Slashdot Mirror

Instagram is testing a feature that would allow it to share your location data with Facebook, regardless of whether you're using the app or not. Researcher Jane Manchun Wong says the option, which is being tested as a setting you have to opt-in to, allows Facebook products to "build and use a history of precise locations" which the company says "helps you explore what's around you, get more relevant ads and helps improve Facebook." The Verge reports: In a statement to TechCrunch, a spokesperson from Facebook confirmed that there was no guarantee the feature would see a wide release. "We often work on ideas that may evolve over time or ultimately not be tested or released. Instagram does not currently store Location History; we'll keep people updated with any changes to our location settings in the future."

Wong has a history of correctly identifying features like this before they're officially announced. She has previously leaked Facebook's dating application, Instagram's updated two-factor authentication, and Instagram's school bio feature. Facebook is also reportedly testing a map view to see friend's locations, similar to what's already offered by Snapchat. Instagram's data sharing could provide additional data points to power this functionality, while providing Facebook with more data to better target its ads.

An anonymous reader sent us an interesting little article about Miyazaki and Disney. Disney of course owns the rights to distribute his films (like to pick a gigantic example Princess Mononoke) to worldwide audiences. Apparently lackluster profits from Mononoke may jeopradize future Miyazaki titles release in the US, which would be terribly unfortunate considering that in the end, the DVD release of Mononoke was absolutely wonderful (although its a somewhat dark film for Mouse) This is all tied to Spirited Away, his latest film which is apparently doing great things at the Japanese Box Office.

Jeff Scarpace writes: "Defense and intelligence alums, including former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, are marketing a copy-protection system that works by taking control of your computer. Try to hack InTether, the creators say, and it destroys the document. Check out the article article here." Strangely, this system works only with Windows. Hmmm. Interesting too is the mention of SPOCK, or Security Proof-of-Concept Keystone.

Whatanut writes: "As reported by inside.com in this article, Blizzard Entertainment is suing New Line for using the word Diablo as the title of a movie release. Blizzard wants to make a movie of their own with the same title and feel New Line is only using the word to cash in on the popularity of the Diablo gaming world. Since when did Blizzard own all rights to the word "diablo"? And what kind of precedent would this set if they were to win?"

Whatanut writes: "As reported by inside.com in this article, Blizzard Entertainment is suing New Line for using the word Diablo as the title of a movie release. Blizzard wants to make a movie of their own with the same title and feel New Line is only using the word to cash in on the popularity of the Diablo gaming world. Since when did Blizzard own all rights to the word "diablo"? And what kind of precedent would this set if they were to win?"

An assortment of Napster news. Napster put out a press release, mirrored below, talking about their plans for the subscription Napster service to include strong copy protection - so you can pay Napster in subscription fees, storage space and bandwidth for files you can't use, and you can transmit them to other people who can't use them either. What a great business plan! The RIAA submitted their proposal for the injunction against Napster - it isn't pretty. Napster may have to block all 2.5 million of the RIAA's songs, as soon as the RIAA can figure out all their names. And Lessig sounds the battle cry for peer to peer - nothing you haven't heard before, but perhaps inspiring nonetheless.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Napster Announces Key Building Block of New Business Model Bertelsmann Subsidiary Digital World Services Will Work with Napster to Enable Secure Management of Transferred Files

Redwood City, CA and New York, NY (February 16, 2001) -- Napster today announced progress on the development of a key aspect of the technology necessary to implement a new, membership-based business model supported by the recording industry. The solution, which enables secure administration of transferred files within a peer to peer structure, has been in the works for several months and will be implemented by Digital World Services (DWS), a Bertelsmann subsidiary with extensive experience in innovative digital rights management solutions.

"Today's announcement underscores one key fact: the real questions about Napster's future are economic, not technical or legal. Our alliance with Bertelsmann and the Bertelsmann eCommerce Group was our first important step toward a model that makes payments to artists, songrwriters and other rightsholders. This solution is further evidence of the seriousness of our effort to reach an agreement with the record companies that will keep Napster running, reliable, and enjoyable," said Hank Barry, Napster's Interim CEO.

Barry reiterated that Napster hopes to move to a membership-based service as soon as possible.

The solution the two companies have been working on will maintain the peer to peer structure of Napster, but will allow in the future restrictions to be placed on what can be done with the transferred files, such as limits on the ability to burn music files onto CDs.

"To work with Napster on the design and operation of a key component of its new business model is an extraordinary opportunity for DWS," said Johann Butting, CEO of Digital World Services. "The successful combination of Napster's very compelling user friendliness and popularity with an architecture that addresses the needs of rightsholders will be a very significant step for secure sharing of content over the Internet."

The technology will enable the sharing of MP3 files to which a protection layer will be added as the file is transferred from one Napster user to the other. The Napster client will be enhanced to support this protection. The solution will not use any existing multi-purpose DRM but a new security architecture that is specially tailored to the requirements of file-sharing.

"We are extremely pleased to partner with Digital World Services in bringing together and operating a key aspect of the technology we need to preserve file sharing and build an industry-supported business model. Through this agreement with DWS and the work we have done together to date, the architecture for one important component of our new model is now in place; we are building out this aspect of the system," Hank Barry added.

"We have been working with Digital World Services for several months to design this solution. They really understand the technologies involved and are sensitive to the user experience. We are confident that the new system will allow us to accomplish key goals of the record companies in terms of restricting use, while still maintaining and improving the performance and service levels of the Napster system," said Napster CTO Eddie Kessler.

About Napster Napster is the world's leading person-to-person file sharing community. Napster provides music enthusiasts with an easy-to-use, high quality service for discovering new music and communicating their interests with other members of the Napster community. Napster's software application enables users to locate and share music files through a user-friendly interface, and features instant messaging, chat rooms, and Hot List User Bookmarks. Shawn Fanning, then an eighteen year-old freshman at Boston's Northeastern University, founded Napster in 1999. In October 2000, Bertelsmann AG and Napster announced the formation of a strategic alliance to further develop the Napster person-to-person file sharing service. In January 2001, edel Music and TVT Records joined the alliance. This year, Napster won several Wired Magazine Readers Rave Awards, including Best Music Site, Best Innovative Start-up, and Best Guerilla Marketing.

About Digital World Services Digital World Services provides Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions and services enabling the convenient use to digital works by making the process transparent for the consumer, retailer and publisher while protecting the owners' copyrights. The company offers clearinghouse services such as rights clearing, financial settlement, and administration of usage information. Digital World Services are experts in the digital delivery of music, content hosting, system integration, project management and distribution platforms. Based in New York City and Hamburg, Germany, Digital World Services is a Bertelsmann subsidiary.

An assortment of Napster news. Napster put out a press release, mirrored below, talking about their plans for the subscription Napster service to include strong copy protection - so you can pay Napster in subscription fees, storage space and bandwidth for files you can't use, and you can transmit them to other people who can't use them either. What a great business plan! The RIAA submitted their proposal for the injunction against Napster - it isn't pretty. Napster may have to block all 2.5 million of the RIAA's songs, as soon as the RIAA can figure out all their names. And Lessig sounds the battle cry for peer to peer - nothing you haven't heard before, but perhaps inspiring nonetheless.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Napster Announces Key Building Block of New Business Model Bertelsmann Subsidiary Digital World Services Will Work with Napster to Enable Secure Management of Transferred Files

Redwood City, CA and New York, NY (February 16, 2001) -- Napster today announced progress on the development of a key aspect of the technology necessary to implement a new, membership-based business model supported by the recording industry. The solution, which enables secure administration of transferred files within a peer to peer structure, has been in the works for several months and will be implemented by Digital World Services (DWS), a Bertelsmann subsidiary with extensive experience in innovative digital rights management solutions.

"Today's announcement underscores one key fact: the real questions about Napster's future are economic, not technical or legal. Our alliance with Bertelsmann and the Bertelsmann eCommerce Group was our first important step toward a model that makes payments to artists, songrwriters and other rightsholders. This solution is further evidence of the seriousness of our effort to reach an agreement with the record companies that will keep Napster running, reliable, and enjoyable," said Hank Barry, Napster's Interim CEO.

Barry reiterated that Napster hopes to move to a membership-based service as soon as possible.

The solution the two companies have been working on will maintain the peer to peer structure of Napster, but will allow in the future restrictions to be placed on what can be done with the transferred files, such as limits on the ability to burn music files onto CDs.

"To work with Napster on the design and operation of a key component of its new business model is an extraordinary opportunity for DWS," said Johann Butting, CEO of Digital World Services. "The successful combination of Napster's very compelling user friendliness and popularity with an architecture that addresses the needs of rightsholders will be a very significant step for secure sharing of content over the Internet."

The technology will enable the sharing of MP3 files to which a protection layer will be added as the file is transferred from one Napster user to the other. The Napster client will be enhanced to support this protection. The solution will not use any existing multi-purpose DRM but a new security architecture that is specially tailored to the requirements of file-sharing.

"We are extremely pleased to partner with Digital World Services in bringing together and operating a key aspect of the technology we need to preserve file sharing and build an industry-supported business model. Through this agreement with DWS and the work we have done together to date, the architecture for one important component of our new model is now in place; we are building out this aspect of the system," Hank Barry added.

"We have been working with Digital World Services for several months to design this solution. They really understand the technologies involved and are sensitive to the user experience. We are confident that the new system will allow us to accomplish key goals of the record companies in terms of restricting use, while still maintaining and improving the performance and service levels of the Napster system," said Napster CTO Eddie Kessler.

About Napster Napster is the world's leading person-to-person file sharing community. Napster provides music enthusiasts with an easy-to-use, high quality service for discovering new music and communicating their interests with other members of the Napster community. Napster's software application enables users to locate and share music files through a user-friendly interface, and features instant messaging, chat rooms, and Hot List User Bookmarks. Shawn Fanning, then an eighteen year-old freshman at Boston's Northeastern University, founded Napster in 1999. In October 2000, Bertelsmann AG and Napster announced the formation of a strategic alliance to further develop the Napster person-to-person file sharing service. In January 2001, edel Music and TVT Records joined the alliance. This year, Napster won several Wired Magazine Readers Rave Awards, including Best Music Site, Best Innovative Start-up, and Best Guerilla Marketing.

About Digital World Services Digital World Services provides Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions and services enabling the convenient use to digital works by making the process transparent for the consumer, retailer and publisher while protecting the owners' copyrights. The company offers clearinghouse services such as rights clearing, financial settlement, and administration of usage information. Digital World Services are experts in the digital delivery of music, content hosting, system integration, project management and distribution platforms. Based in New York City and Hamburg, Germany, Digital World Services is a Bertelsmann subsidiary.

aardwolf64 writes: "msnbc.com has a story (taken from Inside.com) about the successor to Sega's DreamCast. Aparently it won't play actual DreamCast discs, but will instead download them to an internal hard drive through a digital cable connection. According to the article: 'Wallace said that the box, called the Games Gateway, can store up to 60 games at a time, and will play any and all of the 350 or so games developed for the Dreamcast platform. The box will ship next year, though Wallace declined to speculate whether it would ship in the U.S. or U.K. first. The deal is mutually non-exclusive; the box itself has been a year in development'"

michael hirschorn writes: "The code would sit in the guts of your digital TV or set-top box and would essentially eat up any bit of programming deemed off limits." Deja vu. It's a recurring theme: every piece of electronics in your home will include code designed to prevent you from using it in any way that Hollywood doesn't like.

michael hirschorn writes: "The code would sit in the guts of your digital TV or set-top box and would essentially eat up any bit of programming deemed off limits." Deja vu. It's a recurring theme: every piece of electronics in your home will include code designed to prevent you from using it in any way that Hollywood doesn't like.

SupremeOverlord writes "A new P2P file-sharing tool called "BitHive" is entering public beta soon. This one uses IRC servers to connect nodes to avoid the scalability problems Gnutella suffers while not having a centralized server like Napster. Check out the press release at BitHive.org, and sign up for the upcoming public beta here. At the very least, it's going to be an improvement over automated fserves." Update: 12/11 4:09 PM by michael: See also this article describing file-sharing over AIM - Aimster.

StoryMan writes "Inside.com is reporting that Salon jumped the gun when it reported that SDMI had been cracked. I think this is fascinating. There's obviously a faction within SDMI that doesn't want this thing to fly. (I say this because I'm assuming Salon's 'anonymous' tipster must have been someone within the working group.)"

One of Inside.com's columnists wrote a nice story on the Valenti-Lessig debate that we posted a few days ago. It's a pretty funny play-by-play evaluation, nails Valenti for his evasiveness, and there are archives of the debate available, which is not as dry as you might think it would be.

michael hirschorn wrote to us with an interesting news story that's popped up a couple times. Rumour has it that some major ISPs have been in talks with Napster regarding an accquisition. The reason for the purchase would be to help get more clients - but that's a heckuva lawsuit to step into the middle of.

michael hirschorn wrote to us with an interesting news story that's popped up a couple times. Rumour has it that some major ISPs have been in talks with Napster regarding an accquisition. The reason for the purchase would be to help get more clients - but that's a heckuva lawsuit to step into the middle of.

StoryMan was the first of a flood of readers to note: "Napster ruling has been stayed. Doesn't have to close by midnight! Woohoo!" As of 10:15 GMT, CNN is displaying a note that says "The injunction barring Napster from trading music online has been stayed. Details to come." Watch this space for updates.Update: 07/28 10:26 PM by H :Thanks to Sgt. Owen for the first real link about the stay. Update: 07/28 10:58 PM by t : And to michael hirschorn, who points to this story at inside.com.

StoryMan was the first of a flood of readers to note: "Napster ruling has been stayed. Doesn't have to close by midnight! Woohoo!" As of 10:15 GMT, CNN is displaying a note that says "The injunction barring Napster from trading music online has been stayed. Details to come." Watch this space for updates.Update: 07/28 10:26 PM by H :Thanks to Sgt. Owen for the first real link about the stay. Update: 07/28 10:58 PM by t : And to michael hirschorn, who points to this story at inside.com.

TonyPyGarthno writes "Facing a veritable who's who of the music-copyright wars, Chairman Hatch threatened -- in surprisingly direct terms -- to force the music labels and publishers, by legislation, to make their content digitally available for a standard fee if the record business continued to ensnarl e-music with lawsuits. As a capper, Hatch suggested that Congress might even go so far as to offer its own comprehensive definition of 'fair use' to hasten the arrival of paid digital music -- an action that would have implications far beyond music. The full story."

Media hotshots and junkies were breathing heavily last week after Salon and CBS.com announced layoffs and APBNews.com had a near-death experience. These and other new media "setbacks" prompted some gleeful, almost poignant predictions that old media might return from the grave. Don't put any money on it. The media war of the future isn't between "old" and "new" media, already meaningless terms, but between Open and Closed media.

What's the future of media? What are all the rumblings about struggling online media?

Pundits and gossips and entrail-readers were asking one another (and me) these questions last week. It was a nervous few days, the jitters touched off by announcements of layoffs at Salon and NBC and CBS.com and by the near death experience of the strange crime-news site APB News.com, which dismissed its staff, then brought some back unpaid in an attempt to keep publishing.

Was all of this a watershed moment for new media? The ubiquitous analysts were warning that in the wake of the NASDAQ panic, money for new sites was drying up. Maybe old-time journalism could rebound, after all? Maybe these hordes or raucous digital pests would finally get their comeuppance, or even better, go away completely. Maybe the media universe would right itself.

Dream on. If there is a central idea that conventional media have willfully failed to grasp, it's that the future of information belongs to Open Media, even when AOL/Time-Warner gets its lawyers and lobbyists lined up. The meaningful distinction isn't old-versus-new, it's open-versus-closed.

What exactly characterizes the Open Media? Open Media sites embrace interactivity; they reflect ideas, commentary and information from a wide range of sources, especially their readers. They were shaped by the distributed architecture of the Net. Their agendas and political philosophies are rarely static, but continuously evolving, a gift of interactivity. Each reader becomes a highly-wired researcher and reporter, foraging for information. Stories can be reported originally, but most often stories are posted from other sources or posted and readers are given links. Links are a universal signature of an Open Media site, a way to use Net architecture to maximum advantage. Revenue comes from advertising or other sources, because the information itself is always -- always -- free.

Open Media are ascending all across the information spectrum. Closed Media -- newspapers, evening newscasts, even pay-per-use news websites -- have been in decline for years, facing aging audiences, shrinking revenues and marginalization by ferocious (and usually free) competitors. Open vs. Closed, shared vs. proprietary - these conflicting impulses have divided Net users for years, the Linux challenge to Microsoft being one of the more dramatic examples. Now that conflict is intensifying throughout media.

There was considerable if short-sighted rejoicing in old media offices with the spate of so-called "new media" problems. Conventional media has been battered for years now by new competing technologies like the Net, abandoned by younger consumers, struggling to re-define itself. There was more than a little glee in reports that new media was bleeding as well.

"For some people, online journalism is a path to interactive enlightenment and economic liberty," gloated the New York Times. "But to the puritans of the old media world, Web journalists are apostates who have confused liberty with license and whose delusional disregard for profit can only end in self-immolation. It was hard for the puritans not to act smug last week."

What an interesting statement. When exactly did "disregard for profit" become a journalistic liability as opposed to an ethical standard? And who conferred on mainstream journalism -- as greedy, non-interactive, incestuous and elitist an institution as exists in American public life -- this high moral ground?

The reasons for the smugness extended beyond the layoffs. Media watchers also cited Slate.com's struggles to become viable (it's massively subsidized by Microsoft and promoted on MS sites from MSN.com to MSNBC, and is still struggling for audience) and they were obsessively monitoring the super-hyped launch of Inside.com, a mega-media gossip and news site from a company that actually calls itself "PowerfulMedia, Inc."

You can check out this lavishly-funded site for yourself (www.inside.com), but all you really need to know is that its readers get to vote on what Inside.com considers most critical; the daily media "Power Index," which tracks whether Sumner Redstone of Viacom is gaining on Michael Eisner or Ted Turner on any given day. Part of Inside.com is free, but that's a lure. The part with the supposed original reporting is subscriber-only. This anomaly -- charging money in an environment where the volume of information grows by the hour and the price steadily drops -- is both arrogant and astonishing.

What was most interesting about last week's New York Times sneer was its focus on the rather few Web sites familiar to journalists. With perspective-narrowing narcissism, the Times described Slate as "the online magazine with probably the highest profile in online journalism?"

Slate - interesting though it can sometimes be - is actually one of the lowest profile sites on the Internet - except for New York or Washington journalists. They tend not to notice mailing lists, messaging systems or the countless individual sites far from media consciousness. Thus when Slate or Salon hits trouble, media pundits instantly conclude that online journalism must be failing. That's a big mistake.

"So who's winning?" asked the Times, "the puritans or the apostates? It may be too soon to tell, but certainly last week's upheavals were enough to try a Web journalist's soul." This bizarre framing of the issue -- a win/lose battle between worthy traditionalists and whacked-out rebels -- is silly, but it helps explain conventional journalism's problems in coming to terms with its favorite story: itself.

Mainstream media are fascinated with themselves. No story is more interesting than the people who publish or broadcast it. The press can't stop writing about itself, launching whole new publications -- Brill's Content magazine, Inside.com, much of Slate -- to chronicle its heroes, power-brokers and adventures. The media have a bizarre and shrinking geography in the 21st Century, despite the fact that we are all in the midst of an explosive information revolution. They pay rapt attention to certain aspects of life in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. No place between gets much attention unless a terrorist blows up a building, a plane crashes,or a river floods its banks. If you gather information on the Net, of course, your experience couldn't be more different, since you're connected to new kinds of journalists located in all sorts of places - college campuses, the bowels of companies and governments (as opposed to the executive suites), private homes in "flyover" land, foreign countries, hi-tech environments. The agenda is stunningly different. And there isn't much interest in the people who run media or their daily power standings.

How did the traditional media, once a populist, working-class information medium, fall so totally, even suicidally, in love with themselves? Or waste so much money and time chronicling their own comings and goings while missing so completely the real economic and cultural boundaries emerging between old and new forms of information distribution? Sometimes it seems that the real competition isn't between purists and renegades but between Narcissistic (and thus Closed) versus Open Media.

This narcissism is harmful because it shrinks the creative universe of media workers and disconnects them from the new global conversation taking place online. Open Media operate in striking contrast, thanks in part to the distributed architecture that makes up the Net's infrastructure. Instead of handfuls of editors closeted in offices dictating agendas, successful online media tend to be highly interactive, informal, diverse, often amateurish, yet quick, newsy and, therefore, useful.

Open Media can't claim anything close to perfection. These sites are often hostile, chaotic, and unreliable. But they're open in the most literal sense -- online, anybody with a computer and a modem can be a journalist and use the open protocols of the Net. In the techworld, people bring one another news, links, URL's, and information obsessvively -- the most basic definition of a journalist and of journalism -- and in a never-ending stream.

The architecture of the Net -- designed mostly for research -- was designed to be open. The architecture of conventional media, designed mostly to sell information, has been closed for generations. This has caused the widening rift between the two cultures that plagues the so-called "traditionalists" to this day.

When journalism comes online, the first mistake most editors and producers invariably make is to replicate the closed forms they know -- as Slate did when it tried to charge customers to subscribe. One of the first Web sites run by mainstream journalists -- its editor is Michael Kinsley, former editor of The New Republic, Slate became synonymous in many traditionalist's minds with Web journalism. It was the first and only site many reporters visted regularly, then and now. And the fact that it didn't have to break even or attract large numbers of readers -- Bill Gates made it clear that Slate had years, if not forever, to succeed financially -- gave it further license to practice traditional journalistic values rather than confront the Net's raucous interactivity. Slate never really had to come to terms with the Net -- it had a gazillion dollar safety net anyway. As a result, the magazine has always had a sort of grafted-on quality to it, although it has grudgingly become more inter-active.

Open Media have thrived on very different principles -- they offer decentralized, digitally-empowered media populism. Why are the conventional media so hobbled with it comes to grasping this?

Until the l960's, journalism was a distinctly unglamorous profession, a working-class, blue-collar alternative to civil service jobs or manual labor. But as the Boomers went off to college in increasing numbers, and encountered social struggles like the anti-Vietnam and civil rights movements, journalism began attracting a different sort of practitioner. It became a more elite profession. People who go to Harvard and Yale tend to believe that what they're doing is important, at least in part because they're doing it. Being a journalist, producer or magazine editor was suddenly fashionable.

And as information became a valuable commodity and entertainment a global, multi-billion dollar industry, media executives became more visible and powerful. The media industry itself became a huge story, especially as entertainment, news, information and popular culture began overlapping. Conventional media coverage of pop culture is either tepid, or still ghetto-ized in the back sections of magazines and papers. Landmark evolutions in new media culture -- gaming and animation, for example -- aren't yet considered culture at all in the traditional press.

Journalism has paid dearly for this endemic myopia. Many of the smartest, best-educated reporters in America seemed not to notice that an information revolution was bearing down on them like a tidal wave.

Even as the net spawned thousands of new kinds of sites -- including this one, started not coincidentally far from coastal media encampments -- the traditional press continued its focus on itself. Successful new media sites seemed more likely to spring up in places like Holland, Mich., or Portland, Ore., than in New York, L.A. or Washington. Rather than embrace new technologies, much of media began sounding alarms about them, from pornography to addiction. On the Net, Open media offered sites, reporters and commentary drawn from increasingly far-flung sources on an ever-widening variety of topics.

Closed media have at best only a vague sense of this transformations.

In a medium where amateur news and information sites routinely draw hundreds of thousands of hits a day, Slate was unable to get more than a relative handful of people to pay a modest subscription fee despite the movement of tens of millions of people online, and sooned abandoned the idea of charging readers. In fact, many "old media" sites on the Web, from Slate to Washingtonpost.com, remain subsidized media, a luxury rarely afforded new or Open Media. If Microsoft hadn't been so generous and rich, Slate would have folded long ago. In any other context, in fact, it would be considered a disaster. In the surreal world of media narcissism, it's failure somehow becomes virtue, even a triumph.

Salon, also founded by conventional journalists (in this case mostly from San Francisco) was always livelier and more Net-savvy than Slate, and is a different, more complex story. From the first, Salon established itself as a digital bastion of culture and literacy, which also understood interactivity. As good as the site can be -- its technology coverage is often outstanding -- one gets the sense that it has failed to grow creatively. The magazine seems stuck, almost marginalized, long on attitude but short on new ideas. Selling criticism, cultural and political commentary and point-of-view in a medium driven by cheap and plentiful information is rough.

That doesn't mean that Salon won't survive, or even prosper, despite the recent layoffs, but that it may have to reinvent itself. In media, this often seems the hardest thing for pulications to do, online or off.

Now, as those sites seem more and more like early prospectors overrun by a Gold Rush, there is no more meaningful distinction between "old" and "new" media. Almost every major paper, magazine and TV network has a Web site, and their reporters and producers continually cross-over frome one form to the other, as do their consumers.

On the Internet, there is no workable definition of what a journalist is. That's a good thing. Anybody who sees him- or herself as a journalist becomes one, which is the way it ought to be and, in fact, used to be. The kind of press conceived by Jefferson and Paine had much more in common with the present-day Internet than with the corporatized behemoths dominating the mainstream media. The press was always meant to be open, "point-to-point" in the Net sense, individualistic and outspoken. Journalism was never meant to be an exclusive elite, and the Net has re-democratized it. Online journalism may be adolescent and chaotic, but it is freer, more diverse and participatory than its offline predecessors. And a hell of a lot more fun and interesting.

Thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of people write and gather information on Web pages, sites, Weblogs, mailing lists and messaging systems. They post stories, start topics, engage in discussions and debates. By New York Times standards, they don't count as journalists. But they are the personification of the new journalism, and of its rebirth. The fact that they are practicing journalism in the most literal sense is precisely what's causing problems for the conventional media -- online or off -- still organized around outdated and nonsensical models of information dispensing.

These amateur journalists offer information on everything: weather, quilting, sports, movies, music, politics, and, of course, technology itself -- the seminal story online. Sometimes their coverage is brilliant, sometimes dreadful, just like old-style journalism. One Slashdot editor e-mailed me a list of just a few of the sites he visits regularly for news about software. These sites are bad news for traditional media practitioners -- newsy, teeming, useful, vibrant, telling examples of the ferociously interactive, information-stuffed open media mushrooming all over the Web. [His sites: cpureview.com; rootprompt.org; kuro5shin.org; macrumors.com; macnn.com;ompages.com].

On such Open Media sites -- there are thousands devoted to diverse topics ranging from teen women (www.chickclickers.com) to sports topics to music, TV, movies, consumerism, books, politics and Star Wars. Readers spot and suggest and link to stories continuously. Information moves in several directions -- top-down, laterally, and bottom-up. Readers have access to the reporters and editorial figures on the Web site. Through story ideas and discussion forums they have a say in how the site operates. And they are truly heard -- no Open Media site would last long otherwise -- in opposition to the pretend interactivity of Closed Media ("E-mail Peter Jennings. He wants to hear from you!")

Open Source is, of course, different, a technical term that applies to the sharing of software, not to media or culture. But it has far-reaching implications that go beyond code. OS was a significant, prescient idea. Like Dorothy in the final moments of the "Wizard Of Oz," OS pulled back the curtain on the biggest story in the world - the rise of computing technology, which is making information cheaper and more available by the hour. And transforming media.

Any successful media site of the future has to begin with that understanding, since it affects news consumers so directly. People in significant numbers won't pay for access to general news sites that charge for information. Nor should they have to. They will, however, regularly visit sites that organize some of the vast amounts of information now available online. And they especially value the opportunity to contribute -- to comment on articles, posts and features, and to contribute links, ideas and pieces of their own.

The media are dramatically affected by (and quite vulernable to) the wave of openness, much of it architectural rather than political, which OS helped fan. Open Media are not only the wave of the future, but the hot information commodity of the present. Open media are the only media that can thrive in the 21st Century, that can connect with young consumers, incorporate new information technologies, draw large numbers and make money in the Digital Age. Unlike traditional media, they don't have to adapt to the Net. They literally grew out of it.

Open Media sites grasp that online, news is organic, continuous, participatory. Open Media editors can be plenty autocratic, and they make lots of decisions. But they make more of those decisions in the open, and readers are taken much more genuinely into account.

Open Media aren't uninterested in profit - quite the opposite. Their advocates, understanding how new technologies operate, have simply perceived a radically different priniple with which to make money - by sharing information rather than controlling it.

Proprietary sites on the Net have particular problems with this idea. As Slate learned early on, and as Inside.com will learn soon enough, it's difficult to charge money in an environment awash in timely information available for free. Closed media -- online or on paper or on cable or on the airwaves -- try to set agendas rather than permit agendas to be set by others. They don't trust their consumers to really participate, and aren't willing to share the power such an ethic requires. Instead they project an outdated image: a formal, rigid environment occupied by people holed up in offices, preoccupied with increasingly irrelevant formats.

Like The New York Times, they don't seem to grasp that the very definitions of media are really changing. Until last year (when she tired of the workload), a housewife in Akron created a free-coupon/quilting Web site that drew more than a half-million visitors a day.

In the 21st century, Closed Media can't compete either economically or creatively with the vibrant culture of open information sites. When a handful of editorial instincts compete head-on with tens or hundreds of thousands of editorial instincts, the rabble may just win every time.

An Anonymous Coward wrote in about the Salon article of an unedited transcript of Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. Gnutella News wrote in and told us that Inside Music is running a story about the RIAA uncovering very incriminating internal memos and e-mails between Napster executives that the RIAA says is "proof that the service represents a haven for music piracy and should be closed immediately". Also, head on over to Camp Chaos for the latest flash cartoons about Napster, including one featuring the real Motley Crue. There's also a parody over at Everything2 to check out. Also here is a Wall Street article about the copyright office and the age of the Internet.

An Anonymous Coward wrote in about the Salon article of an unedited transcript of Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. Gnutella News wrote in and told us that Inside Music is running a story about the RIAA uncovering very incriminating internal memos and e-mails between Napster executives that the RIAA says is "proof that the service represents a haven for music piracy and should be closed immediately". Also, head on over to Camp Chaos for the latest flash cartoons about Napster, including one featuring the real Motley Crue. There's also a parody over at Everything2 to check out. Also here is a Wall Street article about the copyright office and the age of the Internet.