Son of ACTA + more news

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Son of ACTA

US Proposals For Secret TPP ‘Son Of ACTA’ Treaty Leaked; Chock Full Of Awful Ideas | Techdirt – the draft proposals for son of ACTA look like an overreach:

  • Expanding what’s patentable, for instance the US allows processes like Amazon’s one click purchase to be patentable
  • Blocking people from buying copyrighted goods in other countries and taking them home (no multi-region DVDs, music imports etc), this is to allow differentiated pricing by country or region. It is more a Hollywood thing than a music industry thing; pre Internet distribution, music imports were a big business tapping into engaged music fans. The son of ACTA could be seen on the EU’s single market status and record labels in places like Italy
  • Expanding liability for ISPs whose users commit acts of infringement, forcing ISPs to identify their users to anyone on demand, and getting rid of third-party patent review. This draft son of ACTA looks as if it has been written by a Hollywood lobbyist

You have to remember this son of ACTA overreach is intentional. There will be lots in there that the

Design

The rise of polyester | FT.com – its not cheap and if made well feels better than natural fabrics

Wristwatches, Reimagined – Will Young Shoppers Care? – NYTimes.com – more wearable computing ideas

Ideas

Long-term capitalism | McKinsey & Company – pretty much straight out of Will Hutton’s The State We’re In published in the early 1990s

Innovation

Why Facebook open-sourced its datacenters – Simon Willison wraps a bit of smart analysis around this

Japan

FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Micro towns bring evacuees a sense of order – helps with societal cohesion. There is one bit near the end where an old person talks about being awake in the middle of the night and there is no snoring meaning that lots of people are still awake afraid of sharing their troubles with others – it’s a real sucker punch when you read it (Paywall)

Luxury stocks’ tumble: a contrarian view | Material World – FT.com – yet luxury goods manufacturers have been de-emphasising Japan for a number of years so best prepared for impact

Korea

n+1: Behold the Koreans – the rise of the Korean motor industry in the US

Luxury

Burberry To Join China’s Digital Revolution With Beijing Fashion Bash « Jing Daily – complex distribution and a fast-growing market has forced fashion houses to embrace much faster than they previously had

Chinese Media: Luxury Goods In China Up To 50% More Expensive Than Overseas « Jing Daily – less discounts due to strong demand

Media

Rupert Murdoch Asked Gordon Brown To Help Weaken NoTW Phone Hacking Investigations: The Observer – but what was the benefit to the Brown administration?

Managing in Asia: Agence France-Presse News Chief Emmanuel Hoog Pushes Multimedia – WSJ.com – embracing social media blah, blah, blah. The real interesting bit about this story is that the WSJ is interviewing AFP

Online

Sina Corp, Large Chinese Portal, Drops Google As Search Provider – interesting that they’ve built their own search engine

Retailing

Etail’s creeping influence on retail (and you) | FT.com – the user experience and colour scheme at Net-a-Porter is influencing designers choice of colours

Women’s retail report: changes ahead? | FT.com – change in behaviour due to reduced time to market?

Security

EU admits deep impact cyberattack in run-up to key summit • The Register – Microsoft Exchange servers compromised

Software

Microsoft Co-Founder Hits Out at Gates – WSJ.com – this comes off worse than Jennifer Edstrom’sBarbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside. (Yes, Jennifer Edstrom is the daughter of Pam Edstrom of Waggener Edstrom: Microsoft’s agency-of-record). It will be interesting to see how it is spun.

James gosling joins google- The Inquirer – the Java father at Google. This will be interesting

Technology

Sun finally shines under Oracle | FT.com – shows that Jonathan Schwartz was probably a better CEO at Sun than most people give him credit for