Internet economics
What a week for the tech generation as the power of web revenue allows people to profiteer from tragedy
It’s fair to say that the Internet is experiencing massive shock at the sudden death of Michael Jackson, King of Pop over a career spanning some five decades. It seems to have halted all news channels in their tracks. We’ll come back to that soon but first, here’s a rundown of what else happened this week:
Nicolas Sarkozy’s address to the French government earlier in the week has now been overshadowed but let’s not forget the controversy he courted; in a major policy address, he steadfastly expressed the opinion that the burka - a garment covering women from head to toe - undermined dignity and reduced Muslim women to servitude. Putting forward the idea of a parliamentary commission, he said [“We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity.”] [“That is not the idea that the French republic has of women's dignity,”] he continued. A surprising conflict between forward-thinking and stigmatisation.
In Stateside news, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke denied the Fed has pressured the Bank of America into taking over Merrill Lynch, saying that the US central bank had in fact acted with the [“highest integrity”]. In these times of financial tumult, it’s certainly a story to keep your eyes on for the next foreseeable.
In news closer to home, the Office of Fair Trading has announced that even if it loses its appeal in the House of Lords, it will still pursue bank overdraft charges as unfair. The stasis is such that the banks are still trying to overturn previous rulings allowing the OFT to investigate their overdraft fees; Jonathan Crow, QC, for the OFT, spoke of a concern [“that banks are capitalising on a mistake”].
The Law Lords may end up referring some issues to the European Court of Justice, further delaying a final judgment on an issue going back some three years now. The claims involve around one million people who have issued formal requests for the return of their unauthorised overdraft charges, and in time, could lead to the complete restructuring (and removal of ‘accidental overdrafts’) of current accounts across the board.
Back to the main story, and the fact that the leading news portals broke Michael Jackson’s passing from a Hollywood gossip blog entrenches the imprint of the current generation. The Internet storm that has ensued is like no other; bloggers racing against time to boost their search-optimisation, feed into Twitter, re-hash old content, make a quick buck from AdWords – it’s astonishing to see that the sad death of a music legend has been at least partially overshadowed by the rampant desire to drive traffic to any of many essentially duplicated websites.
What a week…
