PCIN.net Update

From eWeek:

Google’s continuously raked over the coals regarding the massive amounts of PII (personally identifiable information) it collects, what it does with it, how long it retains that data and what the company might do with it if its merger with DoubleClick goes ahead.

That’s all been ratcheted up to fever pitch over the past few weeks, with two new privacy headlines: complaints being voiced about Google’s new Street View service’s photographs getting too close for comfort and Privacy International’s having flunked Google on its privacy policies and procedures in a report published June 9.

The fury boils down to one question: whether or not it’s OK for Google to own us.

From Yahoo! News:

When Will Nickelson and his daughter want to spend some quality time together, they fire up Nintendo Co.’s Wii and play a few rounds of “Wii Sports” or “Mario Party 8.”

“It’s kind of difficult picking a game for a 7-year-old girl, but she really likes to beat her dad at bowling,” says Nickelson, 30, a stay-at-home dad from Huntsville, Ala.

He’s certainly not alone.

The generation that grew up with “Pac-Man” and “Pong” are now having children of their own. And across the nation, fathers and their kids are finding the virtual worlds of video games a popular place to bond.

Many fathers say the games bring them closer to their kids by providing a safe, convenient way to stay in touch and talk to their children on their own terms.

A national survey released last year by the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry group, found that 35 percent of parents play video games, of which 80 percent play with their children. Mothers, too, were part of the study.

From ZDNet News:

One lazy afternoon, Maer Israel and a colleague ducked out of work to have a double espresso at a nearby cafe in San Francisco.

Several weeks later, the information technology manager at the French American International School was alerted that a picture of him sitting at the cafe could be found on Google’s online map as part of the search giant’s new street-level photo view.

“The HR manager ran into me in the hallway, and she pulled me aside and…said, ‘Do you know that there are cameras everywhere?’” Israel recounted. “Of course, I was a little freaked out because it’s the HR person telling me that we got busted having a coffee next door…My mother is surprised I haven’t been fired.”

Google’s recently unveiled Street View stunned many with its photos of the unsuspecting, from a man climbing a front gate to another walking out of a strip club, but it’s hardly the first time the company has compiled a massive database of material that some would want to remain private. Indeed, Google has for years been storing every Web search and analyzing the topics of Gmail so it can serve customers with related advertisements.

But now that Google is serving up images from the sky with Google Earth, creating street-level images with Street View and tracking customer behavior in cyberspace, some are starting to ask: how much is enough?

From BBC News:

Internet video site YouTube is to test a new video fingerprinting technology to address copyright concerns.

The software will identify unique attributes in video clips and could be used to prevent copyrighted clips from being uploaded without permission.

YouTube executive Chris Maxcy told news agency Reuters that the tool would be tested in a month’s time.

Breach of copyright has been an ongoing issue for the Google-owned video sharing site.