IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 2 December
02-12-2009
by Sylvia Leatham
Google to let publishers restrict content | Apple settles Psystar suit
The Irish Times reports that Irish people were preoccupied with the threat of swine flu and the death of celebrities in 2009, according to search queries on Google News. Read more on this story on ENN.
The paper also says that the Commercial Court has cleared the way for Vodafone to seek damages from a former financial executive and others over allegedly conspiring to defraud the company of more than EUR2.3 million. Vodafone claims that Niall Barron, formerly head of Vodafone's corporate financial services division, enriched himself by buying services on behalf of the company which were either never provided or inadequately provided over a five-year period. The mobile operator claimed Barron ordered services, for which invoices were not provided, on behalf of a company called Tel-Q Ltd, of which he is the owner and which is registered in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.
The Irish Independent says that veteran presenter Gay Byrne helped to launch an online book club at Synge Street primary school in Dublin on Tuesday. The FIS book club is an online site for schools where children post their own book reviews. Ciaran McCormack, who heads up the not-for-profit project, said 180 schools were now participating with 700 book reviews online. The idea is to get pupils to read more by encouraging them to review books on a webcam before they are posted online and critiqued by their peers. A series of security measures are in place to ensure the site is safe for children.
According to the Financial Times, UK accountancy software group Sage has said growth for 2010 is likely to remain "muted" after a financial year that saw growth in its main software and related services fall 16 percent. The group said it had added 245,000 new customers, mainly buying desktop licences, during the year, down from 304,000 a year ago. This resulted in an overall decline in organic revenue for the year of 5 percent. Paul Walker, chief executive, said the performance was "not bad" considering the environment and said conditions for Sage's SME customers had stabilised. "But at this stage it's still too early to call a recovery," he said.
The paper also reports that a US newspaper industry study has found that the average American newspaper story was being copied 4.4 times in full or in part by unauthorised websites. The Fair Syndication Consortium, a group of more than 1,500 newspaper publishers, conducted a month-long study of how news spread across the internet. The study of 101,000 articles published by 157 newspapers found that more than 75,000 sites reused 112,000 almost exact copies without authorisation, and a further 520,000 articles in part. The problem was most serious for large national publishers, with 15 unauthorised reuses on average.
Meanwhile, in related news, the Wall Street Journal reports that Google is to allow publishers to set a daily limit on the number of articles readers can view for free through its search engine. The change, which will let publishers limit readers to five free articles per day, comes as news executives claim Google is pocketing advertising profits on the back of their free content. Critics says that aggregators such as Google News generate advertising revenue without compensating the news providers.
The paper also reports that Apple has partially settled a copyright lawsuit with Psystar, a maker of clone computers that come with Apple's Macintosh operating system software. Psystar will pay undisclosed damages to Apple, according to papers filed in the case. In return, Apple will dismiss all its trademark, trade dress and state law claims.
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