Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:38:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090116/0604453439.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090116/0604453439.shtml ban Google maps and now a large number of police are sweeping through all of Mumbai to find open WiFi networks and get the owners to shut the networks down. Of course, there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for offering an open WiFi network, but it seems that no one is even considering that. Because such networks were used in the past by terrorists and possibly could be again, they all must go.

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]]> blame-the-technology http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090116/0604453439 Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:20:32 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081210/0318383073.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081210/0318383073.shtml
However, an Indian Court is now calling for the software to be banned saying that it "aids terrorists." Of course, so do maps or photographs of hotels, such as those placed online by the hotels themselves, but people aren't overreacting and calling for a ban of those things as well. Yes, we can understand the kneejerk reaction here, and the anger over these horrific attacks. But, banning Google Earth isn't the answer. If Google Earth weren't available, the attacks still would have happened. It's just that the planning would have been different. It's perfectly natural for people to lash out at technology used in a bad way after a tragedy, but hopefully the court won't overreact and will eventually realize the anger should be at the people who actually performed the attacks, not the tools they used.

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]]> oh-please http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081210/0318383073 Tue, 9 Dec 2008 19:29:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081207/1950293050.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081207/1950293050.shtml it wasn't journalism because Twitter reports got facts wrong. That sounds good, but if that's the actual standard, then, well, pretty much nothing is journalism. As Slate is reporting, early reports from the mainstream press seemed to get much of the story wrong as well.

In the heat of an ongoing crisis, it's no surprise that details and facts are somewhat cloudy, and sources aren't (and often can't be) checked, but in the rush to get the news out, information, whether or not it's accurate, is going to get reported anyway. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- so long as it's clear that the information hasn't yet been confirmed. It's better to get the information out there. However, as the Slate report notes, what newspapers could do, is do a much better job cleaning up after the fact -- as we suggested in our story last week about a newspaper's incorrect report that quickly spread around the internet. Rather than put up a correction, the newspaper simply deleted the wrong article and pretended it never happened.

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]]> it's-what-happens-in-the-heat-of-the-moment http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081207/1950293050