Thursday, July 22, 2010
Graphic Adventures, the Book
Early last year after reading a book about Lucasfilm, I wanted much more information on my beloved games like Maniac Mansion, Secret of Monkey Island or Loom. I ended up browsing Wikipedia for info on these titles, and that in turn gave me the idea of turning the Wikipedia articles into a book of its own. I’ve started the project with Google Docs but after hitting the usual limits, went to offline HTML editing and setting up several tools to get the formatting right, and then started a Lulu self-publishing project for this.
What I did was edit the Wikipedia articles through heavy or light rewriting, depending on what I figured the article would need to look good in book form. I then went to find additional information from other sources where I felt having more could be fun, and I added screenshots. And then I conducted interviews with many people who were involved in producing the classic graphic adventures. I interviewed creators like Al Lowe of Leisure Suit Larry, Lucasfilm’s David Fox, and Michael Bywater, who worked with Douglas Adams on the game Starship Titanic. The book took much longer than expected... the original idea after all was to merely compile an encyclopedia from Wikipedia, a book for perhaps a small but dedicated group of fans like me. But after sending myself the first draft version, I realized much more editing was needed to have something really fun.
To make a long story short, the book is now available at Amazon and Lulu and also got a page of its own here! It’s called “Graphic Adventures: Being a Mostly Correct History of the Adventure Game Classics By Lucasfilm, Sierra and Others, from the Pages of Wikipedia”, and includes games like Maniac Mansion, Labyrinth, Time Zone, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Zork Nemesis, Myst, Indiana Jones, Monkey Island and Grim Fandango.
50% of the book revenues will be donated back to Wikimedia. Your feedback as usual is welcome. I’m not the author but just the editor or compiler of the info – the authors are everyone who ever edited Wikipedia, and by Wikipedia’s rules the full copy of the book can also be downloaded for free in an editable version. This book is a project of love for the genre of graphic adventures, so if you were or are a fan of that too, I hope this fan project will also give something to you.
[Thanks to all who helped with the book through Wikipedia editing, getting interviewed, providing screenshots, or giving feedback and other help!]
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
New Google Images Design
Google has revamped its image search. Instead of showing image information right below individual images in the results overview, you’ll now get just the image thumbnail. Hover over it, and the thumbnail will grow a bit in size and show its information text below it, like file name, originating site, and contextual keywords (you can also click on “Similar" for some pics to find similar imagery). Thumbs are presented border-less, and rather close to each other.
When you scroll down the results page, new images will be dynamically loaded into the page without a manual page switch (you’ll still see headers reading “Page 2”, “Page 3” and so on, perhaps to give a bit of direction). Looks like Google is getting more Bing-like here. In a blog post, they also mention their new thumbnails are larger than before.
Clicking through to an individual page shows an interesting new layout as well. Many of us sometimes just want to get to the individual image, and only later (sometimes not at all) look at the context page. What Google previously did in the US – in countries like China this differed already – was to show a two-frame page, and if you clicked in the image in Google’s top frame, you’d see the big version without context, saving you from scrolling down on the origin page to look for the image.
Now what Google does is show their own side pane to the right, then dynamically overlay a big version of the image onto the slightly darkened web page it originates at. (Sometimes, an even bigger version is linked to from Google’s side pane.) An X button in the upper right of the bigger picture closes both the pic, as well as Google’s side pane. All in all, I think this is a nice solution that creates a very usable mixture of getting the origin page to show its face, but also letting the user see the big image immediately... and Google’s side pane can be closed easily, too. Admittedly, the origin page may now be getting less visitors to look at it closely than before, hard to tell.
[Update: In case you don’t like the new Google Images version – when you scroll way down to the end of the page, there is a link named “Switch to basic version”, which brings back the old design.]
Added to above changes, Google in their post says that for their advertisers, they’re “launching a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text.”
For what it’s worth, the thumbnails in the results of the the old image search were often blocked here in China (often only a small portion of the pics would show). The thumbs in the new version all show up fine for now, though I’m not sure if this is perhaps a recent change in no relation and so just the usual mysterious blocking flicker.
[Thanks Juha-Matti and Morgan!]
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Magic Artist (for the iPhone)
We created an iPhone app called "Magic Artist". What it does is paint a picture based on a snapshot you take (or a photo from your phone's album). You can see brush stroke by brush stroke being painted. Hope you like it, feedback welcome. If you don't have an iPhone, post your photo in the comments and I will run it through the app for you and post a reply!
This project started its life as a JavaScript/ Canvas prototype (I was looking into letting you enter a term, grab an image via Google Images, then draw it), but I was running into a zone where it looked like I would have had to support image uploads or provide some image proxy for the necessary JavaScript rights. The iPhone app, programmed by Mike Dougherty, solves this issue, and the nice thing is that you already have a camera at hand when you have a phone (and that Objective-C as used on the iPhone is fast).
Monday, July 12, 2010
Google’s Supposedly Easy Android App Creation Tool
Google lets you sign up for a program called App Inventor that is meant to make Android mobile app creation easy... by getting rid of most of what’s traditionally associated with programming. Google suggests that “[i]nstead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.” [Via Reddit.]
Google Games?
TechCrunch writes: “Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. (...) Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources.” Wikipedia has some information on controversies surrounding Zynga’s business methods. [Thanks Mbegin!]
Monday, July 5, 2010
Eric Schmidt On Newspapers, Mobile, and What Might Eventually Kill Google
Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at the Activate 2010, and the Guardian has an overview of some of his comments. Eric says “Mobile is the hottest area of computer technology ... The smartest developers now are writing apps for mobile before they write for Windows or Apple Mac desktop operating systems. Part of that is because these devices are hugely personal to us when we use them.” On how we read newspapers in the future, he says “I think it’s delivered to a digital device, which has text, obviously, but also colour, and video, and the ability to dig very deeply into what you are supplied with ... The most important thing is that it will be more personalised.”
Eric was also asked about what keeps him awake at night, and what might eventually kill Google. He said:
Almost all deaths in the IT industry are self-inflicted. Large-scale companies make mistakes because they don’t continue to innovate. For example, ’nowness’ – real-time information – is a new concept that wasn’t around when Google started, or even a few years ago. Now we integrate it into our searches.
My fundamental fear about Google is that we have the same feature as other companies, which is that we lose that edge. If you lose that edge... But I think that will be a long, long time from now. External threats are likely to come from a truly innovative company that builds itself a big enough business quickly enough that we can’t catch it. It’s not different from other industries in that sense, except that in IT it happens so fast.
The next great success will be built even faster than Google, and the one after that even faster. It’s just how it is.
[Thanks Manoj!]
What’s It Like to Work at Google?
Over at Reddit, people who work at Google are invited to tell what it’s really like there. Knowing that some replies posted in such threads may be fake, here are three comments, from the negative to the positive.
CinoBoo writes:
I’ve been there for about 5 years. You can read about the good parts anywhere, so I’ll try to offer a counterpoint based on having worked at other software companies.
A common problem is that it’s easy to become spoiled by all the perks. Several offices have developed distinct cultures of entitlement, and people whine about the quality of the fudge on the free brownies. It’s embarrassing to be around people who’ve become like spoiled children.
An engineering-specific problem there is that there’s a lot of support for operations – that is, lots of people whose job it is to keep the systems running. Engineers don’t habitually carry pagers and are on-call relatively infrequently. The plus side is that they can focus on development, get adequate sleep, and be more productive. The downside is that they can easily lose touch with what’s really going on in the data centers and sometimes even their customers. It’s a trade-off. Google is at least aware of it and uses incentive programs to entice engineers to spend time in ops roles.
Last, the company is big into “generating luck”, which means trying a whole bunch of stuff in the hopes that a few efforts will pay off. The practical net effect of this on leaf-node employees is that you can wind up working on three, four, even five or more failed projects in a row. It doesn’t actively hurt you, and in some cases they even give big bonuses to teams that worked really hard before the project was canceled. But because promotions and bonuses are generally tied to “impact”, meaning stuff that actually launches and gets used, a whole lot of people wind up spending their first 4 years there with no launches, no promotions, and no fancy bonuses. (The bonuses really are quite generous for teams who launch things that are successful.)
This may wind up being a morale issue at some point, but at the moment people aren’t so fed up that they’d quit over it. They know they can always move to a sure-fire domain like GMail or Chrome or Ads or whatever, and be assured of at least minor launches and success for a few years. It’s just that there are a lot of opportunities for startup-like success within Google, and people are encouraged to participate without being told of the potential risks and opportunity costs.
These three factors combined yield a fair percentage of employees who wind up feeling a little disenchanted, though not actively scarred the way they might be if they’d worked for 90% of the rest of the industry.
I know people are always interested in hearing the downsides, so I thought I’d be honest about the main ones I’ve encountered in my 5 years there.
That said, there are way more upsides, and I doubt I’d want to work anywhere else. I’ve turned down more offers than I can remember, but I always tell them the same thing: I have the best job in the world. (And it’s not even that great, Google-wise. But I do love my job.)
Davmre writes:
I’m not there now, but I did an internship a couple years ago. The food is nice, there are a lot of cool people, and the tech setup is pretty solid: they give you nice machines, and there are very reasonable procedures for source control, testing, code reviews, etc. Hours are flexible and there’s free beer every Friday afternoon.
At the end of the day, though, it’s a software engineering job. The vast majority of Google employees (especially those without PhDs) are essentially code monkeys: granted, very smart code monkeys working with some complicated systems, but 90% of any project is basically gruntwork, and that’s true at Google just as much as anywhere else. So if you like coding, it’s a great job.
Dmazzoni writes:
I’ve been at Google for 4+ years and couldn’t be happier.
The free lunch is nice, but what I really love is the engineering culture:
- Google has some of the best programmers in the world. Unlike some companies where they move into “architect” roles, many of them continue to just write lots of code and do great things. It’s amazing to get to work with these people and learn from them.
- The culture here really values high-quality code. The style guidelines are incredibly strict and people are rewarded for high test coverage. All code must go through code review before the revision control system will even let you check it in. Of course it’s not perfect, but it’s way better than any large company I’ve ever heard of.
Could I imagine leaving? Sure, someday - but I’d have a hard time imagining going to another large software company. I think there are a lot of small companies that would be amazingly fun and rewarding to work at, but Google is the only large company that is really that amazing for someone who loves software engineering.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Google.cn Homepage Now Redirects on Click (Instead of Auto-Redirecting)
When you now go to the google.cn homepage, you’ll see a static image of a Google homepage instead of the real thing* (a Chinese explanation on the page translates to something along the lines of “We have moved to google.com.hk... Please add our site/ update your bookmarks”). Click anywhere on the page, and you’ll be forwarded to the Hong Kong homepage Google.com.hk. Previously, since some time, Google automatically redirected users to Google Hong Kong when they visited the Google.cn homepage (following a hacking incident and to escape more stringent censorship requirements, as Google suggests).
Note the redirect isn’t gone, though – it will still occur for direct search queries, like google.cn/search?q=foo. Some other Google.cn services like Google Music China (listen to lots of songs for free) are also continuing to work well, using the old domain. Also note that in China, google.com, just as before, can be accessed rather normally. However, Google in a blog post writes:
[I]t’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable – and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn – so Google would effectively go dark in China. (...)
Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page – and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.
We’ll see what happens to direct search redirects, then. It’s interesting also because some tools have the google.cn search queries hard-coded, for instance, the Chinese-manufactured (wifi-free) Apple iPhones you can buy here (search in its Safari Google box, and you’ll see google.cn, then google.com.hk).
[Thanks Moses!]
*Not all users on all devices may see this.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
How to Access the Internet (A Guide from 2025)
Welcome to the Internet! By following the simple rules below, you make sure your internet experience is smooth and risk free.
RealIdentity
Before signing on, please ensure you have received your RealIdentity card from local authorities. Signing on to the internet without identifying yourself has been ruled illegal in the Stop Anonymity Act of 2012, and you need to be sure to associate your comments, emails, posts and more with your real name. Setting up your RealIdentity is easy, as your computer (MacOS 15 or ChromeOS7 and higher) will automatically connect to your near-by card, verifying it with your biometric data. Do not put on shades, veils, contact lenses, and please shave before the biometric scan starts; it is advised to not perform biometric authentication after a long night of drinking.
Geolocation
The internet is split into roughly 120 country regions. This is to ensure that fitting entertaining content will be streamed to you, and that you will not find content that may be unsettling. Your Geolocation should be automatically derived from the position of your point of login – if it matches with the country provided in your RealIdentity card, you’re ready to go. Users from the US may enjoy great copyrighted US TV show reruns like Friends 2020, for instance, while users in other countries may have different tastes and preferences.
As a note for travellers: Before planning your trip to another country, make sure you apply for a Geolocation Visa in order to surf from internet cafes within that country. Alternatively, you can also jump into your cybersuit and just enjoy the other country through Google Street View 3D Plus Touch. Google Street View 3D Plus Touch will only show you those things from the other country which are legal in your location, so it’s a great, risk-free and streamlined experience to get to know other exciting cultures.
Signing Up for the Right Internet
Many content offerings depend on the internet you’ve signed up to. If you’ve signed up with the GoogleAppleAmazon Internet, then you have one-click access to a great digital library, many movies, as well as a certain approved set of homemade web pages. If you’ve signed up with the DisneyWarnerBrosViacom internet, you get a different digital library, set of movies, and approved homemade web pages.
While we cannot specifically recommend one internet over the other, the goo:// internet is great for research and mindless entertainment (talking dogs), whereas dis:// has the faster movie experience. Buffering the 50 Terabyte Feel3D movie Wall-E Jr. Returns for smooth playback and touch takes only 0.1 seconds.
Adult Content
If your RealIdentity identifies you as being over 21 years of age (30 in some countries), you are of the legal age to view adult content. Adult content includes pornography, unmoderated forum discussions, as well as political discourse, religious counter-views, artistic expression, and free speech in general. If you are below 21 years (30 in some countries), you can still discuss politics and religion with your family, and you are free to artistic expression in your own house (local terms and conditions apply).
Acquiring Your Internet Surfing License
Getting your Internet Surfing License is a necessary prerequisite in making the web safe for everyone. Before governments made the ISL mandatory, people often found themselves lost in the myriad of web sites, naively double-clicking Hit The Monkey to Win iPad ads, finding themselves spammed by pop-unders. Acquiring the license typically takes only between 2-5 days of education by your local Surf Training School. You will need to carefully prepare for the final test, in which you are required to answer simple questions like:
- What is a pyramid scheme, and do they really work?
- How do I replace the solar cells on my cyber glove?
- Why exactly is it bad for people to badmouth their governments or big companies online?
- Why is it illegal to surf without a RealIdentity card?
- In which year did Google buy the internet?
Product Placement
As you may know, product placement and paid product mentions in videos and text replaced all other forms of advertisement. Keep in mind – without such product placement, the internet as we know it could not be paid for, and would not exist! All major content providers agreed to switch to product placement instead of separated forms of advertisement in 2014, and since 2019, your government’s politicians in over 80 countries are on board too, peppering their political speeches with commercial references. This allows you to pay less taxes, so it’s a win-win situation.
Technical Jargon
Sometimes you will run across abbreviations specific to the internet. If you’re not used to this tech speak, keep this glossary within reach or load it into your brain extension module. Some key words are:
- WWW - Literally “World Wide Web”, an expression used in the beginnings of the web. It has since grown out of use but is still heard by certain older netizens. Like communism, it was an appealing yet completely unrealistic idea.
- Virus - A virus, often called “computer virus” by oldtimers, is a program entering through your brain chip and meant to stimulate your commercial desires. If you find yourself in the supermarket with the sudden urge to buy enormous amounts of a certain brand of cereals, it might be due to such a “computer virus.” These programs are clearly illegal; stimulating commercial desires via brain chips is required to be opt-in, and has a minimum legal age of 6.
- LOL - The word by word meaning of this abbreviation has been lost in history – you may remember that the 2015 CleanUpTheNet Act accidentally deleted quite a bit of archive material – though it is generally interpreted as a form of laughter (it has also replaced Bless You as a reply to when someone sneezes).
Earning Money on the Internet
There are many ways to earn money on the internet. Here is just a brief overview of some of the legal activities that can earn you a dollar or two:
- If you can get a job as a BrainWorker, you will answer simple semi-automated questions like “Is the person depicted in the photo male or female" for 8 hours a day. Answering questions like these will help you power the algorithms of datacrunching companies like Google.
- If you’re lucky to score the high-paid job of an Idea Placer, you will be entering the parts of the internet where you can add comments or enter chats, influencing others by mentioning how great a product, idea or person is. The US government alone employs around 150,000 Idea Placers around the web.
- Work as a Content Rewriter. Every day, new non-localized articles, images, news bits and user comments are entering the internet. Before they can be successfully deployed to the localized versions of the net, they need to be rewritten to meet local cultural and legal requirements. As a Content Rewriter, it is your job to know these requirements and change content accordingly, removing the unsettling parts or rewording those facts and bits which may cause cognitive dissonance with consumers.
Finding a Partner
Are you single and looking for the right partner? Based on your biometric data, your income, your location, as well as the Overall Attitude (OA) results from your Internet Surfing License, anywhere from 10-100 people in your area will be suggested to you. At first, meeting all of them may seem a tedious way to find your true love – who has the time to get to know 10 people if it cannot be assured they are definitely Mr., Mrs. or Rbt. Right? – but keep in mind: your grandmother’s generation had none of these tools available, and they still managed to fall in love.
Stumbling Upon Illegal Content
As safe as the internet is today, there may still be a time when you stumble upon content that you may deem unnecessarily unsettling. Perhaps a report of political issues in a foreign nation is shocking to you; perhaps there’s a bit of accidental nudity which slipped through; perhaps you’ve downloaded a version of a book from 1990 before a Content Rewriter had a chance to change it. Make sure you report these pages to your local internet authorities by using your OS’s Flag button. A team of internet professionals may get back to you with further inquiries if necessary, and also meet you at your home to take a look at your current internet surfing hardware setup and general mental stability.
It’s Easier Than It Seems
With so much information that seems to be necessary to take your first online steps, we don’t want you to be frightened to enter the internet. The web is a relaxing, streamlined and harmonious experience. Decades ago, when the web was invented, it was a place of free roaming chaos. Differing viewpoints, an abundance of copyright infringements, non-localized content, anonymous smear campaigns, unapproved software and more roamed the WWW. Compared to then, we’re truly lucky to be accessing the internet in 2025, not 1995. Welcome to the net, and enjoy your stay!
FCC "Quietly Holding Talks" About Net Neutrality with AT&T, Verizon, Google and Others
The Wall Street Journal writes:
Federal Communications Commission officials are quietly holding talks with phone and cable companies about a legislative compromise that would give the agency authority over Internet lines without the need to adopt a controversial proposal to reregulate Internet lines.
FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus and other senior FCC staffers are holding closed-door meetings with a small group of lobbyists representing Internet providers, including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and Internet services providers, such as Google Inc. and Internet phone provider Skype Ltd. (...)
Public-interest groups were fuming about the private meetings with industry lobbyists, however. The agency did not invite any public-interest groups to attend the negotiation sessions.
Freepress.net comments:
President Obama pledged to “take a back seat to no one” in his support for Net Neutrality. His appointee to the FCC, Chairman Julius Genachowski, promised to bring a new era of transparency to proceedings on this and other important issues.
Yet now the FCC is huddling with industry lobbyists in closed-door meetings to cut a deal on the future of the Internet.
[Via Reddit.]
Should Google Offer Ad Opt-Out Based on Categories or Companies?
Should Google give its users the chance to opt out of specific ad categories? Giannis thinks so, writing (spacing adjusted):
I’ve been so sick of watching the same ads again and again, that I’ve event tried using AdBlock. Great software, but I don’t want to block all of my ads but just the annoying ones!
You would think that by showing the same ad over 20 times in 5 minutes (that’s no exaggeration, I’ve counted them), Google would understand that I’m not going to click it anyway, but that’s asking too much I guess.
I don’t believe that there aren’t any other relevant of useful ads for me to see. Google needs to try harder.
It would be great if I could choose my ads somehow or perhaps block a specific category or vendor.
Every now and then, as webmaster of GamesfortheBrain.com, I’m getting a mail from users along the lines of “My family won’t ever look at your site again because there’s half-naked sword-yielding ladies seen to the right”. Or, “The game to the left won’t load properly, all I see is the ad banner” (sometimes the Flash-based ads seem to block other stuff). It would be great for the site if users had a button to hide those ads users don’t like (replacing them with perhaps more agreeable ones), or offer users to apply temporary company blocks or so (half a year?). This would also provide Google with statistical info on which ads might be dubious and worth checking again. All I can do in replying to those requests is say that I wish these ads weren’t there, and that I didn’t manually pick them, though that I don’t necessarily even see the same ones from my country... then ask them to tell me the domain, which I can add to my AdSense domain block list.
What do you think?
Google, Apple and Microsoft Showing Off HTML Capabilities
Google has created an (only subtly branded, mostly trying to be neutral looking) HTML5 showcase, presentation and tutorial called HTML 5 Rocks (on a side-note, this site is inaccessible from China).
What exactly HTML5 will be though in popular usage may be decided in new browser and standard battles. Take Apple’s HTML5 showcase, for instance: once you click on the demos using Firefox, a message pops up saying “You’ll need to download Safari to view this demo.” If HTML5 is meant to be a cool cross-browser things solving all our problems, then certainly it would work in more than just Safari, right? (Google too in the first version of their Chrome Experiments showcase site warned you when opening demos in Firefox – which often worked fine – that other browsers than Chrome might cause problems and be risky to use.)
Microsoft, too, is giving developers a taste of their version of the future with the latest preview of Internet Explorer 9. As Ars Technica says, it brings “support for HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements, 2D graphics using the <canvas> element, and support for embedded fonts using the WOFF standard”. Trying to play a preview video of this at the MSDN Blog, you’ll see the button message: “Install Microsoft Silverlight”. (When companies educate us about new technologies, it’s worth keeping in mind that they may be at least partially self-interested, and buttons like these are a good reminder that interests among competitors aren’t fully aligned.)
Now, if it’s true that browser companies do get together in more standards consolidation, in another area in the meantime – the one of mobile applications, including devices like the iPad – we’re seeing a move away from the open web and towards more fragmented device-specific app store programs. Let’s see if in 2015, when (hypothetically speaking) an element like Video or Canvas finally works in 99% of the browsers, mainstream consumers aren’t already accessing most of their software through walled gardens of Chrome Extensions Web Stores/ Apple Stores/ Geolocation IP-Restrictions/ Facebook apps.
Google Spreadsheets Now Working in China
When Google decided to redirect requests to their .cn (Mainland China) domain to .hk (Hong Kong), some people speculated that more of Google would now be blocked. Actually, Google.com still works as before, and at least one Google service can be added to the unblocked list now, too (though not necessarily with any causality): I’m now able to access Google Spreadsheets from within China. While other parts of Google Docs worked for me, this one I previously couldn’t access from China either.
To call this a trend would be overreaching – I don’t know what causes blocks like these to appear or disappear, and it’s worth noting that sometimes, it may also be a technology change at Google (say, moving the domain of an inclusion file) that may cause a block to disappear. At the moment, the biggest Google-related blocks still going on where I live – location within China may matter – are YouTube, Blogspot, Picasa Web Albums (with momentary lapses to normalness, if I’m not mistaken), as well as many Google Image results.
YouTube Wins Against Viacom
From the YouTube blog yesterday:
Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.
Roger Browne in the forum comments:
This is great news, not just for Google themselves, but for users of all services like YouTube.
It basically means that YouTube is legally in the clear to host content uploaded by its users, even if that content is subject to unexpired copyright, provided the copyright holder doesn’t actively object.
Effectively it enshrines, as the default position, that this content may be hosted.
Now, if only the world’s lawmakers would give the same rights to each individual, that they give to the corporations.
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