New submitter FSWKU writes "Courtesy of Penny-Arcade, Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing provides a perfect example of what not to do when interacting with customers, especially if you are doing so on behalf of another company. There's name dropping, an ego trip worthy of Charlie Sheen, and even what appears to be a promise to commit libel. Other outlets are already picking up the story and running with it, and an examination of Ocean Marketing's website has generated accusations of plagiarism."

New submitter cornicefire writes "By now most people have heard the news and seen the picture of the boy who was killed over the new Nike sneakers. There are Facebook pages devoted to fist-shaking protests about materialism and greed. Yada yada yada. But while the scuffles over the shoes were real, the death was not. The photo was just a stock photo of some kid in a lab. We know this because of some old school reporters — Steve Earley and Justin Fentin of the Baltimore Sun. In the rush to celebrate crowdsourcing, many of us pooh-pooh the old media as 'gatekeepers,' but there are times when keeping that gate locked is a good idea. After all, if one of the crowd discovered the error, the signal would barely rise above the noise. There are people claiming that anyone questioning the facts is being disrespectful. Is there something we can do about the mobocracy? How can we support the best traditions of journalism while fixing the worst? How can we nurture accuracy?"

An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to a previous story, Google played no part in the Megaupload takedown. From Wired: 'YouTube said Friday that Universal Music abused the video-sharing site's piracy filters when it employed them to take down a controversial video of celebrities and pop superstars singing and praising the notorious file-sharing service Megaupload.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Time's editor Rick Stengel announced on The Today Show that 'The Protester' is Time Magazine's Person of the Year: From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow. 'For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century.' The initial gut reaction on Twitter seems to be one of derision, as Time has gone with a faceless human mass instead of picking a single person like Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi who Time mentions in the story and is widely acknowledged as the person who set off the 'Arab Spring.' In 2006, Time chose "You" with a mirrored cover to much disappointment, picked the personal computer as 'Machine of the Year' and Earth as 'Planet of the Year,' proving 'that it should probably just be "Story of the Year" if they aren't going to acknowledge an actual person,' writes Dashiell Bennett. 'By not picking any one individual, they've basically chosen no one.'"

New submitter Bad_Feeling sends in a followup to the story we discussed on Monday about a new site that scanned a few popular torrent trackers and linked torrents to IP addresses. The folks at TorrentFreak decided to check IP addresses belonging to major companies in the entertainment industry and published lists of pirated files from several, including Fox, Sony, and NBC Universal. Of course, they used the information to make a slightly different point than the industry usually does: "By highlighting the above our intention is not to get anyone into trouble, and for that reason we masked out the end of the IP addresses to avoid a witch hunt. An IP address is not a person, IP addresses can be shared among many people, and anyone can be behind a keyboard at any given time."

Freddybear writes "Digital forensics experts at Dartmouth have developed software that can analyze digital photos to rate how drastically they have been altered by digital editing techniques. 'The Dartmouth research, said Seth Matlins, a former talent agent and marketing executive, could be "hugely important" as a tool for objectively measuring the degree to which photos have been altered.'"

itwbennett writes "Internet freedom got a boost Wednesday when Italy's highest court ruled that the editors of online publications can't be held legally responsible for defamatory comments posted by their readers. The judges said online publications could not be treated in the same way as traditional print media and could not be expected to exercise preventative editorial control over readers' comments."

PolygamousRanchKid writes with an article in CNN Money about Netflix's prospects in 2012. From the article: "Netflix warned in its last earnings report that it expects to be unprofitable 'for a few quarters' starting at the beginning of 2012. The primary culprit is Netflix's pricey plan to expand its streaming video service into the United Kingdom and Ireland, but a wave of subscribers jumping ship hasn't helped. The filing also revealed that Netflix is in the process of raising $400 million from investors to help bulk up its cash stash. While that will give Netflix more money to invest in content, secondary offerings are sometimes considered ominous signs."

ideonexus writes "Once upon a time, newspapers were considered the "first draft of history." Today, rather than the daily episodic updates of major news stories developing a narrative over time, we have a perpetual stream of factoids from which a story emerges. Lauren Rabaino of mediabistro details this new lifecycle of a newspaper story, from tweets to blog posts to an eventual print edition, and asks What are the best standards of practice? Should news sources provide a single web address with a stream of updates, post new blog entries that link to older ones, or should they adopt a Wiki approach to the news — revising a single story with a history of revisions available behind the scenes?"

Agit-prop? Absurdist pranksterism? Unsubtly subversive PowerPoint-based performance art? Yes, Yes, and Yes. Specifically, The Yes Men, whose brand of straight-faced media manipulation has raised eyebrows at staged events and on international news, have agreed to answer questions about their activities. These include social engineering of a certain peculiar variety ("Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them"), and multi-media lampooning of major corporations and political bodies — and, sometimes, committing the results to film. (Their 2010 film The Yes Men Fix the World is CC-licensed; the torrent version includes a bonus short, the making of which is the subject of a lawsuit by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the target of a mock press conference it depicts.) So, please ask your questions of The Yes Men, bearing in mind (especially if you've never read them before) the Slashdot interview guidelines. (Major takeaway: for unrelated questions, please use separate posts.)

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Steve Green reports that newspaper copyright infringement lawsuit filer Righthaven of Las Vegas has been hit with an order to pay $119,488 in attorney's fees and costs in its failed lawsuit against former federal prosecutor Thomas DiBiase, who was sued over allegations he posted a story without authorization on a murder case by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. US District Judge Roger Hunt dismissed Righthaven's suit against DiBiase this summer because Righthaven lacked standing to sue him under its flawed lawsuit contract with R-J owner Stephens Media. The DiBiase case was noteworthy because his attorneys at the EFF said DiBiase's nonprofit website, 'No Body Murder Cases,' performed a public service by assisting law enforcement officials in bringing justice to crime victims — and that his post was protected by the fair use concept of copyright law. Case law created by the Righthaven lawsuits suggests DiBiase's use of the story would be protected by fair use as it was noncommercial and judges have found there can be no market harm to Righthaven for such uses since there is no market for copyrights Righthaven obtains for lawsuit purposes. Although this was by far the largest fee award against Righthaven, it will likely will be dwarfed by an upcoming award in Righthaven's failed suit against the Democratic Underground."

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the derided-on-slashdot paywall for the NY Times hasn't brought down the paper so far. The Times now reports 300,000 digital subscribers (to e-reader versions and the web combined) and digital advertising revenue for the part of the company that includes the paper has increased 6% this quarter."

tekgoblin writes "Federated Media has just announced a partnership with WordPress.com. This deal follows shortly after Federated Media acquired the advertising network Lijit. The deal will include all of the blogs that are hosted under the company which comes to around 25 million. WordPress.com users will now be able to choose to allow sponsored posts, and Federated Media ads on their blog."

Hugh Pickens writes "Alan Mutter writes that the California Public Employees Retirement System, the nation's largest pension fund, has become the latest investor to say it would vote against the re-election of Rupert Murdoch and his sons to the company's board of directors, joining several other institutional investors opposed to the tenure of not only the Murdoch trio but also most of the rest of the leader's hand-picked board. 'The company appears to have devolved into a free-wheeling, cut-throat and paranoid culture that reached its logical conclusion in the phone-hacking scandal at The News of the World, where deceit and naked ambition trumped common decency, good judgment and even simple compliance with the law,' writes Mutter... Further proof of the anything-goes atmosphere at News Corp was supplied last week when the Guardian reported that ... the European edition of the Wall Street Journal evidently sold access to its news columns and created back-channel payment networks to lift the otherwise sagging circulation of the paper... 'It's not clear whether the outside shareholders have the votes to change anything at a corporation where Murdoch effectively controls 40% of the shares,' concludes Mutter, 'But adult supervision most certainly is in order, because News Corp. seems to be operating with only the sketchiest of business plans and no effective executive oversight of his many far-flung initiatives. '"

itwbennett writes "Rumors of original, professionally-produced content channels coming to YouTube are heating up. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported on it, invoking pro skateboarder Tony Hawk as one of the star attractions. Now The Hollywood Reporter is saying the channels may be launched early next year, with an official announcement coming later this month. 'Originally the story was that YouTube was going to invest $100 million in this content, but now that number has been bumped up to $150 million,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Does that sound like a lot? Consider Netflix is rumored to be spending $100 million on House of Cards, a single original series that the company is backing. YouTube is said to be delivering 24 channels of original content.'"

Long-time readers will know that we try not to clutter the front page of Slashdot with much stuff about the site itself; this is a rare exception, but we hope you'll like the reason: we want your opinions. You should see above a link to take a survey about Slashdot, and (just to be heavy handed) here's the direct link. The questions there are simple, but we're going to read the answers carefully. The reminder bar up there will remain active for some time, but this story will scroll down the page like all Slashdot stories. Comments are welcome below; surveys have their limitations, after all, but please don't comment without also giving the survey a visit — if it makes sense, feel free to cut-and-paste any answers from there as comments, too. The engineers who build this site (and the editors, too!) are counting on your honest opinions and hoping for some great ideas; ideas outnumber the hours we have to do things, so we hope you'll make a case for the ways that Slashdot should change (and the ways it shouldn't!).

An anonymous reader writes "Proposed legislation under debate in Italy has Wikipedia warning of a shutdown for the Italian version of the site. They say the law would create 'a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.' They further explain. 'Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge — the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website. Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.'"

First time accepted submitter djl4570 writes "Federal Judge John Kane ruled that Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas lacked standing to file copyright infringement lawsuits in Colorado under its lawsuit contract with the Denver Post and abused the Copyright Act in doing so. Righthaven was ordered to reimburse the defendant his costs including reasonable attorneys fees."

macwhizkid writes "After signing a major book deal for his autobiography, Julian Assange backed out (allegedly worrying about self-incrimination) but failed to return his £500,000 advance payment. The publisher is understandably unhappy with this outcome, and intends to publish the 'world's first unauthorized autobiography' from an early draft Assange submitted. The book will be in stores tomorrow, but I'm still hoping it'll be published early on WikiLeaks..."

First time accepted submitter jonez450 writes "Times are tough in the advertising business. But PCMag publisher Ziff Davis has come up with a new plan to gain a competitive edge: Paying other tech sites $1 CPM to place tracking code on their sites in return for data about their users via JavaScript. The company is also offering free content in return, but the 'private' Ziff Davis Tech Co-Op doesn't want anyone to know what they are up to." Update: 09/15 13:32 GMT by T : Reader jbrodkin writes in with an appreciated correction: "Ziff Davis doesn't publish PC World. they do something called PC Mag. as a former IDG employee, I can tell you there is a difference ;-)" Story has been updated to reflect -- thanks.