Online Piracy Costing Publishers Millions, Study Says (Forbes)

New data tries to put a value on copying and pasting from media sites.

Web publishers struggling with the devastating effects of a collapsing advertising market are also losing millions of dollars thanks to a problem as old as the commercial Internet: piracy.

At least 1.5 times as many people are reading publishers’ stories on third party sites than on the publishers’ own sites, says a new study by Attributor, a California-based start-up that searches the Web for copyrighted content based on extended strings of a story’s text. Linked back or not, that cribbed content leaves publishers saddled with the creation costs but none of the ad revenue for presenting it to a reader.

Harper Gov’t not renewing its program to monitor the world’s fresh water

Haper government wants out of a Canada led United Nations program that monitors freshwater around the world.  Environment Canada spokesman John Carey says they system to track water quality in 100 countries is no longer a priority.  Carey says Ottawa won’t renew a trust fund worth 1.5 million dollars for the United Nations program.  Water experts say they’re shocked Canada would abandon a program it has led for 30 years, just as water quality is emerging as a critical issue.  University of Ottawa professor Errol Mendes says it’s the latest snub by the Conservatives of international efforts once led by Canada.  The Global Environment Monitoring System collect data from 2,700 tracking stations around the globe.  

(Source: The Canadian Press)

NBC axes high-profile TV shows (AP)

NEW YORK – Add Christian Slater and Brooke Shields to the list of actors with TV failures on their records.
NBC is pulling the plug on `My Own Worst Enemy’ and `Lipstick Jungle,’ two of its more high-profile young series.
The word comes from two network executives who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the decision.
The network will not order new episodes of either series when their current orders – nine in the case of `My Own Worst Enemy’ and 13 for `Lipstick Jungle’ – run out, the executives said.
`My Own Worst Enemy’ was given a big promotional pitch by NBC.
The psychological thriller stars Slater as a man who has two separate identities and lives, and slowly comes to learn about the situation.
(The Associated Press)