Stanford University uses Disney characters mashed together to explain the “fair use” defence in US copyright law and to argue against extending the protection.

Technorati Tags: legal, media

The Pentagon has restricted access to 13 social media sites, reports Paid Content. Security – viruses and phishing, not breaches of official secrets, were cited as the main reasons. Really?

Technorati Tags: social media

Paid Content has the skinny on the merger of Thomson and Reuters in the media deal of the year (so far).

Thomson will change its name to Thomson-Reuters Corporation. Reuters will be known as Thomson-Reuters PLC. The combined Thomson Financial unit and Reuters financial and media businesses will be called Reuters. The existing Thomson professional businesses – legal, tax and accounting, scientific and healthcare – will together be known as Thomson-Reuters Professional. Thomson-Reuters PLC and Thomson-Reuters Professional will have identical boards of management.

Technorati Tags: m&a, media, online

There has been much speculation that Yahoo! and Microsoft may merge to combat the threat from Google. Forrester’s Charlene Li gives her take on the rationale.

Technorati Tags: GYM, m&a, predictions

It’s easy to forget that Microsoft is the largest software company on the planet, especially when the news is relentlessly against them. This week they unveiled financial results which show just how resilient they are: revenue up 32% to $14.4bn for the quarter and profit up 65% to $4.93bn. There’s life in the old dog yet.

Technorati Tags: GYM

Page 3 of The Observer today was entirely given over to a story about the backlash against “the web’s endless cacophony”. Citing British-born Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur out at the end of the month, it argues that the rise of self-publishing is a direct threat to truth and discernment as administered by “experts”. It targets Wikipedia, MySpace and YouTube, among others, and has only a couple of sentences in defence by Jeff Jarvis. I thought it was an extraordinarily intemperate piece of unbalanced journalism, and even Keen was dismissive on his blog today. It sounds a bit like a wounded “old media” stalwart trying to make sense of a tidal wave of change, and failing.

Technorati Tags: media, newspapers, web2

Google has reached the number one spot in as a website and as a brand, points out John Battelle, citing two separate sources.

Technorati Tags: GYM, search

PC World sets out to find out as it road-tests a bunch of contenders. The verdict? Google is still best, but others are coming up fast.

Technorati Tags: search

What is Web 3.0? Robert Scoble, the ex-Microsoft blogger, has some ideas….

Technorati Tags: web, web2