Projo Subterranean Homepage News

The PayPal story: PayPal -- give 'em a credit card number and pay anybody for anything; if it's eBay, they already fill in the auction details -- could have replaced the banking industry for most personal payments. It didn't.

This story (Who Killed PayPal?) at ReasonOnline buries the lead, bemoans that it didn't fulfill a mission far punier and unlikely than replacing consumer bill payment ("a way for people to protect the money they earn from greedy governments and protect private purchases from the prying eyes of regulators.":) and writes the headline off the ending rather than the lead.

But along the way, you get the details of what happened to PayPal.

Album: Bob Dylan is a rave review by the Independent (U.K.) of the ostensible score of Scorsese's Dylan movie, Bootleg Series Vol 7: No Direction Home on Columbia (as always):

It all adds up to a compelling portrait of an artist working at such a pitch of fiery creativity he broke the very mould of his medium.

When Blame Knocks on the Wrong Door:
"Since Fox News wrongly identified a La Habra home as that of a terrorist, its five- member family has faced an angry backlash."

An outrageous story in the L.A. Times.

In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London.

Hilal, whom Loftus identified by name during the broadcast, moved out of the house about three years ago. But the consequences were immediate for the Voricks...

Subgeniuses felt the call:

......Last weekend, someone spray-painted "Terrist" on their home. Police, who have regularly patrolled their house since the day after the broadcast, now station a squad car across the street.

"John Loftus has been reprimanded for his careless error, and we sincerely apologize to the family," said Fox spokeswoman Irena Brigante.

Loftus also apologized and told The Times last week that "mistakes happen."

"I'm terribly sorry about that. I had no idea. That was the best information we had at the time," he said.

The whereabouts of the actual alleged terrorist, Iyad K. Hilal, are not mentioned, but he is identified as a Garden Grove grocery store owner, so he shouldn't be that hard to find.

The result of America's biggest filesharing case is already hampering innovation, says Ben Hammersley in the Guardian (U.K.):

...The result is that programmers with a good idea will have to prove to everyone, and specifically their backers, that they are operating entirely without the risk of a lawsuit. This is hard to do: indeed, so hard, that many backers aren't giving them the chance in the first place.

Furthermore, given that the fundamental point of the internet is the moving of data from one place to another, the area of chilled innovation is greater than you might think. Does advertising a system that allows for large email attachments induce copyright infringement? Could the features of broadband connections, which make large files easier to deal with, make it an inducement to illegal filesharing? When a photo-sharing site or blogging tool proudly proclaims the ease of placing material online, does that make it an inducement to breach copyright?

It doesn't really matter. The fact that the answers are fuzzy means that small innovators will run out of money for their lawyers long before the record labels do.

Pitchfork: Top 100 albums of the '90s. Number 1: Radiohead, OK Computer

Patriots v. Packers, 8 p.m.