Muslim Community Lobby Ireland is an independent organization established 1st May 2007. Its motto is TO USE THE VOTE RIGHTLY AND TO RAISE THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY AWARNESS WITH THEIR RIGHTS AND TO PROMOTE TOLERANCE AND UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER EXISTING GROUPS. لترشيد استعمال الصوت الانتخابي ولتوعية وتعريف المسلمين بحقوقهم في ايرلندا وان يعيشوا بتفهم للواقع وللجماعات الاخرى الموجودة على الساحة

Friday, July 24, 2009

Opinion: Justice Department's fear of Google book publishing is misplaced




Afraid of Google taking over the world? The Justice Department seems to be. It recently confirmed its antitrust investigation into the Google Book Search Settlement, citing "public comments expressing concern" as impetus for the inquiry. European Union officials have also started sniffing around.

These concerns are misguided, and outmoded antitrust regulation will stunt the growth of the emerging book search market.
Google launched its Book Search project in 2004 with the worthy goal of digitizing and indexing the world's books. Litigation promptly ensued. In 2005, the Authors Guild filed a class-action copyright infringement suit on behalf of all owners of book copyrights.
In a settlement proposed last year, Google negotiated a license to digitize these books. Google would pay $45 million upfront, pay royalties on all book search revenues going forward, and create a registry to enable authors to receive payment. The settlement must be approved by Judge Denny Chin, who is presiding over the case and has slated a hearing for October.
The most contentious issue concerns "orphan works," copyrighted texts that are no longer in print and whose owners cannot be found. Without the aggregation of copyrights by the class-action lawsuit, Google would not have been able to obtain a license to these works. Some critics have argued that granting Google a license in this manner will exploit the rights of orphan works authors, which they claim should

be in the public domain. Perhaps, but this is not a matter of antitrust concern.

Many of the public comments decrying the settlement come from Google's largest competitors. The Internet Archive, which has scanned 1.5 million books to date, claims that Google will monopolize the market for orphaned texts. But the comments by the Archive and others ignore a crucial fact.
The fact that orphan works are out of print implies that these books have little if any market value, and publishers do not consider them profitable to sell. Therefore, they are only available at the few libraries that stock them. In this state, orphan works are unlikely to ever be rediscovered by the market or gain popularity.
Digitizing orphan works will make them available, but there is no guarantee they would acquire market value or earn a profit. Google is paying a high upfront cost for this gambit in both infrastructure investment and settlement payments.
Given all that investment, antitrust penalties on Google would allow its competitors to free-ride on its investment. Internet Archive President Peter Brantley has advocated requiring open access to the orphan works. In practice, that would mean that after Google pays to scan all orphan works, its competitors will be able to pick and choose which ones to offer.
Furthermore, the claim that Google will have exclusive access to orphan works is unfounded. The settlement gives Google a nonexclusive license. New entrants can enter the market at will. Even if the only way to license these works is to settle another class-action lawsuit, the $45 million precedent makes litigation inevitable.
The court must consider whether the rights of orphan work authors will be fairly represented under the settlement. Consumer benefit, not pressure from the Justice Department, should guide the court's decision.
Google is creating a market for orphan works and is making them available for widespread access. Antitrust interference will only distort market incentives and hinder the growth of this nascent sector.JONATHAN HILLEL is a policy fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and a contributor to OpenMarket.org. He wrote this article for the Mercury News.


By Jonathan Hillel

Muslims and Jews From Europe Size Up U.S. as a Model for Coexistence

Can visits to Ellis Island, Yankee Stadium, Manhattan’s 96th Street Mosque, Yeshiva University, the White House and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — among other American landmarks — give Jewish and Muslim leaders from Europe a model that not only will help them combat antisemitism and Islamophobia, but also instill within them a vision for religious integration and interfaith dialogue?
As a delegation of European rabbis and imams toured the United Nations as part of a visit on the morning of July 20, Swiss interfaith activist Hafid Ouardiri took to the General Assembly’s famous lectern and delivered an mock message of how easy it could all be.


“Now, peace is a reality!” he bellowed, to laughs and applause. “This is the peace of the rabbi and the peace of the Muslim together to help the world to live better.”
But shortly after he took the stage, event organizers whisked away Ouardiri and the other delegates. Time was of the essence, they said, and the lectern was off-limits to visitors.
It was a moment that underscored the tenuous nature of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding’s inaugural conference of European religious leaders. For four days in New York and Washington, the group of about two dozen clerics would attempt to balance lofty ideals with complex religious and political realities.
But some participants recognized that not everything was easily translatable.
“The dynamic in the United Kingdom is different,” said Sheikh Muhammad Al-Husseini, a British imam who teaches at Leo Baeck College, a rabbinic seminary in North London.
Rabbi Jackie Tabick of North West Surrey Synagogue echoed her British delegation colleague, citing the lack of a shared assimilation narrative common to both American and British Muslims.
“The historical experience has been terribly different,” she said. “It would seem that the [British] Muslim community does not equate with the societal experience in America.”
In England, Al-Husseini said, Muslims tend to be less educated and less likely to occupy the middle class. In addition, Jews in the U.K. probably would feel “a little more hesitant getting involved,” Tabick said, because of population ratios: Her synagogue has 300 family members, while the local mosque has nearly 3,000.
Still, most conference participants — Tabick included — said that the mere existence of a forum for interfaith communication represents some measure of progress.
Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, who serves as chairman of the foundation, said, “Dialogue and tolerance leads to love” — a sentiment he said is grounded in the scriptures of each of the world’s major religions.
“It’s written in different languages by men of different colors, but it’s always the same rap,” he told the Forward. “These men of faith… for them it’s simple. Getting them in the room is such an obvious step and such a simple idea.”
Rabbi Marc Schneier, the foundation’s president, said he hoped the interfaith mission can serve as a springboard for continued communication. The conference also may contribute to the extension of the Twinning Project, a year-old foundation effort that pairs mosques and synagogues in the hopes that Jewish and Muslim congregants will experience, and thereby demystify, the other religion’s culture and house of worship.
Schneier said his organization has focused on Muslim-Jewish relations in only the past two years, after 17 years of centering on black-Jewish relations. To expand that focus globally, he said, has been a foundation goal for only about half a year.
Even so, European participants said they appreciate the outreach effort.
“We in Europe are in dire need for dialogue between Muslims and Jews. We need to, through dialogue, show and struggle for our rights, our freedoms, our status,” said Senaid Kobilica, a Norwegian imam. “We have much to learn from America. Problems of racism, discrimination, marginalization… that’s our problem in Europe, and America can definitely be the model for that.”
Though differing colonialist histories and immigration sagas have made the experiences of North American and European Muslims vastly dissimilar, Canadian diversity activist Karen Mock said that the trick to truly using the United States as a model for interfaith engagement is to avoid viewing America as a panacea.
“I don’t think any model is totally applicable when you move to different contexts,” she said. “What is important is building relationships, getting to know the ‘other,’ building on what is applicable.”
Speaking to the conference after a roundtable discussion at the U.N., Rabbi Reuben Livingstone of England’s Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue, said he understood that bringing up some issues wasn’t worth the drama the discussion would cause.
“There are some things I’m aware we won’t be talking about, and some things we shouldn’t be talking about,” he said. “Primarily, we need not put any stumbling blocks before us in the simple process of talking about those things we can talk about.”
Having the conference based in New York and Washington further aids that effort. Unlike the Old World or the Middle East, where “history weighs heavily on our shoulders,” America serves as a symbol of change and innovation, Livingstone said.
“This is America, where history is not so heavy, and where new beginnings are the ethos and order of the day. We need that sense of new beginnings more than ever,” the rabbi continued. “It’s all well and good to talk of the great lessons. It’s rather another thing to have the strength to carry them forward.”
Contact Alex Weisler at weisler@forward.com

Intel Cuts Nearly 300 Employees in Ireland

Intel yesterday announced that the company will cut 294 jobs from its Irish plant in Leixlip, County Kildare.
Zoom
Intel has said that the job cuts are a result of the consolidation of two of its factories on the property which is situated just outside of the Irish capital, Dublin. The chip maker said that the cuts were a direct result of a decline in demand for older 200mm technologies.“The fact of the matter is the older 200mm technologies are coming to the end of their useful life and there aren’t that many customers left for those products. The key is repurposing ourselves; identifying a new transition path and winning new investment is vital,” an Intel spokesperson said, according to Silicon Republic.Intel has begun a three month consultation to determine which staff will be the first to go come October. The compulsory layoffs are the first for Intel Ireland following the company's request for 300 voluntary redundancies at the beginning of the year. Intel has invested more than $6 billion in its Irish facilities since it first set up shop in Ireland back in 1989.
Source :
Tom's Hardware US

Majority of Irish believe economic crisis will get worse

TWO-THIRDS of Irish people believe the worst of the economic crisis has yet to come with almost a quarter saying they are not confident of having a job in two years’ time.
These are two of the key findings of a new Eurobarometer survey on employment and the economic crisis, which highlights the prevailing pessimistic mood among the public.
The survey, which will be published by the European Commission today, shows that just 21 per cent of Irish people say the economic crisis has now reached its peak and things will start to recover.
In contrast, two thirds of respondents say that the worst is yet to come.
Almost a quarter of people, some 24 per cent, say they are not confident of having a job in two years time while 19 per cent say they are not confident of holding on to their jobs in the coming months.
This represents a major drop in confidence since the last major Eurobarometer survey on employment was conducted in June 2006 when just 5 per cent of Irish people said they were not confident of keeping their job in the coming months.
Across the EU the mood is marginally more optimistic with 28 per cent of Europeans saying they feel the crisis has reached its peak and things are recovering little by little. Some 18 per cent of EU respondents to the survey fear they won’t have a job in two years time.
Irish people hold a more positive view of the EU’s impact on employment and social affairs than other Europeans – a statistic that may have some bearing on the second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in October.
Some 62 per cent of Irish people surveyed say what they see, read or hear about the union’s activities in the area of employment is positive, compared to an EU average of 52 per cent.
However, this represents a slight fall on the 65 per cent of people who told the 2006 Eurobarometer survey that the EU had a positive impact in the area of employment and social affairs. The number of people who view the EU as having a negative impact has jumped to 18 per cent, up from 9 per cent.
The survey also highlights a trend toward a more flexible workforce in the Republic with 82 per cent of people saying lifetime jobs are now “a thing of the past”. Some 86 per cent of people say work contracts should become more flexible to encourage job creation, which is significantly more than the European average at 73 per cent of people.
Irish people cited: increasing childcare facilities (85 per cent); increased care facilities for elderly people (81 per cent); regular training at work (87 per cent); and supporting people who want to start their own business (86 per cent) as some of the key ways to get more people into work and help them to stay in work longer in the survey.
Research for the Eurobarometer survey was conducted via 1,007 face-to-face interviews in Ireland in late May and early June this year.
Irish attitudes to economic crisis Two-thirds of Irish people believe the worst of the crisis is yet to come 24 per cent of Irish people are not confident of having a job in two years’ time 19 per cent are not confident of keeping their job in coming months 62 per cent view EU action in employment area as positive 18 per cent see EU action in employment area as negative Three-quarters of Irish people have not participated on a training course in last year 82 per cent say lifetime jobs are now a thing of the past 85 per cent say increasing childcare facilities is effective in increasing employment

The Irish Times