Short Takes On The News: Google Reader, The Apple e-Book Case, TLDs, And Law Applications

Google is killing Google Reader as of July 1, 2013.  I don’t use the product myself (or RSS for that matter), so I have no feelings about the move one way or the other.  However, any numbers of articles in the popular and semi-popular press express shock and/or sadness at the announcement.  Felix Salmon writes a Reuters post asking whether Google has killed RSS altogether, though he suggests that Facebook and Twitter feeds may have replaced the immediate need for RSS.  A post in Socialmedia Today offers instructions on how to move to other RSS readers out there.  Ars Technica posits that an equivalent of Google Reader will wind up as part of Google+.  That wouldn’t be surprising as Google seems committed to creating more reasons for subscribers to mingle on Plus pages.  CBS News reports that Digg has announced it is building a substitute reader to fill the gap.

Poor Tim Cook.  The Apple CEO has been ordered by Judge Denise Kote to give a deposition to the Government in the Apple e-book antitrust case.  He had declined due to lack of any unique knowledge about the arrangement with publishers according to paidContent.  It was Steve Jobs’ baby all the way.  Bloomberg fills in a few more details.  Cook was running Apple on a day-to-day basis while Jobs’ illness played out.  Other depositions from Apple employees suggest Cook did have private conversations with Jobs about e-books.  There’s something about that “under oath” thing that helps bring these things out.  Apple is the only defendant left in the case with the publishers having settled.

It seems that Amazon’s attempt to gain the top-level-domains (TLD) of .book and .author (and others) is raised the ire of the Authors Guild, Barnes & Noble, and other objectors.  ICANN has approved the creation of additional TLDs and the land rush is on with Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others attempting to snap up domains.  Amazon potentially would be the one who would control registration for .book sites and could conceivably keep the domain for its own use.  The Guild thinks this is anticompetitive.  My reaction to the Guild in past scrums such as the Apple e-book case and the Google scanning case is the Guild is wrong.  Here, I think the organization is absolutely right.  I can see Google controlling .goog in a similar way as the TLD is reflective of its corporate name.  However, .book and .author are too generic to be controlled strictly by Amazon.  The comment period is closed, but more information on what ICANN is doing is here.

Finally, the latest LSAC figures are no comfort to deans who may be ruffled by the latest U.S. News law school rankings:

As of 03/08/13, there are 323,167 Fall 2013 applications submitted by 46,587 applicants. Applicants are down 17.9% and applications are down 21.6% from 2012.  Last year at this time, we had 84% of the preliminary final applicant count.  Last year at this time, we had 88% of the preliminary final application count.       

The charts are here.  Many are asking the question why the University of North Texas is opening the UNT Dallas College of Law for business in Fall of 2014 in light of figures that are not likely to get better in the coming years.  Is Texas really an underserved legal market?  [MG]