. 3. "Enlisting Science's Lessons to Entice More Shoppers to Spend More" Summary: ======== This is the latest article on the science of "selling". The article points out the results of a study of customers' behavior in a large store. - there is a correlation between the time customers spend in the store and the width of the aisles. Frequent "butt brushes" make customers leave the store sooner. - Most customers turn right when the enter a store. ???!!! - Shoppers do not notice anything for the first few feet after entrance. Don't place merchandise in this area. Implication: ============= The importance of dynamic shopping outlets is growing. Many of these rules and findings have their correspondent in virtual world, on the Web. Amazon.com and Google are spending a much effort in measuring the behavior of their customers as a result of their websites' layout changing. Idea: ====== Build a system that dynamically tailor the presentation of an e-commerce webpage based on customers' behavior.