Spanish ISP Telefonica Claims Google Gets Free Bandwidth; Says Google Should Pay Up

from the can-we-explain-the-internet-to-you? dept

And I thought Ed Whitacre had moved on to run United States General Motors. You may recall that, half a decade ago, when Whitacre was running SBC (prior to its takeover of AT&T), he made sure that a lot more people heard the term "net neutrality," after he claimed that SBC should charge Google and other big online companies. His explanation was that Google and Yahoo and others were "reaching" his customer's for free. This is, of course, wrong. Very, very wrong. It's actually an attempt to double charge, based on the false belief that when you pay for your internet connect, you are only paying for the connection into the cloud, but then not out to any end point. Google is not getting anything for free. It pays (and pays a boatload) for its bandwidth. What Whitacre was trying to do back then was double dip and get everyone to pay twice for their bandwidth. The reasoning was so bizarre that you would have hoped it had died off by now.

No such luck.

Alan Gerow points us to the news that Spanish telco Telefonica's President Cesar Alierta, appears to be channeling Whitacre, by claiming that big sites like Google and Yahoo get too much bandwidth "for free" and he wants to start charging them for it. Just like Whitacre, he's really looking to double dip. Google pays for its bandwidth. What Alierta really means is he wants Google to pay again just to reach his customers over the bandwidth the customers have already paid for. The claim that Google, Yahoo or any of those companies are getting their bandwidth "for free" is ludicrous. But since Alierta believes that Google is getting bandwidth for free, perhaps he'll agree to pay Google's bandwidth bill.

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CBC Gets Two Stories About George Lucas Totally Mixed Up

from the mashup! dept

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but we keep hearing how it's the professional press that actually checks fact, and it's the blogs that rush out stories that are factually weak. And yet... there seem to be plenty of examples of the "professionals" going to press with stories that clearly weren't fact checked or researched. Robert Ring points us to an article in the CBC supposedly about a new film coming from George Lucas. The only problem is that it seems to take two totally separate George Lucas films, and thinks they're the same exact film, making for quite the odd story. You see, Lucas has been working for quite some time on a film called Red Tails, all about the Tuskegee Airmen, which he wrote and executive produced (but didn't direct). That film is in post-production and should be out in the nearish future. Just recently, stories came out about a totally unrelated, and totally different project that Lucas was involved in -- a computer animated musical about fairies. Yeah, don't ask.

These are clearly two separate films... unless you're a reporter for the CBC apparently:

George Lucas is tackling his first musical, a film about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of African-American pilots.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Lucas is working on the movie Red Tails at his Skywalker Ranch in California.

Plot details for the computer-animated film are not being released, but it is known that fairies play a role.

While we're big supporters of mashups and remix culture, this isn't exactly what we meant...

The article continues to bounce back and forth over the details of the two movies, as if they were the same thing. Perhaps this is why the CBC put in place a terms of service that required sites to get permission before quoting any CBC articles...

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Some More Data On How CwF + RtB Is Working In The Music Space

from the keep-on-keeping-on dept

While we keep presenting details of CwF+RtB working for various musicians, big, medium and small, some have complained that there needs to be more data to demonstrate that these kinds of business models can work. So, here we go. I briefly got to meet Shamal Ranasinghe from Topspin at Midem, but unfortunately wasn't able to go to his presentation. Thankfully, he's posted his slides along with some data from Topspin's own artists, who are making these business models work:

Some of the key points they've found so far are that fans are paying greater than $20 on average per band on its platform (more than a CD costs) and with big name "branded artists" that number is more like $50. But.. but.. but don't we keep hearing that no one wants to pay musicians any more? Apparently that's not true.

Digging into some of the details, Topspin found that while many people do pay for digital downloads, the big chunk of revenue actually comes from physical scarce goods: And while the number of folks who buy cheaper packages is much higher, the total revenue earned on higher priced packages is much, much higher. In fact, more than 50% of the revenue was earned on price points higher than $25. The under $10 sales, while making up more than 50% of the volume, account for less than 18% of the revenue: Again, it becomes clear: if you offer things of value people have no problem paying -- and often paying more than they did in the past. The claim that fans just want everything for free is pretty clearly untrue.

I won't go through all the slides, but Shamal also spends a fair amount of time talking about converting fans into buyers, and (no surprise) suggests that it helps to have a real connection with the fans, as opposed to just putting stuff out and expecting people to just show up and buy. You can't give it away and pray, but have to provide a real connection and real scarcities. But part of making that work is getting widespread distribution (Topspin uses a music playing widget) that helps bring people to the purchasing options, if they like the music. Rather than trying to hold back and hoard access to the music, sharing freely, and connecting it to reasons to buy helps bring in a lot of fans who are happy and willing to buy.

He also highlighted two case studies of amazing conversion rates. The David Byrne and Brian Eno album widget (the very first launched on Topspin) had a stunning 20% conversion rate of plays to purchases. Yes, one in five people who listened to the widget then purchased in the first few weeks of the campaign. That's an astounding rate -- and one I doubt many other bands would see, or sustain -- but still an amazing data point. In their case, since the average transaction price was over $15, it meant that every play was worth about $3 in sales. And yet some still don't believe that music online has promotional value that can lead to sales?

The second case study was with Fanfarlo, who sought to build up its email list -- and found that for every 1,000 plays of the widget, 49 fans either purchased or signed up for the email list. The presentation compares that to paid advertising, which found that per 1,000 impressions, they ended up with 0.7 new email users. Once again: the music is a great promotional tool, much better than traditional advertising in actually driving a conversion.

And, taking it one step further, to highlight the massive power of word of mouth, Topspin found that (again with Fanfarlo), the "Shares to Sales" ratio was 1.1. Yes, this meant that for every one person who shared the musical widget, more than one person ended up buying something -- though, admittedly, this number was likely skewed greatly by a $1 promo offer that ran for three weeks. But, either way, it shows that if you offer something that people want, at a good price, and you let people share (rather than punish them for sharing), great things can happen.

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Comedian Has To Retell Joke 2nd Time, Because Viacom Couldn't Have Him Sing Four Words: 'We Are The World'

from the copyright-insanity dept

Copyright insanity continues. Stephan Kinsella posts an email from Luke Mroz, who recently attended a Comedy Central taping of some standup comics, that is going to be used in an upcoming TV show. Mroz explains how copyright law got in the way and forced one comedian to have to come back out and tell a joke a second time:

One of the performers was one of my favorite comedians named Robert Kelly. He told a really good joke about how he rarely used the word love because it loses its strength if you use it to much. When his wife tells him she loves him, he shrugs it off. When his father told him he loved him, for the first time in his adult life when he graduated high school, he feigned breaking down into tears and acting like an emotional wreck. While doing this, he feigned being hugged and sang the phrase "We are the world". He then went on to his next joke.

After another comedian, the taping ended. We were informed that the crowd had to stay put because Bob Kelly had to come out and re-film a joke. It was the joke I just mentioned. They said it had to be re-taped because Comedy Central didn't have the rights to the song "We Are The World".

Remember, all he did was "sing" the four words in the title once. He didn't break out into a full rendition of the song. Just "We Are The World." That's it. And he had to come back out and tell the joke a second time to avoid Comedy Central (really: Viacom) having to clear the rights on that song -- a song that was written for charity. But copyright isn't stopping free expression?

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NBC Continues To Do The Exact Wrong Thing When It Comes To The Olympics Online

from the you-can't-be-serious dept

Is it any wonder that NBC Universal keeps having trouble? If you painted them a map that explained how to clearly provide people what they wanted, the company would do the exact opposite. Two years ago, during the summer Olympics, NBC Universal severely limited online offerings. It didn't let people embed videos. It only made events that people weren't as interested in available online, and even then, would delay much of the content online. The backwards thinking here was that if they blocked the "good stuff" out and made it only on TV, it would drive people to the TV. Of course, NBC's own research showed that the more people watched online, the more they watched on TV. But, of course, by limiting access, not that many people watched online through legal channels (a lot more watched elsewhere). And, at NBC, they considered this a success. Seriously.

And to prove it, NBC Universal is apparently going to make things even worse this time around. TorrentFreak points us to a MediaWeek piece that describes NBC Universal's "plan to fight piracy," that makes so little sense it makes the whole Jay Leno fiasco look well-organized.

Rather than giving people a choice, NBC is limiting its live streaming even more. There are 300 events at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and NBC is going to stream a grand total of two of them live online: curling and hockey. And, then its spending a ton of wasted effort getting lots of other sites to try to block live streams of Olympic events. You know what would have stopped those live streams in a way that NBC could have profited from? Providing those live streams directly. What sort of company sees that there's demand for a product and then purposely decides to not offer it and to actively stop others who are trying to offer it? Wow!

NBC's explanation for all this is just as bizarre:

"One of the things we learned in Beijing is that people really go to the Web for highlights," said Perkins Miller, svp, digital media at NBC

Perhaps that's because you didn't offer much live streaming last time around, and the only events you did so on were the events no one cared about.

But, of course, the best comes from Rick "oh-those -poor-corn-farmers-decimated-by-piracy" Cotton, NBC's general counsel, who seems so fixated on "stopping piracy!!!" that he seems oblivious to the concept of providing real value:

"Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find," said Rick Cotton, NBC's evp and general counsel. In terms of Web piracy, "you are never going to go to zero. But there has been a sea change in terms of recognition of the problem."

Again, you solve the problem of people going elsewhere by giving them what they want, not purposely deciding not to give them what they want and then getting upset when they go find it elsewhere.

And you wonder why, for the first time ever, a broadcaster is expected to lose money on the Olympics?

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Kevin Smith May Try Crowdfunding Horror Film, Red State, After Fans Offer To Do So

from the i'm-the-cellist-now! dept

We've already pointed out how director/writer/filmmaker/entertainer Kevin Smith is a great example of a filmmaker embracing the model of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, even to the point of saying that unauthorized file sharing is just a way to get more fans he can "convert." Apparently, he may take things to another level, by following a crowdfunding effort similar to what we've seen with some musicians and authors.

The twist here is that it wasn't his idea. The fans came to him and made it clear they wanted to fund the project. If you are a fan of Smith (as I am), you know he's been talking about various projects he's been thinking about, and last year talked a lot about a rather different kind of movie, a "political horror film" called Red State. Of course, that's definitely a big step away from Smith's usual comic-fare, and finding financing for it was initially proving difficult. But, the fans stepped up:

"I think an interesting thing that may happen with it is--I was on Twitter and people are asking about Red State, and then a dude tweeted 'hey man, what if we pay for it?' And all of a sudden, a bunch of people were like 'Seriously, why not?'"

Smith has said that if he does this, he'd match every dollar donated. They're working on a website for it, but there have been some logistical issues:

"We're kind of creating this website. We're seeing if it works to set up and collect donations. It becomes a weird tax nightmare, though... It sounded like such an easy thing online... but now there's lots of checks and balances to make sure we can do it, but if that's the case, I would be into it, and I'll match it. Whatever you raise on line, like fuck it, you put it up, I'll put it up."

Of course, doing it from scratch may raise some issues, and I'd imagine he'd be better off if he weren't trying to sell "shares" in the film, since that's where things get really tricky, but focusing on selling something else (credit in the film, access to screenings, meet & greet with Kevin, etc.), with the proceeds going to fund the film. But there are lots of platforms like Kickstarter or Biracy that he might want to look into, since they've worked out a lot of the legal issues.

Still, it highlights, yet again, what a lie it is to claim that "fans just want everything for free." And it shows that content not yet created is a scarcity people will pay for. It's still early (and Smith is focused on another movie first), but it could be one of the most high profile movies made using this technique.

But the further this moves along, the more interesting it gets. After a bunch of people misinterpreted the original interview Smith gave, he wrote out a more detailed explanation of his thinking, which is clearly still in the very initial planning stage (i.e., they don't even know if it's possible), but it looks to be about more than just fan funding this one film:

Our plan is to put anything we make into a fund that would, in turn, finance other (cost-sensible) flicks fans want to see. And from that? Build a People's Studio. Simply have any interested/frustrated/desperate party put their script on our website, open for all to read, during a "pilot season" of sorts. Script that gets the most votes, gets the loot. That flick gets made and sold, all the loot goes back into fund for next round. If there's enough loot from RED STATE sale to do so, idea would be to fund two low budget flicks a year. Ultimate dream: Indie Movement, v.3.

Even though a lot of the talk around these parts has been about music industry business models, in the last year or so, I've really been amazed at the number of indie filmmakers who have been really digging in on new business models, with a strong willingness to experiment and adapt. It's very encouraging to see.

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Research Shows Unauthorized Digital Books Leads To 'Significant Jump In Sales'

from the well,-look-at-that dept

We've seen this before, with individual authors like Paulo Coelho and David Pogue, who both found that as more people were able to get unauthorized copies of their ebooks, their sales actually increased. So, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but some new research looking at the impact on sales of unauthorized files getting out found a "significant jump in sales" (found via Michael Scott):

Brian O'Leary discussed his firm's research on the effect on sales when a title finds its way into an unsanctioned online market. The findings -- a significant jump in sales -- have surprised many in the business.

To be fair, he does go on to say this doesn't mean just "don't worry about" unauthorized access. Instead, he says it's important to figure out what kind of unauthorized access helps sales and what kind hurts -- and that still needs to be studied. But, the early results certainly suggest that the stuff that helps quite often outweighs the stuff that hurts (sometimes by quite a bit).

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Understanding What's Scarce And What's Not...

from the sell-the-experience dept

A bunch of folks sent over Jeff Jarvis' recent blog post entitled stop selling scarcity, which I actually think is slightly misleading. If you read the details, he's actually saying that you should very much sell scarcities -- but that you should avoid pretending that you're selling a scarcity when you're really selling something that it infinitely available:

If you are selling a scarcity -- an inventory -- of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value -- outcomes -- instead. Or you're screwed. Apply this rule to many enterprises: advertising, media, content, information, education, consultation, and to some extent, performance.

I have to admit, while I get what he's saying, I'm not sure it's particularly useful to most people, because they've always thought they were selling "outcomes" in the first place. I think that a similar post by filmmaker Ross Pruden may actually be a lot more useful, in that he talks about selling experiences, which is something that's scarce:

You think you sell a movie--you do not.
You think you sell a book--you do not.
You think you sell a song--you do not.

You sell an experience, something communicated, something elusive and ephemeral. Something mystical and transformative and inspiring. All these abstract things simply come in the shape of a movie, a book, or a song.

Never before has it been possible to strip away these experiences from the product... until now, the Digital Age.

The Digital Age lets us duplicate products infinitely. And, for the first time in human history, creators are not deprived of their original copy.

From that he points out the simple problem that many folks who were used to the old way are facing:

...now we can read a novel without buying a book.
...now we can watch a movie without buying a movie ticket.
...now we can listen to a song without buying a record.

From there, he lists out a bunch of different scarcities that come up with you separate the experience from the physical product, and notes that this is how things have always worked in reality, it's just that conceptually we merged the experience with the scarce physical product, which is why it's often so difficult to separate them conceptually now that they've become untied in reality.

The key to the Digital Age is to recognize that many existing products already embed intangibles, which is why those products are still being bought. However, once those tangibles stop being offered, or a competitor offers better intangibles, the customer will go elsewhere.

Creators can sustain. They will sustain. The market wants to sustain creators. Yet only the ones who realize that they don't sell products, but experiences. Only those creators are the ones worthy of survival in the Digital Age.

This is a great point, and more eloquent than my own post from a few years back on how every "product" was really a mix of scarce and infinite goods. To understand what the technology allows, and how to embrace it in a way that's sustainable, you need to be able to break out the components, and properly figure out what's really scarce, and what isn't.

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Photographer Thrilled That Apple Using His Photo As Default iPad Background, Despite No Official Agreement

from the see,-it's-not-so-bad... dept

In my experience, there is a group of photographers who are even more extreme in their copyright views than groups like the RIAA and MPAA. It's certainly not all (or, perhaps, even most) professional photographers who are like this, but there is a group of very, very adamant photographers who absolutely freak out about any use of their works without compensation. They even get upset if they feel that another photographer isn't getting enough compensation for every single use of a photograph. Since they tend to be independent, they don't have the clout of a large organization like the RIAA, but they make up for it in aggressiveness. We've see it in the discussions that have compared microstock photo websites to drug dealers and even in response to our recent post about a misguided takedown of a guy who was promoting stock photo images on his blog -- where some photographers were quick to call us idiots. Yes, how dare we suggest that such a use of stock photography is fair use, despite legal precedent suggesting a decent chance that such a blog was legal. Since their response doesn't go beyond calling us all "idiots," it's difficult to judge the reason, other than they just don't like it.

Given all that, I found this story about the photographer, Richard Misrach, whose photograph was chosen by Apple to be the default wallpaper for the iPad, quite interesting. That's because, while he's been talking to Apple for a while, the company only came to him days before the launch to ask to use the image, and no agreement had been worked out by the time the product launched with the photo there. But unlike some, Misrach didn't freak out. He still thinks it's cool, and knows that it'll work out:

"The funny thing is that I don't even have a contract with them yet, so they must have decided on it at the eleventh hour," Misrach says. "I'm sure they'll send me one quickly now. But I'm very happy, I'm sure it's fine, and the terms are good."

Now, yes, this is a bit different, since there is a contract on the way, but he doesn't know what the terms are, and he doesn't seem to care that much, recognizing that this is good no matter what. And the same thing is true of blogs, like the one we discussed above, whose sole purpose was to promote stock images and direct people back to the site to purchase the rights to those images.

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Facebook Sends Lots Of Traffic To News Sites... Will They Start Demanding To Be Paid?

from the just-wait-and-see... dept

With a new report coming out suggesting that Facebook sends more traffic to news sites than Google News, folks like Mathew Ingram are asking if Rupert Murdoch, the AP and others will be complaining about Facebook "stealing" their traffic and demanding to get paid. Given their reactions to Google, it does seem like a reasonable question. Or will that only happen when Facebook is making much more money from its other lines of business, and those news execs get jealous?

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Norwegian Supreme Court Explores Whether Private Companies Should Get Access To IP Info

from the legal-questions dept

TorrentFreak alerts us to an interesting case happening in Norway right now. Apparently, the most expensive movie ever produced in Norway was (shocking, I know) found on the internet soon after it was released. The filmmakers got very, very upset about this and "launched an investigation." After figuring out what they believed to be the IP address of the first uploader, they went to the police, who basically said they weren't interested in getting involved. So instead, the fillmmakers filed a civil suit and attempted to get the name of the account associated with the IP address at the time of the first upload. But, at least in Norway, it's something of an open legal question as to whether or not a private company/individual can get such info, as it has the potential to violate data privacy rules.

Oddly, the court made its decision last May, but kept the verdict secret from the public. I guess I'm not that familiar with Norwegian law, but I find it odd that a verdict can be kept secret. Either way, whichever party lost (and no one knows who) appealed, and the Norwegian Supreme Court is apparently looking over the case.

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AT&T Claims Sling Made Changes To Get On The iPhone; Sling Has No Clue What AT&T Is Talking About

from the say-what-now? dept

We noted in the past how odd it was that AT&T blocked something like the place-shifting Sling Player from the iPhone, but allowed place-shifting streaming TV apps from partners like MLB.com. So it was worth highlighting that, recently, AT&T changed its mind and began allowing Sling, though in the announcement, it claimed that Sling worked with AT&T to make changes to the app to make it okay. Apparently, no one ran that bit of PR by Sling, who quickly spoke up to say it simply wasn't true:

"We didn't change anything... AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us."

Perhaps what actually "changed" was the fact that the FCC has become interested in AT&T blocking apps in anti-competitive ways... Funny that AT&T didn't mention that part.

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Webinar On Data Center Productivity For ITInnovation.com

from the be-productive dept

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com. Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

As part of our ITInnovation.com website, we're hosting a webinar on data center productivity, on Wednesday, February 10th, at 9am PT/12pm ET, that should be a good discussion for those of you in the IT world. I'll be moderating, and we'll have short presentations from Chris Peters of Intel, talking about matching data center productivity to business productivity, and from Michael Rowan of Viridity Software, discussing productivity measurement from an energy management perspective (an increasingly important part of the equation). Following this we'll have a further discussion on these and related issues, including Q&A from attendees. You can sign up to attend here.

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The New Middleclass Musicians: I Fight Dragons

from the yet-another-example dept

Obviously, we've been covering various stories of content creators who are making use of new methods and new ideas to build a successful business model in a very changed world. We get lots of content creators contacting us about what they're doing -- but so many are doing cool things these days that just what they're doing is becoming less interesting than the details of how well they're working. So it's great to see Ariel Hyatt, over at Music Think Tank, provide a fascinating interview with Brian Mazzaferri, of the band I Fight Dragons. While I think the interview leans a little too much towards the concept of 1,000 True Fans (which I believe gets people way too focused on the "number" rather than the concept of true fans and how to build them), there is plenty of interesting information provided.

I also find it a little disconcerting that in what appears to be a clear success story, Mazzaferri seems to keep acting as if it hasn't been a success. He talks, repeatedly, about how difficult it is to build up enough true fans to be successful -- especially with a larger band (I Fight Dragons has six members). And yet, then he admits that the band is making enough money so that it's his full-time job. So clearly, the band has built up a strong enough fan base, combined with creative enough business models that it works. And they did this in less than a year! To me, that's really impressive, and it suggests the band has gotten off to a fantastic start. Yet, Mazzaferri keeps insisting that the 1,000 True Fan idea (and, again, I think it's a mistake to focus on the number) only works for a solo artist or a duo, while also admitting that as a band, they've probably only got closer to 500 true fans. It just feels like something is missing. Why is he so down on the concept when it appears to be working?

It's also interesting to see how the band has been making its money. He admits that for them, a lot of it has come from CD sales -- often CD sales done at live shows. He notes that because of the venue choices they've made, they don't make that much on live shows, but it has helped sell more CDs. But it does seem like the band realizes the benefit of offering really valuable scarcities like what we've seen work with other musicians as well -- and, of course, working hard to connect with fans through things like email and Twitter. When asked to break down where the money comes from, Mazzaferri highlights one unique offering that was a huge success for the band:

Making limited-edition, very high-value stuff is awesome. We sold 100 Lifetime Membership USB drives for $100 each (lifetime admission to any IFD show, free digital content for life), and that was a huge $10,000 boon for us.

All that said, it appears that he still thinks the only way to become a success today is to do a deal with a label -- and preferably a major one. I've always said that if bands don't want to really do what's necessary on the business side, there's nothing wrong with working with a label, though I think most musicians who end up signing a standard record deal may end up regretting it. It may speed up the ability to get attention, but it may make it more difficult to actually build a sustainable career. Oddly, he seems to suggest the opposite, noting:

My last big concern about the 1,000 true fans model is longevity. Most of the people using it work through the internet, and everything on the internet has an exponentially shorter shelf-life than it's Real Life corollary.

I just think there's very little data right now on how long an internet music career can last. Most traditional music careers, even people with a hit record, are lucky to last more than a decade, and so traditional music business literature says to make as much as you can while you're hot and save it up for when your career's over.

What's the new model for that? Is the expectation that an internet music career is longer than a traditional one? I suppose one could argue that, but it's a tough sell for me. The internet is fickle, and tastes change. I guess we'll see the truth of that as time goes on too.

The problem is that on a typical record label deal, things don't really work that way for most musicians, either. It may work for the top of the top -- the ones that catch on quickly and become big. But for the majority of bands that sign with a major record label, they fail to really get big enough to matter, and the labels very quickly drop all support and the band becomes yet another unrecouped wonder. That's not a sustainable model at all, and it's certainly not a model of "making as much as you can while you're hot," since many signed bands never actually get hot enough to really make that much money anyway. It seems like a bottom-up approach that relies on building a strong relationship with the fans has a lot more chance of being long-term sustainable than a career fueled by a sudden rush of major label hype, followed by being dropped into the obscurity bin.

While Mazzaferri may not be entirely happy with where the band is today and its prospects as an unsigned act, it still seems like this represents a pretty good example of the new sort of middle class of musician that couldn't have really existed in the same format not so long ago. In the past, the only way you could really get to the point where the band was your full time job was to get a label deal first and have them give you an advance. But by doing creative things like the "lifetime subscription" offering, I Fight Dragons has been able to reach that stage without having to sign a label deal. Now, it may, in fact, make sense for the band to now switch to a major label track, but I can't see anything in the band's experience that suggests that embracing a newer model of connecting with fans directly, and offering unique scarce reasons to buy, can't lead to a sustainable living.

Update: As is pointed out in the comments, just a few days ago, the band did, in fact sign with a major record label. This isn't surprising, given what Mazzaferri was saying in the interview, since he seemed to conclude he needed to do that, despite the evidence to the contrary. I wish them luck, but I've seen so many bands make similar statements when they first sign with a label:

"They were really interested in us from the get-go," singer Brian Mazzaferri tells The A.V. Club. "They're really interested in us keeping our creative control, as opposed to some other people, who were like, 'We really like what you're doing, but how 'bout we take out the chip tune?'"

I hope that's true, and I hope the were "really interested" in letting the band keep creative control, but so many of these stories end up poorly, with the band realizing that, once its signed, it loses pretty much all leverage on these issues. The article also suggests that this will mean the end of the band emailing out free tracks. This would be unfortunate, as it would be a mistake to go against what helped build your fan base.

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Author's Guild Didn't Want To 'Pull An RIAA' But Still Misses The Point

from the it's-a-bit-better dept

Last week, in discussing its attempt to settle its lawsuit with Google over the Google book scanning project, the Authors Guild posted a rather interesting public letter, entitled To RIAA or Not to RIAA, That was the Question. In defending the settlement, it notes that it could have fought the lawsuit to the end, but that it might have lost. In fact, this is why I supported the idea that Google should have fought on, because it seemed like Google had a strong fair use case -- something the Authors Guild admits. Even though the Authors Guild says that it disagrees that the book scanning project was fair use, an awful lot of copyright legal scholars seemed to believe that it was, in fact, fair use.

But the more interesting point is that the Authors Guild noted that even if it did win the lawsuit, that could actually make things worse, and it pointed to the RIAA's Pyrrhic victories over file sharing systems:

Our settlement negotiations went on with full knowledge of what happened to the music industry. The RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) won victory after victory, defeating Napster and Grokster with ground-breaking legal rulings. The RIAA also went after countless individuals, chasing down infringement wherever they could track it down.

It didn't work. The infringement just moved elsewhere, in unpredictable ways. Nothing seems to drive innovation among copyright pirates as much as a defeat in the courts. That innovation didn't truly abate until Apple came along with its iPod/iTunes model, making music easily and legally available at a reasonable price. By then, the music industry was devastated.

While I applaud the Authors Guild for recognizing that suing (and even winning) don't help you innovate and can backfire massively in driving innovation underground, it does still feel like the Authors Guild got the wrong message out of this. Despite what it claims above, the "innovation among copyright [infringers]" did not really "abate" with the introduction of the iPod/iTunes. While the Authors Guild is correct that offering a legal solution is better than offering nothing or fighting innovation, it feels like it's overestimating how much of the market transformation its facing is due to infringement vs. how much is due to economic forces that will occur even without infringement in the market.

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Verizon Wireless Blocks 4chan; You Would Think It Would Remember What Happened When AT&T Did That

from the not-wise dept

Last summer, due to a DDOS attack emanating from IP addresses connected to 4chan, AT&T temporarily blocked access to 4chan... without giving a full explanation for why. If you know 4chan, you know why this is a bad idea. It took very little time for the 4chan community to retaliate (and, as you know, no one "retaliates" like 4chan "retaliates"), and only a few days later, when AT&T explained what happened, did 4chan back off. So, now comes the news this weekend that Verizon Wireless is blocking 4chan (this is just Verizon Wireless, not Verizon), and the company seems to be making the same mistake. No clear explanation of why. I'm sure there's a reason that Verizon Wireless can give, but not explaining that immediately seems like a huge mistake. Update: Not surprising, but looks like the same reasoning as AT&T's temporary block last year. Still doesn't explain why the company wasn't upfront in explaining it.

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The Economist Notices That The Patent System Is Hindering Innovation And Needs To Be Fixed

from the wow dept

A whole bunch of you are sending in one of the first mainstream articles I've seen on patents that gets almost (but not quite) everything right. The Economist has a wonderful piece that clearly explains why patents are hindering, rather than helping innovation. It notes the difference between innovation and invention -- and how patents quite often can hinder the former. It discusses how patent thickets get in the way of innovation, and the focus on using patents to force through massive cross-licensing deals simply adds transaction costs and reduces efficiency in the market. The solution to all of this put forth by the Economist is mostly the same thing we've been suggesting for years: bring back a real test for "obviousness" that gets rid of obvious patents -- though, it falls short in not suggesting an independent invention test for obviousness. The only other areas where I'd say the Economist article falls short is (1) simply assuming that patents do work in pharma and biotech -- when there's evidence that's not true, (2) assuming that a ruling in Bilski alone might clear up the obviousness issue and, finally, (3) its parting suggestion that programmers focus on copyright monopolies, rather than patents. Still, it's about as good a piece on this subject as you might expect to see in such a mainstream publication.

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Remix Culture Is About The Culture As Much As The Remix

from the killing-culture dept

Over the weekend, I finally got to watch the film Copyright Criminals (after having seen clips and a discussion about the film at the Fair Use Film Screening put on by Public Knowledge back in January). I have to admit, the film was pretty depressing. While it may seem like I pick on lawyers a fair amount, I actually tend to like most lawyers I meet -- but I don't know quite how they did it, but every lawyer who showed up in that film just seemed to ooze smarmy. They appeared to smirk through their interviews, as if they knew what they were saying was ridiculous, and the whole thing was all about getting as much money as possible, rather than having anything to do with fairness or creating art. Meanwhile, the actual content creators -- they seemed pretty much defeated. They had worked on amazingly innovative and cool projects that had nothing to do with "copying", and everything to do with creating beautiful new works of art that people loved. And they got sued and shut down over and over again. It's a shame. But not just because of the art that wasn't created, but the potential to connect culturally through it.

This is a point that often gets overlooked in these discussions -- that art is about more than the creator. We've tangentially discussed this idea in the past, but Julian Sanchez put together a little video last week that does a nice job demonstrating this in about eight minutes:

What he points out is that for culture to matter, it goes beyond the artwork itself, to the people who experience the artwork and then share it with others -- thereby connecting with each other and the artwork itself. And while people sit back and claim that remixing is "stealing" or "lazy" or "not art" at all, that's totally missing the point. Art is not about just the creator. Without the shared experience, it's a lot less valuable -- and what we've done with copyright laws is make it that much more difficult to share that experience through our own eyes and our own cultural views. And if you don't see the shame in that, then you're missing a lot.

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Why Shouldn't Jurors Be Able To Use Technology To Do More Research?

from the yeah,-that's-not-going-to-work dept

We've pointed out in the past that, eventually, the judicial system is going to have to come to terms with the fact that people use technology to research and communicate, rather than trying to pretend it can be stopped. But, it sounds like that's going to take a while. Courts are increasingly looking to ban jurors from using any kind of technology. And yes, before we go through this again, we understand the arguments why courts do this (so no need to keep repeating it in the comments like last time). The question is does this really make sense? The idea that you have no outside influences in making a decision as a jury is an idealistic fantasy anyway. Jurors always make decisions based on their own history and experiences. It's part of what makes a jury a jury. Otherwise, you'd just have one guy who would weigh all the facts in a case and who would always pop out a perfect decision. So, if we can admit that jurors are always bringing outside information (in the form of their own life history and knowledge) into the court room, can't we at least begin to understand why there's an argument for letting smart jurors make use of technology to better understand the issues at play?

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Court Disagrees On Whether Or Not Schools Can Punish Students Over Fake Social Network Pages

from the first-amendment? dept

We were just discussing whether or not a school can punish students for their social networking activity, and now we've got two legal rulings on the subject. Unfortunately, they seem to conflict with each other, despite coming from the same appeals circuit!

Both cases involved students creating fake MySpace profiles of the schools' principals. Both students were punished, but in one case the court said the school went too far ("Public schools are vital institutions, but their reach is not unlimited...") while the other said it was fine ("We decline to say that simply because the disruption to the learning environment originates from a computer located off campus, the school should be left powerless to discipline the student."). The difference appears to be that in the latter case, the school claimed that the fake profile resulted in disruption in the classroom because "students were talking about the profile rather than paying attention to class."

That seems like a pretty fine line, because now a school will have to do is suggest that students in the school were discussing an activity that took place outside of school to allow the school to punish the student for off-campus speech. From a First Amendment standpoint, that seems pretty difficult to accept -- and certainly seems to go against the principles set forth by the famous Tinker decision concerning free speech rights of students on campus.

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