Photography: When is it real? When is it fake?

In the olden days, photographers enhanced their photos in the darkroom. Art directors have long cropped photos for size and to emphasis certain aspects of the original frame. So how far can a photographer or an editor today go in manipulating an image and under what circumstances?

The "invented reality" in two winning photos in Modern Photography's 16th Annual Readers Contest raised some questions. Winners in the "Action/sports" and "Travel/Places" categories were composites.

The New York Times technology columnist discusses in Photoshop and Photography: When Is It Real? The answers may surprise you.

Google Executives Found Guilty of Privacy Violations

An Italian criminal court judge found three Google executives guilty of privacy violations Wednesday in what may be a landmark case in Internet freedom. An Associated Press story reports, "This could help define whether the Internet in Italy is an open, self-regulating platform or if content must be better monitored for abusive materials." And it's likely not to stop there.

The judge ruled that three Goggle executives did not act quickly enough in pulling down a video --uploaded by some teenagers - showing bullies abusing an autistic boy. The video, which immediately went to the top of the most-viewed list, was posted before Google bought YouTube.

Google says it's impossible to prescreen thousands of hours of footage uploaded daily to sites like YouTube and considers the ruling a threat to freedom on the Internet. Not censorship, argue the prosecutors in the case, but balancing freedom of expression with the rights of an individula.

Google will appeal.

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books

Here is a long and learned discussion about the future of the book with some observations about international copyright.

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books

Goggle Goes Mobile

Here's a headline to strike terror in the hearts of telephone companies around the world:

Google sees its future in mobile technology

And that was the headline of a business story in the print edition of The National last week datelined Barcelona. In a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress, Google's chief executive said straight out that the internet search giant is going Mobile, because that's where the action -- and the advertising potential -- is. He pointed out that Mobile users are going online eight times faster than users of desktops did a decade ago. Google is finding that more than half of its search engine queries come for mobile phones.

So Skype (see previous post) isn't the main worry of the mobile network folks. Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere it wants.

Israeli Embassy Pulls Its Tweet

Twitter started in March 2006 as a way for individuals to flash short messages to one another but quickly ballooned into a major public relations and marketing tool, used by businesses , celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears and political leaders like President Obama and HH Sheikh Mohammed.

Even the Israeli embassy in London tweets but may be wishing it didn't.

The New York Times News Blog reported Friday that the embassy had posted and then quickly deleted a tweet with a joking reference to the Hamas assassination.

It read: You heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on #Dubai target http://ow.ly/18A79 The news? An Israeli female had reached the semi-finals in Dubai Tennis Tournament. For the backstory see Israeli Tennis Player Performs Under Dubai Restrictions

After the British press reported on the bad joke, the Embassy pulled the post from its Twitter feed and its Facebook page. Maybe it should stick to old-fashioned diplomatically worded press releases.

Skype & Internet Neutrality

The UAE isn't the only place where Skype's voice-over-Internet phone (VoIP) service is outlawed. But is blocking Skype a question of censorship, competing technologies or rival business plans?

"In a world where network neutrality has becoming a rallying cry for advocates of an unfettered Internet, Skype, the pioneer in low-cost and even free online calls, has become a prime example of the limits of wireless freedom," writes Kevin J. O'Brien this week in the NYT/IHT.

Reporting from Barcelona, Spain, where the Mobile World Congress has been underway, O'Brien quotes one network equipment maker as saying, "The battle is not about technology but the business model." If telephone service is free over the Internet, traditional telephone companies go broke. A similar argument has been used with intellectual property issues in music, film, news content.

Yet Neelie Kroes, the new commissioner for digital issues for the European Parliament, recently said that blocking VoIP violated network neutrality. She plans to put pressure on wireless operators in Europe to allow VoIP service on their networks. Just last month, Ms. Kroes testified that "open and clear cut net neutrality is needed."

Interestingly, Ms Kroes most recently held the portfolio of Competition Commissioner for the Parliament.

Who's Making the Call?

Here's a transcript of an interview with The New York Times executive editor about holding the secret raid story. It's taken from the website of a new (US) national morning news radio described as "a unique partnership of global news leaders... a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC Radio in collaboration with the BBC World Service, the New York Times and WGBH Boston." The question that comes to my mind: objectivity. Can a news report produced in part by The New York Times be objective in reporting on The New York Times

This Q&A gives some insight into the process and thinking that went on in making the decision to hold the story for reasons of national security. Please note that the executive editor wasn't the one who decided. It was the journalist in charge of the newspaper's Washington bureau. Note also that it was the newspaper that decided what was of "obvious public interest."

More importantly, note that it wasn't the White House that initiated holding the story. The newspaper called the government looking for comment, not confirmation. The Times had the story "nailed down."

It sounds as though the White House hadn't even considered press coverage. White House response: "Well, hold on for a second." Are we exchanging the White Dog function for press self-censorship?

What do you think of what Keller says about the decision to hold -- and then publish -- the secret raid story?

When is Prior Restraint Justified?

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech in the U.S., but sometimes the government tries to block the news before it is published through prior restraint. In today's New York Times , the newspaper reports on a secret raid that captured the Taliban's top military commander. Big news, indeed. Even more interesting in terms of our discussion of freedom of information, the newspaper has known about the classified operation since last Thursday. So why didn't it race to get the news to its readers?

No, the government didn't go to the Supreme Court as the Nixon Administration did in 1971 to block publication of the Pentagon Papers about the war in Vietnam (New York Times v United States). The Supreme Court ruled no, by the way.

Obama White House officials asked nicely, arguing that making the news public "would end a hugely successful intelligence-gathering effort." The Times agreed to hold the story but decided to publish after convincing White House officials that the news "was becoming widely known in the region."

What issues do you see behind this story?

This semester Dr. J's Wonderful Web World will be focusing on media law and ethics with emphasis on globalism and technology. So it's not all that far from what has been appearing on the blog since fall 2008. Expect to see much discussion about what's going on with Google in terms of privacy, copyright, cyberattacks and antitrust concerns. A good news analysis ran as the lead story on the International Herald Tribune front page earlier this week. For Google, the biggest source of risk is in Europe.

Excerpt:
In a region where the media sector is mostly fragmented along national lines and sometimes dependent on public subsidies, Google's border-straddling scale, its ambitious pursuit of profit and its embrace of an open, anything-goes Web are raising alarms.

....and law suits!

NOTE TO THOSE OF YOU IN THE CLASS: We will discuss Sunday.