The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a valid point in explaining the under-anticipated downside of going paperless. Once you’re gone, your family may not know where to begin to look for your accounts, assets, insurance policies, retirement plans, etc. So you should write all that information down and keep it in a safe place, right?

Well, not exactly. Having a list of your passwords and private information all in one place is asking for trouble.

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Trent Reznor gave an interesting interview over at the Herald Sun. In it he states, “It’s a very odd time to be a musician on a major label, because there’s so much resentment towards the record industry that it’s hard to position yourself in a place with the fans where you don’t look like a greedy asshole."

He goes on to say, “I’ve have one record left that I owe a major
label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I
could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you
could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay
$4 through PayPal.”

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Fair Isaac Corp. of Minneapolis is a "fraud-detection specialist" which has released a study showing that Internet advertising put out by "online marketing vehicles" is subject to deceptive clicks that are
occurring far more frequently than network operators
acknowledge. These reports and studies seem to pop up all over the place. In fact, last year the Economist was bold enough to claim that "’click fraud’ might undermine the industry."

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Lee Gomes of Wall Street Journal fame has an interesting Q&A with Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He thinks files should have expiration dates because human beings are "better off" when we forget certain things.

It’s an interesting argument, though it leaves me wanting to know more of the reasoning before I’m ready to support any law mandating it. In fact, it goes against the latest movement of society to be more interested in genealogy and family history. But check out the Q&A:

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In light of the recent hoopla, could Digg die?

After trying to keep an HD DVD crack from being linked on
its site, Digg was subjected to an onslaught of users resubmitting the code
faster than the posts could be deleted. Eventually, Digg decided to stop trying
to censor the submissions.

Digg founder Kevin Rose has hinted at the possibility of
Digg’s being sued, and possibly even shut down. Could this happen?

Yes.

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an interesting Q&A with DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt about the pending acquisition by Google. Rosenblatt tries to reassure consumers and privacy advocates that this merger won’t change how safe their data is. He says things like, "Ad-serving information collected by DoubleClick has always been the property of our clients, not us… so we are very comfortable with our current policy."

"Current" being the operative word. Companies change policies all the time. It’s nice DoubleClick’s "current policy" protects me, but it’s not difficult to see why privacy advocates would want to see a force external to the company to ensure this going forward. So are his answers reassuring? Judge for yourself, the Q&A follows:

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Tim Westergren, founder of Internet radio station Pandora, has sent out a letter to listeners asking for help regarding the increase of licensing fees specifically for Internet radio. It revolves around a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to nearly triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. Click here to help save Internet radio (the process is streamlined and takes approx. 30 seconds) and read below too see what Tim has to say:

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On Friday, Google announced its plans to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion beating the competition, which included Microsoft, Time Warner, and Yahoo. But now Microsoft, AT&T, Time Warner, and other Internet and media companies are publicly opposing the deal and encouraging antitrust regulators to take action to prevent it from happening.

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