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I have just read a very interesting post on the Google vs Viacom lawsuit on Mashable.com (a leading social networking blog).

(N.B. If you are new to the topic check the previous post on this blog for background info).

The Mashable article is very condemning of Viacom in making their requests for logging history, and also critical of the US judge who ruled in their favour on the action, mainly out of anger that Youtube users might now be at risk from facing potential (and probably successful) copyright violation lawsuits from Viacom.

So Viacom’s lengthy court case with Google over Youtube copyright infringement is finally coming to a head. A US court has ruled that Google will have to hand over the entire Youtube logging database, approximately 12 terabytes of files, after Viacom complained about roughly 160,000 Youtube clips of their shows (total views; over 1.5bn), posted in violation of copyright laws.

The log files contain details of all userIDs and IP addresses for every single video view on record to date, which understandably Google is not keen to share with Viacom…

I have been thinking lately about our reliance on portable gadgets to provide distraction and entertainment in situations where a decade or two ago people would have had none. I am talking about the moments on the move perhaps, or on public transport, where we plug in our iPods for a bit of music, or get some handheld device or other out to do a bit of work - or play the odd game.

Prominent web commentator Seth Finkelstein is no fan of Wikipedia - and even less so of its founder Jimmy Wales. Finkelstein’s Infothought blog regularly features sharp criticisms of both, and while sometimes it can be perhaps overly negative about Wikipedia itself (he likens its functioning to that of a sweatshop, due to the ‘exploitation’ of unpaid contributors), I cannot help but feel that when he is critical of Wales he is sometimes right.

Here’s an interesting statistic: Apple’s 2008 sales estimate for the iPhone is 10m, while the global mobile phone market as a whole is expected to shift 1bn handsets in the same period. Therefore, assuming these estimates end up being at least somewhat accurate, the iPhone will account for only 1% of mobile phone sales in 2008.

Question is; if the actual sales are relatively low (as they clearly are), how come the iPhone is pretty much far and away the most recognisable and ‘famous’ model out there?