And before I sign off for the weekend...

Just thought I would bring something to every one's notice, though I'm a bit late to the party.
Raju says that Sunita is a 'thief' (or at least employs thieves). (would this be called Copyright 'Infringemint' in this case?)
SpicyIP's take on the issue - (this is a great blog for anyone who tracks IP matters in India).
Such fun! Stay tuned for more and wait until Sunita's 'dear friend' Suhel wades into the issue.
PS: Anyone else planning a trip down to watch Russell Peters in Delhi? And Vodafone please stop sending me twenty SMS's a day with messages that I can win money and women by calling a special number.

EDIT: I've been sitting in office waiting for playbacks and generally surfing around - found a fantastic blog which a sure sign of the times!

The shit has hit the fan!

And I'm not talking about the blatant misuse of copyrighted material by newspapers. Which almost invariably occurs in the Edit pages of newspapers - wonder if edit page editors stuck in a 1960's time warp don't quite understand the concept of copyright. But, some argue that Chiddu is really not to blame, after all Chiddu (and the desi economy) is but a mere victim of global greed and GW not content driving the US into ruin has managed to drag the entire world into chaos. I wonder if my mother's idea of withdrawing money and buying gold a few months ago has become an act of sheer genius.
But seriously, Udayan's face during initial market hours as the market collapsed a thousand points in early trade was in marked contrast to the faces of absolute horror that the CNBC US anchors last night. Those guys almost went hysterical with fear and rage - while UM seemed strangely dispassionate, almost Zen-like. Two extremes within twelve hours on the same channel, and I'm not quite sure I was a big fan of either. Well UM was not bad, and I get the idea that one should not perpetuate panic, but now even the language channels have caught on - and even the mainstream CNN-IBN is asking 'Is your money safe?'. Note that CNN-IBN asks crazy rhetorical questions such as 'Have Christians lost faith in India?' where the Congress sends a spokesperson there who says that 'those people' (the Sangh) are going on about Ram-something or the other." Interesting way of pissing off 'those people'. Note to the Congress send erudite people preferably from the majority community to answer criticisms, unless you admit that a large majority of your party is scared of taking action against the Bajrang Dal, lest Hindu votes consolidate against the Congress.
True, the religious whacko's manage to go mad just before election season, but you could almost sense that this was coming. The problem is that all those who claim that they feel strongly against the whacko's on TV and Print won't vote. I hate the whacko's but I cannot possibly vote for this inept government again and I will vote. As much as I think that V.K Malhotra is an old coot, I can't vote for the party that gave us the crappy BRT - even though god knows what can be done with that stretch of road short of re-doing everything.
Anyway, back to the media now I guess. I'm just wondering how Ratan Tata and Bennett have kissed and made up a few short years after the Tata Finance fiasco. The only exclusives before the launch of the Gujju Nano were to ET and ToI. Makes you wonder really. As they say, there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, maybe even Ratan Tata is a lot more pragmatic than people think. I mean the concept of 'Indian pragmatism' not business pragmatic - since the Jaguar-Land Rover is probably going to end up sinking Tata Motors, though apparently they could have even bought General Motors for the same amount of money going by yesterday's share price of GM. I wonder, GM's desi unit CEO, a Brit called Karl Slym is selling a three-year free service program for their cars here, I just don't think that there will be a GM in three years time. Heck, a hell of a lot of other companies won't be there in three years time.
Actually, the economic slowdown has put a cramp on the launch plans of several networks - apparently Triveni TV, the guys who just launched Voice of India TV are holding back on their lifestyle channel launch. Which is a good idea for a while, but what about all the people they hired for massive salaries? And how long will a channel hold on before cutting back staff for unviable channels? As it is appraisals in 2009 will be on the lower end of the scale. And a note to CNBC-TV18, I know that you guys have revamped your feature shows line-up - but isn't this a horrible time to have a show called 'Wealth Creators', nothing against Mitali, but the name of the show and the timing of its launch are a double whammy right now - and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is not exactly a hero of the investing classes right now.

The V can't search Google?

The headline for the story in today's Papermint reads "Google search: Vir Sanghvi. Results: 42,300". So a colleague actually went ahead and performed a search, quite a simple one, no 'AND' operators and guess what? There are only 34,800 results (search conducted 1722 IST 03.03.07) I know Google re-indexes its pages quite often, but a 20 percent downside? Hmm, seems a bit much, wouldn't you say? Of course, the search led me to his HT bio, which would make even the most idolising PR bio-writer cringe!
Anyway, I actually hadn't discovered this because Vir's column isn't about Google, but about copyright. While Vir makes some interesting noises on copyright issues, the noises are fairly old noises. The copyright battle in media has become far more interesting in the West. Look at the world now, digital media, DRM and the pros and cons of DRM (can't really see too many upsides, but anyway!) and Creative Commons. In fact, Creative Commons (under which I plan to move this blog fairly soon) has recently moved to Version 3.0. You cannot do an article on copyright without understanding the complexities of the digital medium. lame, decade-old answers are not the solution. I realise that we work in an industry that has to face the issue of online content-distribution and how best to deal with copyright in the age of the internet.
Though, I am pretty surprised that Vir mentioned the VN Narayanan incident - wherein Vir's predecessor at HT actually lifted an entire article (this is pre-Google mind you!) and passed it off as his own. Anyway, don't read too much into this post, I am just a mischief-monger! Plus, I reckon I have a lot of readers through feeds - and I know a lot of people have started writing in through email lately, and I'll like to thank all of you folks for writing in, but the slow-comment conundrum is something still baffles me!