From the left-hand-doesn’t-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing department, CBS appears to have infringed its own copyrighted works:
A CBS reporter embedded a video of one of their own pieces of content onto a CBS-owned web property. Only to have it soon yanked down by lawyers (or lawyer-bots – AKA auto-DMCA patrol).
Click on over to the original piece on The Future Buzz to see the screenshot, which is pretty hysterical.
It looks like we are headed toward more clarity on the fair use front: Righthaven is appealing one of its fair use losses to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:
[U.S. District Judge] Hicks found the online posting by [defendant Michael] Nelson of the first eight sentences of a 30-sentence [Las Vegas] Review-Journal story didn’t amount to copyright infringement as it was protected by the “fair use” doctrine .
This ruling caused Righthaven to alter its litigation strategy to limit its lawsuits to entire stories, photos and graphics — rather than partial stories — that were reproduced without authorization.
This could get interesting. The 9th Circuit is extremely pro-content industry, perhaps unsurprising given that Hollywood is located within its jurisdiction. At least a ruling will provide additional clarity going forward.
Chicago has often been held up as an example of a Midwestern/Rust Belt city that managed to thrive in the 1990s and actually gain population. But new Census numbers show that the 2000s weren’t as kind to Chicago as the city’s population fell about 200,000. Here are a few of the key numbers and thoughts from the front-page article in the Chicago Tribune.
1. One of the key conclusions is that suburbanization continued during this past decade:
“I think these data from here and elsewhere in the country reflect that the United States has become a suburban nation,” said Scott W. Allard, a University of Chicago associate professor of social service administration.
This quote seems somewhat silly to me: the United States has been a suburban nation for decades now. It is not just a feature of the 2000s or the 1990s; a larger number of Americans have lived in suburbs (compared to cities or rural areas) for several decades.
2. The population growth of Chicago in the 1990s was helped by Latino immigration:
In the 2000 census, Latino immigration fueled a modest 4 percent population increase in Chicago, marking the city’s first decade of growth since the 1940s.
This time around Chicago’s Latino population was up just a little more than 3 percent. The white population was down a bit, while black numbers dropped nearly 17 percent.
Latinos and Asians accounted for the metropolitan area’s biggest population increases during the 2000s. In both cases, the biggest gains for those groups were in collar counties, not in the city or suburban Cook County.
So in the 2000s, the Latino population still increased but the Black population, in particular, declined in Chicago.
3. Minorities are living in places throughout the Chicago area:
“The biggest (change) is finding more minority people in different places in the metropolitan area where you didn’t used to find them,” said Jim Lewis, a demographer and senior program officer at Chicago Community Trust. “That and the loss of black population in the region and the state.”
The census information isn’t yet complete enough to track where blacks who left the city went, Lewis said. The figures indicate some have moved to suburbs, but a slight decline statewide suggests some African-Americans have been moving out of the region entirely, Lewis said.
This is also not surprising. This is a growing trend throughout the United States in recent decades: minorities and new immigrants are moving to the suburbs in increasing numbers.
4. The whole Chicago region did grow but the numbers were down compared to 1990s growth:
Carried by the collar counties, the population of the six-county Chicago region grew almost 3 percent during the decade, to 8.3 million. That’s down significantly from the region’s 11 percent growth in the 2000 census.
5. DuPage County is no longer a hotbed of growth as it was from 1950-1990. This likely due to the fact that there is little open land remaining for new subdivisions. The growth has moved on to locations further out from the city:
DuPage County, long the region’s epitome of booming suburbia, barely grew at all. The county lost about 45,000 white residents, which was offset by more African-American and Asian residents.
“You could say that Kane County is the DuPage County of yesterday,” said Rob Paral, a Chicago demographer. “The things we’re saying about Kane County today is what we said about DuPage County 20 years ago.”…
For the second decade, Aurora and Joliet experienced dramatic growth. Aurora (197,899) passed Rockford (152,871) to become the state’s second-biggest town, while Joliet moved up three places to No. 4, with 147,433 residents, nearly 40 percent more than in 2000.
So now we should sit back and wait to hear how various people, including politicians, talk about this new data. Overall, it mirrors a lot of national trends: people, including minorities and immigrants, continuing to move to the suburbs. This has some important implications: Illinois is losing a US House seat and Chicago could lose some status. What are the new figures for Houston, the city that trailed Chicago in the rankings for the largest US cities? Does this mean Chicago is in trouble? Will Chicago enact a plan to draw people back to the city in the next decade?
Earning a PhD gives one the title of “Doctor.” When using this title, one occasionally has to differentiate between academic doctor and medical doctor. But one sociologist is both an academic doctor and a “love doctor”:
Terri Orbuch, a University of Michigan research scientist, studies romance, marriage, divorce and relationship patterns. She gets her “doctor” title because of her sociology Ph.D. and her work at U of M’s Institute for Social Research and Oakland University.
Which title would an academic prefer more: doctor or “love doctor”? It looks like the “love doctor” title doesn’t hurt as Orbuch was quoted in a New York Times story about love a few days before Valentine’s Day.
Digging a little further into this nickname, one can find that Orbuch maintains a blog for Psychology Today. According to the brief profile at the top of the blog, “Dr. Orbuch also is known as “The Love Doctor®” on radio, TV and in magazines/newspapers across the country.” And a profile from her own website says, “One of Michigan’s most trusted relationship experts, Dr. Terri Orbuch has published over 40 articles; been quoted in such national publications as USA Today, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Reader’s Digest; and authored five books.” I would be curious to know how one goes from studying relationships for years to hosting a local show in Detroit and advising people about relationships.
Are there other areas where someone can become a “doctor”? How about those Dr. Pepper commercials where all sorts of celebrities claim to be doctors? I also vaguely remember Frasier Crane claiming to a be a love doctor…
I’ve made the point here before that the music industry inexplicably declines perfectly good revenue sources simply because they are “less” than what they are expecting. At the risk of Monday-morning-quarterbacking their business model, here’s more proof from north of the border, courtesy of Michael Geist:
Pandora, the popular U.S. online music service filed for an initial public offering last week, provided new insight into hugely popular company that spends millions of dollars in copyright royalties. Pandora users listened to a billion hours of music in the last three months of 2010. Given U.S. laws, the Pandora prospectus notes that it paid for the privilege of having its users do so, with the company spending just over half of its revenue on copyright fees – $45 million in the first nine months of 2010.
The numbers are striking since it points to a growing source of revenue that is largely being missed in Canada. Millions of dollars are now generated from online streaming royalties in the U.S., yet many companies are avoiding the Canadian market. The reason, as Pandora explained last year, are the royalty demands of the major record labels. As Tim Westergren stated last fall, “as long as rights societies take this approach, they will prevent Pandora from launching to Canadian users.” While CRIA tried to claim that the decision to avoid the market was a function of Canadian copyright law, Pandora indicated that it is the fee demands, not the laws that are the stumbling block. With millions now being paid for streaming music in the U.S., it is notable that Canadian interests would seemingly prefer to receive nothing rather than the millions that could potentially be on the table.
Talk about turning lemons into lemonade. A Canadian-based copywriting firm is attempting to parlay a very expensive mistake into favorable publicity:
“Like many other creative types in the web industry, our copywriters were not clear on image copyright laws, and we were taught an expensive lesson,” said Rick Sloboda, Senior Web Copywriter at Webcopyplus, which provides designers and businesses optimized web content. “We’re sharing our story, so others can learn from our experience and avoid the same mistake.”
In May, 2010, with the assumption Web images without copyright notices were “public domain” and free to use, a Webcopyplus copywriter used Google images to find an unmarked 400 x 300 pixel scenic photo to complement an article for a tourism client’s blog.
Webcopyplus has posted additional details on their blog, as well as some resources for obtaining stock photography in a way that won’t get one sued (including Creative Commons photos available via Flickr).
It has been well-documented that the housing crisis has had a strong effect on places like Las Vegas and much of Florida. But this report suggests the drop in housing prices has spread to places once thought to be immune to these drops, such as Seattle:
Now, though the overall economy seems to be mending, housing remains stubbornly weak. That presents a vexing problem for the Obama administration, which has introduced several initiatives intended to help homeowners, with mixed success.
CoreLogic, a data firm, said last week that American home prices fell 5.5 percent in 2010, back to the recession low of March 2009. New home sales are scraping along the bottom. Mortgage applications are near a 15-year low, boding ill for the rest of the winter.
It has been a long, painful slide. At the peak, a downturn in real estate in Seattle was nearly unthinkable.
In September 2006, after prices started falling in many parts of the country but were still increasing here, The Seattle Times noted that the last time prices in the city dropped on a quarterly basis was during the severe recession of 1982.
Two local economists were quoted all but guaranteeing that Seattle was immune “if history is any indication.”
A risk index from PMI Mortgage Insurance gave the odds of Seattle prices dropping at a negligible 11 percent.
These days, the mood here is chastened when not downright fatalistic. If a recovery depends on a belief in better times, that seems a long way off. Those who must sell close their eyes and hope for the best.
It doesn’t sound good for sellers in a lot of places.
It would be interesting to know more about why certain cities were thought to be immune. I can think of a few explanations off the top of my head: certain markets didn’t experience a big boom in prices in the 1990s-2000s so there wasn’t much room for prices to drop; certain areas attract jobs and employees so there will be more people always look for housing; and certain didn’t experience building booms so there isn’t a glut of houses or units to be sold. Does one of these explanations fit Seattle?
State Street is a venerated shopping street in Chicago. Prior to the construction of the retail stores on Michigan Avenue north of the Chicago River, State Street was the home to department stores with familiar names like Marshall Fields and Carson’s. And now there is news that Target is planning to open a store in Carson’s iconic building:
Target will lease 124,000 square feet over two floors, but only 54,000-square feet will be selling space, the company said.
The retailer, known for its cheap chic, has been in talks for more than a year to lease space at the landmark Sullivan Center at State and Madison Streets. Carson’s closed its store there 2007…
The city has poured $24.4 million in tax-increment-financing to help restore the Louis Sullivan building, which also houses offices. Chicago-based developer Joseph Freed & Associates, the building’s owner, has invested another $190 million in the national and Chicago historic landmark in the last decade.
“I applaud Target for bringing this urban store concept to Chicago, as well as the new jobs and economic opportunity this store will create,” Daley said. “Target will be an important addition to State Street, one of Chicago’s most important retail centers, and will be located in one of city’s most architecturally significant buildings.”
The State Street store would be in keeping with the discount chain’s recent strategy to push into urban cores with smaller stores. Target recently signed deals to open a 70,000-square-foot store in the heart of Seattle and a 100,000-square foot store in a shuttered Macy’s in downtown Los Angeles. Those stores are slated to open in 2012.
“We look forward to preserving this Chicago treasure and blending in with the building’s aesthetic, said John Griffith, executive vice president, property development at Target. “A hallmark of Target is our flexibility in store design.”
As for Target’s iconic red bull’s eye, the retailer is still working out the details of incorporating its logo while still respecting the building’s historic status.
This announcement comes as both Target and Wal-Mart have announced plans recently to move into more urban markets. A few thoughts about this:
1. It is somewhat ironic that the stores like Carson’s and Macy’s (purchaser of Marshall Field’s) are mainly about sales from suburban malls while stores like Target and Wal-Mart, symbol of big-box suburbia, now want to be part of the city.
2. Is there anyone who is going to complain about Target moving into this iconic building? When Macy’s bought Marshall Field’s several years ago and moved into the flagship store on State Street, a lot of Chicago residents were mad that one of their iconic businesses had been replaced. Will there be similar concern about Target or are people just happy that they can get to the trendy Target in the middle of the city? (Imagine if Wal-Mart was planning to move into this location.)
3. It will be interesting to see how Target blends their image and layout with this historic building.
4. What does this move say about State Street compared to other shopping areas in the city? State Street seems to be an odd mix of suburban stores on a historic street. Couple this move with the ongoing saga of Block 37 and one has to wonder if there is any long-term plan for State Street.
A recent course at the University of South Carolina titled “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame” drew a lot of attention. But it appears that Lady Gaga herself has an interest in the sociology of fame. Here is part of the conversation Lady Gaga had with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes:
“You’ve studied the fame of other people, how they got it, how they kept it and how they lost it,” Cooper remarked.
“The sociology of fame and how to maintain a certain privacy without, feeling like you’re withholding anything from your fans. My philosophy is that if I am open with them about everything, and yet I art direct every moment of my life, I can maintain a sort of privacy in a way. I maintain a certain soulfulness that I have yet to give,” Lady Gaga said.
The pressures of maintaining fame and the deadly price other superstars have paid for it are frequent themes in Lady Gaga’s performances. At the MTV Video Music Awards she shocked the audience by the ending of her song “Paparazzi.” Drenched in blood and hanging above the stage, she resembled a blond icon dying before our eyes.
“That’s what everyone wants to know, right? ‘What’s she gonna look like when she dies? What’s she gonna look like when she’s overdosed?’ on whatever they think I’m overdosing on? Everybody wants to see the decay of the superstar,” Lady Gaga said.
“Do you think people wanna see your decay?” Cooper asked.
“What? Of course they do! They wanna see me fail, they wanna see me fall on stage, they wanna see me vomiting out of a nightclub. I mean, isn’t that the age that we live in? That we wanna see people who have it all lose it all? I mean, it’s dramatic,” she replied.
“And then climb their way back,” Cooper remarked.
“Right. It’s a movie. And yet I just am not like that on my own time. I’m not a vomit-in-the-club kind of girl,” she said.
A few questions come to mind:
1. Would sociologists agree that the cycle that celebrities go through (rise to stardom, decline, comeback attempt) is “the sociology of fame?”
2. Does this mean that Lady Gaga is simply playing a role for her fans and for others? If she is so aware of how the script goes, is she doing anything original or authentic? She suggests she “art direct[s] every moment of [her] life” but also claims she is still able to maintain a private side. A classic front-stage/back-stage Erving Goffman explanation.
2a. If she knows that the decay is coming, will she choose to initiate it herself or at least push in a certain direction to maintain some control over it?
2b. There could be some interesting material in thinking about the entertainment or spectacle that Lady Gaga offers and why this is attractive to people.
3. What did Lady Gaga think of having a sociology class named after her (even though the class was about popular music in general)? Is this when she started thinking about “the sociology of fame”?
American Christian colleges and universities have different structures in place in order to maintain their Christian distinctiveness. Baylor just made a change in their policy for their board:
While a number of Baptist colleges and universities in recent years have loosened or ended ties to state Baptist conventions, the move by Baylor is notable because it is widely considered the flagship university of Southern Baptists. The move came despite opposition from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which last year voted down a similar proposal by Houston Baptist University to permit the election of a minority of non-Baptist trustees there, with church leaders arguing at the time that allowing non-Baptist trustees would dilute the university’s religious identity…
Of Baylor’s 14,900 students, the university states that nearly 5,287 identify as Baptists — making them the largest religious group, but by no means a majority. The next largest groups are Roman Catholic (2,128), nondenominational Christians (2,091), and Methodists (1,156). Most of the other students identify with various Christian denominations, but the college also enrolls 125 Hindu students, 122 Muslim students, 84 Buddhist students, 22 Jewish students and 43 atheists.
Samuel Schuman, who studied Baylor for his 2009 book, Seeing the Light: Religious Colleges in 21st Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press), called the vote by the university’s board both “significant and inevitable.” He explained that “there has been tension for quite a while at Baylor about aspirations to be a national research university and their strict Southern Baptist tradition, and I think it was almost inevitable that something would have to give a bit.”
If we can take Schuman at his word, then this sounds like a common struggle for Christian schools: maintaining distinctiveness while also pursuing education and status. Baylor is not the only school to struggle with this; the University of Notre Dame is an example of a Catholic institution that a decision decades ago to become a major research school while also maintaining its Catholic identity. Juggling these two identities, research school plus Christian school, takes a lot of work on the ground on a campus.
Legally Sociable 