The Daily Loper – August 1, 2008

To Live Outside The Law You Must Be Honest Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Long-Distance Plans for Everwood – Season 2
  Rox will be so happy. But, naturally, she’ll be happier if they had plans to release Seasons 3 & 4, as well.
• Is Google A Content Company? Of Course It Is. So What Should Publishers Do?
  Jason Calacanis tells the emperor it’s naked. Google denies it’s a content company, Calcanis says "uh uh, you’re publishing, you’re distributing, you’re a content company."
• FCC rules Comcast violated Internet access policy
  Wow. Un-fuck the FCC!
• Asda backtracks on demanding editorial space in mags
  Or, nevermind.
• Music lovers annoyed by missing lyrics
  Lordy, here’s a problem with an obvious solution.
• The true cost of free music downloading
  Um, sort of. An anti-free rant that makes the same old point about "artists should get paid", but misses the most critical part of this discussion. The biggest contributor to the free download culture has been the music industry’s refusal to accept the future and give the fans what they want (which, by the way, isn’t necessarily "free").
• Video websites ‘must vet content’
  Yes, we must force others to do our parenting for us.
• Washington Post Editors, Seeking Web Advice, Visit the Rival New York Times
  Um, wow. 2008 and the Washington Post is thinking on combining print and digital operations.
• How NBC News Will Get Around China’s Internet Censorship
  Yes, nothing like broadcasting your secret evil master plan to the entire universe…before you’ve had a chance to fully execute!
• Another pitch for the release of "Let It Be" on DVD
  Sigh. Not The Replacements, but some other band’s "Let it Be" movie. Apparently, the reasons that it isn’t on DVD (we still remember catching it, once, on HBO, in the late 1970s) are nearly as confusing and convoluted as the sessions themselves were. As always, it’s easiest to blame Yoko.
• Concert Review: The Hold Steady
  We were there. It was awesome.
• ‘Scrabulous’ gets a nip-tuck, returns as ‘Wordscraper"
  Scrabulous returns in a new form that should neutralize Hasbro’s copyright claims. Meanwhile, the official Scrabble Facebook App is experiencing technical difficulties.
• Dash’s amazing new GPS gizmo guides you around traffic
  Nice. A combo of GPS, internet and crowd sourcing. Please make one for the iPhone, with street level data for, say, Mid-town Los Angeles.
• Print Book Reviews Shrink While Online Versions Grow
  The official transcript from Kassia’s recent NewsHour appearance. For those about to bloviate, we salute you!
• Rumor: Nokia working on integrating Zune Marketplace
  Uh yeah, and the Motorola Rockr had iTunes support. Look how well that worked out. The real story here is that Microsoft seems to hammering one last stake into the hearts of their PlaysForSure partners.
• Sam Zell’s Deal from Hell
  Yep. Yep. Yep.
• LG Blu-ray box to get streaming video from Netflix
  Oooh, this is the type of thing that might just persuade us to make the Blu-ray jump.
• Scrabulous goes for bonus points, relaunches as Wordscraper
  Man, this is almost like the Federer-Nadal of IP disputes.