Google + Amazon = Googlezon

In 2014 Googlezon, a hybrid of Google and Amazon, will give birth to EPIC, according to this short film:

"The "Evolving Personalized Information Construct" is the system by which our sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered and delivered. Everyone contributes now - from blog entries, to phone-cam images, to video reports, to full investigations. Many people get paid too - a tiny cut of Googlezon's immense advertising revenue, proportional to the popularity of their contributions."

In this dystopia/futopia the New York Times will be done in for after the US Supreme Court has rejected its claim that the fact stripping robots of Googlezon violate copyright. The people's media will kill the old guard, and an (un)holy alliance will set us free. Or not? The movie is a bit ambiguous about this, but it provides some gritty eye candy.

Later: This post at Copyfight is right in sinc with the movie. Lawrence Lessig speaks his mind in The LA Times on recent steps of Google (towards Googlezon):

[The] excitement around Google's extraordinary plan has obscured a dirty little secret: It is not at all clear that Google and these libraries have the legal right to do what is proposed...Google, to its credit, has decided to accept these risks. It can afford to fight the lawsuits, and the benefit to society and Google from such access apparently outweighs its potential costs.

But not everyone is Google. Not every library could afford the risks that Google can. And so before we accept a world where only a Google can build valuable, network-based digital libraries, we should ask whether the system that produces these profound uncertainties is a system that we should change.

- - -

Blog of the creators
More information here (ao transcript of the text)
Thru The Technology Liberation Front