Online privacy has been a concern for years but only in recent years, with the explosive growth of the social web, has the concern grown about a person’s own words coming back to harm him or her in the future.  That’s because nearly everyone is using the social web these days, and many are only just beginning to realize that what they publish today could still be found in a Google search years from now.

Newstex syndicates the authoritative content from Thomson Reuters’ podcast, Legal Current, about the business and practice of law, and this week, an interview with Jeffrey Rosen delved into online privacy and the problems associated with exposing too much of oneself in the digital space.  Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor at George Washington University whose article about online privacy, “The End of Forgetting,” appeared in The New York Times Magazine in July.

In Rosen’s interview with the Legal Current podcast, he explains, “The right to privacy tends to cover only the outrageous or the untrue postings, things that are highly offensive to a reasonable person. But when you’re talking about embarrassing or truthful information, there’s not a clear legal right to escape it or to have people take it down.”  You can follow the link to listen to the complete podcast interview with Jeffrey Rosen on Legal Current.  It’s well worth it!

Interestingly, the timing for the Legal Current interview with Rosen couldn’t have been more appropriate.  Just last week, I watched an episode of The Colbert Report that discussed this very topic with the tongue-in-cheek humor viewers expect from host Stephen Colbert.  You can watch the segment clip below (or view it here if the video doesn’t play for you).

Control-Self-Delete — that’s not a bad idea.

The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has an idea that seems to verge quite close to being an act of suppressing freedom of speech with a new $300 “business privilege license” that all bloggers in Philadelphia will be charged if they want to keep writing online. 

All local Philadelphia bloggers will have to pay for the privilege license regardless of whether or not they make any money from their blogs.  Even if a person writes a blog as a hobby, just for fun, or for a personal creative outlet — they’ll have to cough up the $300 to keep blogging.

The online buzz about Philadelphia’s new “business privilege license” is calling it a violation of free speech citing the fact that only people who can afford to pay the $300 license fee will have the ability to express their thoughts on the heretofore free-flow of online information and conversation on the social web that was born of user-generated content and citizen journalism.

MSNBC.com republished an article by Teresa Masterson of NBCPhiladelphia.com, where Masterson makes the following keen observations:

“Blogger Marilyn Bess, whose Ms. Philly Organic Blog has made her a whopping $50 over the past few years, went to the city’s tax amnesty program to explain that she makes pennies on her hobby. They told her to hire an accountant, she told the City Paper. In an economy where jobs are sparse and people try to make ends meet with part-time jobs, taxing the independent, scrappy freelancers and bloggers seems counterproductive. But the emptying of bloggers’ wallets may not be the worst result of these taxes. With the city’s charge being more than what most bloggers make, their voices could be silenced, as the extra expense is enough to discourage many from even having a blog.”

The story even made the news as you can see in the video below:

What do you think?  How can bloggers fight similar tactics from spreading to other cities?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Behavioral targeting for advertising purposes is the subject of an ongoing debate.  On one side are the businesses who use behavioral targeting of consumers’ online activities to serve more ads that are more likely to appeal to specific audiences.  On the other side are consumers who view the tracking of their online activities as an invasion of their privacy.  Interestingly, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is looking into creating a do-not-track list registery similar to the do-not-call list registry that telemarketers must abide by.  In the meantime, the debate continues.

However, there is another party in this debate — online publishers.  They have a stake in this battle, too, and research from a DM2PRO and AudienceScience survey conducted in May 2010 reveals just how much behavioral targeting benefits online publishers.  Take a look at the benefits of offering audience targeting according to the publishers who responded to the survey (from eMarketer):

The data from this study tells us that publishers benefit from behavioral targeting because they can sell more ad space and sell it for higher rates, help their clients make more money, and prove that they’re helping clients make more money because they can offer better metrics.  Based on those survey results, online publishers would certainly be on the business side of the behavioral targeting debate.  In fact, 72% of the respondents to this survey reported that they already offer their clients some form of audience targeting aside from more traditional contextual targeting.

What do you think of this debate?  From a publisher standpoint?  From a consumer standpoint?  Leave a comment and tell us what you think.

The upcoming “affordable” Amazon Kindle includes Wi-Fi access (not 3G)  to download books and more, and it costs just $139.  The upcoming $189 Amazon Kindle includes free 3G access to download books and more.

That’s quite a price difference from the original Kindle as well as Apple’s hot (and pricey) iPad product.  It’s also $10 cheaper than the more competitive Nook ereader from Barnes & Noble.

The $139 and $189 Amazon Kindle devices were only announced recently for pre-orders, but there is already a backlog due to high demand (although Amazon has been known to manufacture backlogs in the past, so it’s impossible to predict what the real pre-order volume looks like) with shipping on new devices now delayed.  New orders will be fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis as new Amazon Kindles become available for shipping.

Sounds like the more affordable Amazon Kindles are already a success.

However, marketing experts are predicting that the Amazon Kindle and other ereaders won’t reach the masses until the price tag drops below $100.  We’ll have to wait and see how the actual sales volume numbers shake out for the more affordable Amazon Kindle devices, but I think the $100 estimate is probably accurate in terms of predicting when ereaders will be purchased in multiple quantities per household across a broad consumer audience.

What do you think?  Do you own an Amazon Kindle, an iPad, Nook or another ereader device?  Leave a comment and tell us what made you decide to buy (or not buy) a particular ereader.

By the way, all blogs syndicated through Newstex are automatically available on Amazon Kindle!  If you’re a Newstex publisher, you can follow the link to get your free Amazon Kindle badge.

comScore released its ranking of online video sites among the U.S. Internet audience for July 2010 this week, and as you might expect, YouTube continues to lead by a very wide margin.  You can see the results in the chart below:

According to the report, 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video in July 2010 with an average of 14.7 hours watched per person.  The monthly rankings didn’t change significantly in terms of market share from previous months, but Facebook did climb one spot to the third position in the ranking list, above Microsoft sites.

In total, 84.9% of the U.S. Internet population viewed online video in July 2010.  The average online video was 4.8 minutes long.  Interestingly, online video ads accounted for 9.8% of online video content viewed in July 2010 but made up just 0.9% of actual online minutes spent viewing online video content during the month.

Of sites known for publishing short-form video content, YouTube by far surpassed all other sites in terms of viewer engagement (i.e., the length of time users actually viewed content).  Hulu also ranked high in terms of viewer engagement, but Hulu is known for publishing long-form video content, so this is to be expected.

It’s an exciting time of growth for online video, and it’s very interesting to keep track of viewer statistics related to online video.  Will another site ever be able to compete with YouTube for short-form video content?  It’s interesting to consider what’s next for online video.  What do you think?