Trust in the Media: International Poll

As part of the We Media 2006 Forum that just ran in London the BBC, Reuters, and the Media Center ran a pol on Trust in Media. They polled the US, Brazil, UK, Germany, Russia, Eygpt, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and South Korea. An interesting choice of countries to make the poll international. Blogs didn’t come out as a trusted source:

Internet blogs are the least trusted news sources across the 10 countries, with one in four (25%) saying they trust them and almost as many (23%) saying they distrust them. Blogs are least trusted in Brazil (where 20% trust them and 45% distrust them) and the US (25% trust vs 38% distrust). Blogs are most trusted in South Korea (38% vs 25%), Indonesia (36% vs 16%), and Egypt (30% vs 15%). Across the 10 countries, one in two felt unable to say whether they trusted blogs or not.

On the most trusted sources internationally:

The most trusted global news brands among those tested include the BBC (with 48% across the 10 countries saying they have a lot or some trust) and CNN (44%). Even though Internet web sites in general do not receive particularly high trust ratings, three Internet portals received the next highest prompted trust ratings across the 10 countries; namely, Google (30%, a lot or some trust), Yahoo (28%), and Microsoft/MSN (27%).

iLoo and other duds

The Wall Street Journal Online has a story by Katherine Meyer, The Best of the Worst (May 3, 2006) about dot-com duds that failed like Microsoft’s iLoo portable toilet with an internet connection. (Yes, it was supposed to have a waterproof keyboard and would be used at UK music festivals.) Other duds include CyberRebate.com, Flooz.com, iSmell, and the CueCat. The last dud mentioned is PointCast which offered a custom browser for push content which I actually tried for a while. This came from Slashdot.

CNET Story Visualizations

CNET News.com has two interesting types of visualization available alongside their stories.

The Big Picture is bubble graph that shows links out from the story you are looking at.

What’s Hot shows the hot stories in coloured boxes where size shows popularity and colour shows how recent the story is.

It’s not clear how they measure “hot”. Is a cool story hot?

Canadian Music Creators Coalition

The National Post has published an opinion piece by Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies about the state of Canadian copyright law. He and othes have formed the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. See A Barenaked guide to music copyright reform. In the opinion Page lists three principles for copyright reform:

  1. First, we believe that suing our fans is destructive and hypocritical. We do not want to sue music fans, and we do not want to distort the law to coerce fans into conforming to a rigid digital market artificially constructed by the major labels.
  2. Second, we believe that the use of digital locks, frequently referred to as technological protection measures, are risky and counterproductive. We do not support using digital locks to increase the labels’ control over the distribution, use and enjoyment of music, nor do we support laws that prohibit circumvention of such technological measures, including Canadian accession to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet Treaties. These treaties are designed to give control to major labels and take choices away from artists and consumers. Laws should protect artists and consumers, not restrictive technologies.
  3. Third, we strongly believe that cultural policy should support actual Canadian artists. We call on the Canadian government to firmly commit to programs that support Canadian music talent. The government should make a long-term commitment to grow support mechanisms such as the Canada Music Fund and FACTOR, invest in music training and education, create limited tax shelters for copyright royalties, protect artists from inequalities in bargaining power and make collecting societies more transparent.

Good to see such a new voice.

Narus: Data-Mining IP

Who creates the software for real-time IP traffic monitoring? Narus is a company named in a Wired story about Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room. The page about NarusInsight says they provide,

CALEA- and ETSI-compliant modules for lawful intercept featuring a robust warrant management system. Capabilities include playback of streaming media (for example, VoIP), rendering of Web pages, examination of e-mails and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols.

The Wired story is about an EFF Class-Action Lawsuit Against AT&T that accuses “the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications.”