speech

It’s too early to lock down the potential (or failures) of crowd-sourcing. Where Wikipedia, the 4th most visited resource on the Internet, logs incredible, meteoric success, and where the politicization inherent to mob rule has dragged down the populist ideals of Digg.com and others, the collaborative spirit continues to be tested and modified. In America, as on the Internet.

Historically, in the brick-and-mortar world, we've had courts to settle disputes. Online, there are terms of service agreements and invisible judges determining, usually at the behest of the loudest and largest mob, who is guilty of crossing the line between conscious protest and hate speech.

A recent federal court ruling accomplished two things: protection of online message board operators from liability for anonymous third party comments; and the funniest judicial opinion ever written.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may be on the verge of a revolutionary development in speech and video algorithmic technology. Their test subject: a 9 month-old baby boy, who is the center of a project called "The Human Speechome Project."

The boundaries of free speech are oft debated and rarely decided conclusively. The issue with Traffic-Power is no different. The search-marketing firm has had some troubles recently. The company is going after two websites in a high stakes free speech issue they may help define and determine the future of what people can say on the Internet.

Around the world, those who had quietly smoldered for fear of offending the powers that be have found a voice in blogs. For many, the blogosphere has become an anonymous cry to the masses. For the brave, not so anonymous, but equally as scathing, sounding boards are giving them words they hadn't dared utter in public.

The product has been built on Windows and .Net; a future version of Exchange will be speech enabled.

Pithy commentary in Business Week on the fall from grace of CNN news head Eason Jordan over his remarks that US troops target journalists in Iraq ...