Winner Takes All, Long Tails And The Fractilization Of Culture

from the rethinking-the-niche dept

Reader Eileen points us to a thought-provoking article by Joshua-Michele Ross discussing the idea that, rather than a diverse "long-tail" culture, we're actually being driven to a homogenized "winner-take-all" culture thanks to the rise of our robot overlords, better known as online recommendation engines. Or something like that. It's a nice theory, with some interesting statistical modelling behind it. And, I've always been interested in "winner takes all" economies, since the guy who taught me Econ 101 literally wrote the book on "winner takes all" economics.

That said, I think this really only tells a part of the story -- and maybe not the most important or most interesting part. That's because (and, again, this may be due to my own econ education) it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that we'd see hits follow a winner takes all approach (that's how hits work). Nor is it a surprise that the effect would seem stronger as the world globalizes and borders and barriers become less of an issue. So, yes, of course there will be a "globalized" winner takes all situation at the hits level. But is that all?

What's much more interesting to me is what happens beyond the hits. And, as you start to dig down into subsectors or subcultures, you begin to notice an interesting pattern there as well: that those subsectors and subcultures follow that same power law pattern themselves. The big name bands in a subculture may seem "small" in the wider world, but they're huge within the subculture. Within that subculture, they're the winner who took all -- but from a more limited population.

In some ways, it's the fractalization of culture.

Just as a fractal repeats its same pattern as you zoom in and look closer on the smaller segments, so do cultural subsegments. And those segments continue to thrive, despite the recommendation systems just pushing people to the hits. Part of that may be that once you've begun exploring those subcultures, the recommendation engines and collaborative filters drive you towards the "hits within" the subculture -- or it may be that the impact of algorithmic recommendation engines isn't quite as dominating as some make it out to be. Yes, people do rely on those recommendation engines... somewhat. But they trust people they know even more. And once you get involved in a subculture you quickly find other people already involved in that culture who act as guides who point you both to the "hits" but also to the interesting and "diverse" long tail places to go as well.

So, yes, there is a winner take all effect found in the recommendation engines, but it hasn't resulted in less diversity within our cultural output or our cultural consumption -- and that's because people don't just follow that limited algorithmic overlord to find the content they want to consume. In fact, the original statistical model highlighted above more or less makes this point. Basically, it shows that even if each individual sees a more diverse culture, it can still end up with a more homogenized culture -- but really only among the hits. Basically, because the world is global, the really big hits go global and become winner-take-all in a much larger market. But, at the same time, the niches thrive as well.

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Focusing In On The Value: Google Books Provides An Amazing Resource

from the how-can-you-be-against-that dept

With all of the fighting over the Google Book settlement, it seems that an awful lot of people have lost sight of the key issue, which is that the tool itself, Google's Book Search, is amazing. We had mentioned this a couple of years ago. But if you step back from any of the legal issues, and just think about Google's book search as a tool, you realize what a wonderful cultural milestone it would be to make pretty much every book searchable. The more you think about it, the harder it is to take seriously anyone who is against this project. It's the equivalent of saying we should burn down all libraries because authors don't get paid every time someone checks out a book.

Luckily, even as the legal dispute continues, we're starting to see more people realize what a terrible thing it would be to kill off such a valuable resource. In that last link, law professor Peter Friedman not only discusses the Google Books project, but also Scribd, and makes a key point:

Why would you use copyright to stifle marvelous new innovations? Copyright exists to encourage, not stifle, invention.

What's scary about the discussions on the settlement, though, is that they don't seem to focus on this at all. Instead, almost all of them seem to be a weak excuse to attack Google because people don't like -- or don't like having to compete with -- Google.

Now, I've been clear since the day the settlement was announced that I thought it was a bad thing -- but not for the reasons most are stating. I thought it was bad because Google had a strong case for claiming that the project was covered by fair use. It was effectively no different than creating a fantastic card catalog -- again, something that should be encouraged. But, as Tim Lee brilliantly notes in a recent post, even if this whole lawsuit was over "fair use," what was so troubling about the settlement was that it deals with a bunch of other issues and sort of ignores the fair use issue! And yet, that was the center of the lawsuit.

In case we've forgotten, this is a copyright infringement case. The dispute between Google and the plaintiffs is not about orphan works, online book sales, or the structure of the publishing industry. It's about whether copyright's fair use doctrine allows the creation of a book search engine that displays "snippets" of in-copyright books in search results. Google says yes. Some publishers and authors said no. Absent a settlement, a judge would have been asked to rule on that question.

In a rational world, the settlement of the case would focus on that same question. Instead, we got a settlement in which the underlying infringement claims are treated as an afterthought. Instead, the focus is on the creation of an elaborate new structure for selling books online. It's as if Sony Pictures sued NBC for copyright infringement and then wound up with a "settlement" that focused mostly on Sony becoming a partner in GE's light bulb business.

And, indeed. So, why can't we bring the whole thing back into focus. Having a resource like Google's book search is an incredibly important and valuable cultural tool. It should be celebrated, not hated. But the key question is Google's legal right to create it. Any settlement should be focused on that issue, and not all of these extraneous things that are being shoved through the class action process. The settlement is bad, but Google's Book Search is an unequivocally good thing. Keep that in focus, and a lot of the sideshows melt away as meaningless.

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Is Serendipity Lost Online?

from the i'd-say-it's-been-gained dept

I'm a big fan of Damon Darlin, at the NY Times, but I'm a bit confused by his latest, claiming that serendipity is being stamped out online, because people just go find stuff they want, rather than randomly discover stuff. Perhaps I'm just speaking for myself, but I end up finding random stuff all the time -- whether it's from seeing random links on Twitter/Digg/Fark or other sites, having people send me stuff or just chatting with people. I'd argue that I end up finding a lot more that's new and interesting than I did before the internet was around. Darlin tries to brush off the fact that people get stuff from friends on social networks, by saying that's "filtered" by who you choose to follow, but his own example of serendipity at the beginning of the article is: "When we walk into other people's houses, we peruse their bookshelves, look at their CD cases and sneak a peek at their video collections." Isn't that "filtered" by whose homes you happen to walk into? I walk into strangers' homes a lot less often than I hear about a new book, album or movie from someone on Twitter.

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Some Quotes Of Note: Politicians Damning New Technologies/Cultural Artifacts

from the have-fun-with-it,-people dept

In my post earlier about Rep. Robert Wexler's misguided remarks at the World Copyright Summit, an anonymous commenter added a wonderful comment highlighting similar politically misguided sayings throughout the years that was too good not to share. The anonymous commenter didn't say where it's from, but it appears that it was mostly from a Wired article from a few years ago. So, one could make an argument that the original comment was infringing, but aren't we all better off for having had the chance to read it?

Is it the only lesson of history that man is unteachable?

-- Sir Winston Churchill

The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it's making the difficult job of being a parent even harder ... I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.

- US senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2005

The effect of rock and roll on young people, is to turn them into devil worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness; impair nervous stability and destroy the sanctity of marriage. It is an evil influence on the youth of our country.

- Minister Albert Carter, 1956

Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!

- Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954

The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?

- Reverend Enos Hitchcock, Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, 1790

Does the telephone make men more active or more lazy? Does [it] break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends?

- Survey conducted by the Knights of Columbus Adult Education Committee, San Francisco Bay Area, 1926

This new form of entertainment has gone far to blast maidenhood ... Depraved adults with candies and pennies beguile children with the inevitable result. The Society has prosecuted many for leading girls astray through these picture shows, but GOD alone knows how many are leading dissolute lives begun at the 'moving pictures.'

- The Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1909

The indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced ... at the English Court on Friday last ... It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies ... to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is ... forced on the respectable classes of society by the evil example of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.

- The Times of London, 1816

I particularly like the last quote. That darn Waltz. Destroying society.

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Government-Owned Norwegian TV Station Launches BitTorrent Tracker

from the legitimate-uses... dept

As some entertainment industry folks continue to insist that BitTorrent tracker search engines have no redeeming value, we keep hearing more and more stories of content providers willingly and eagerly putting up their own torrent trackers, knowing that it's an incredibly efficient means of distributing their content. In the past, we've seen TV networks in Australia and Canada do this with individual shows, and now TorrentFreak is reporting that the government-owned Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) has set up a BitTorrent tracker for distributing a bunch of its shows, noting that: "This type of distribution is reliable, cheap and popular with our audience." Indeed. Not only that, but by running its own tracker, NRK realizes: "we will get better statistics and gather important data about how this technology works." Even better, it plans to share some of that data for others to learn from as well.

The shows will be DRM-free, and it's looking to employ a Creative Commons license on the content "to allow full freedom for our audience." Definitely nice to see someone not going down the same well-trodden road of self-defeat:

"It is important for us to start experimenting with new distribution methods. We don't want to do like the music industry. Running around thinking that people will keep driving down to a record store when they can have the content delivered with the push of a button at home."

If only some others in the entertainment industry would recognize the same thing.

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ASCAP Continues Its Attack On Lessig; Free Culture

from the but-why? dept

We were already quite surprised when ASCAP set up a private lunch to come up with ways to "counter" the viewpoints of folks like Larry Lessig and various "free culture" supporters. After all, songwriters who have been embracing those concepts are making more money because of it. The problem, of course, is that those means often don't send that money through ASCAP. Still, as an organization that claims it represents the interests of songwriters, you would think they'd be thrilled to have songwriters make more money. Instead, it appears they would like to have songwriters make less money, and to attack Larry Lessig in the process.

Their latest move was to send out an email to members with links to various articles and commentaries that try to undermine Lessig's ideas. It's basically ASCAP propaganda. I guess they're afraid that songwriters might discover that they don't actually have to be beholden to ASCAP to make money.

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Entertainment Industry Lawyer Predicts The Demise Of Free Culture

from the logical-inconsistencies dept

Music industry lawyer Chris Castle is at it again. You may recall him from his poorly thought out attack on evil free culture types that was easily debunked. Unfortunately, it looks like others are willing to let him spew nonsense. This time, it's Arts+Labs, yet another "anti-piracy" lobbying group that was formed last year. When it was formed, it was positioned as a more "reasonable" group, because rather than just being made up of entertainment industry reps, it also had a few "tech industry" folks -- though, those tech companies were ones looking to sell DRM or filtering technologies. So, as a supposedly more reasonable "balanced" approach, you would hope that perhaps Arts+Labs wouldn't publish a ridiculous rant from an entertainment industry lawyer, bashing all "free culturists" and predicting the imminent demise of free culture.

But, indeed, that appears to be what Castle is saying, predicting the demise of free culture based on some incredibly weak logic that doesn't pass the basic laugh test. I read the whole thing a few times and the logic was so twisted that I finally had to try to work backwards to figure out what he was claiming, and eventually realized that his position on copyright seems to coincide with Douglas Adam's old saying:

1) everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

So how does this apply to Castle's logic? Well, as far as I can tell, Castle's logical thought train runs as follows:

1. Free culture is an economic fallacy, and is close to its demise.
2. Pop culture is important in winning over the "hearts and minds" of people who hate us
3. The only reason pop culture exists is because people earn money from it
4. Free culture fanatics don't get any of this and think that there's a battle going on between Silicon Valley (innovation) and Hollywood
5. These clueless free culture idiots are demanding government-mandated licenses and government-mandated prices
6. They claim this is needed because of market failure.
7. But there is no market if we don't respect "basic economic rights" (i.e., "copyright")
8. If we don't respect those "basic economic rights" then the internet gets polluted with junk
9. Then pop culture creators are lost forever, because they can't make money
10. So, the government must protect these "fundamental economic liberties" (i.e., "copyright"), but not do anything else, because then we might not win over the hearts and minds of our enemies.
11. Because of that, we're witnessing the end of people believing in this bogus idea of free culture.

You can read over the piece yourself, but I think I'm being quite fair to the reasoning. But, of course, this doesn't make any sense at all, unless you consider the Douglas Adams quote. Castle seems to think that "copyright" (a government-granted right) is somehow "natural" or a "basic economic right" or a "fundamental economic liberty." It's not and never has been. It's a government granted monopoly for the sole purpose of promoting the progress of the sciences and the useful arts. Thomas Jefferson's famous discussion of intellectual property "rights" makes it quite clear that there is nothing at all "natural" about copyright. But, since it's been around since he was born, to Castle, it's fundamental. And anything new is just downright evil.

And, of course, there are tons of other logical fallacies in this piece. Even if we grant that points 2 and 3 are true, he seems to be jumping back to that old lie that support of "free culture" means that artists don't earn money. It's a fallacy that runs throughout the piece, and of course is totally bogus. We've spent about a decade chronicling ways that content creators are embracing "free culture" and making more money because of that. It's getting ridiculous how many times it needs to be repeated but: giving away ONE THING for FREE, does NOT MEAN that you don't make money. Once you recognize that, Castle's entire argument falls apart (as does the entire reason that Arts+Labs exists... but that's another issue).

The other characterizations that Castle makes about "free culture" supporters are total strawmen. While there may have been some who set up a "battle" between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, I actually don't see that very much at all. I live in Silicon Valley and am pretty involved in talking about these issues with plenty of people, and it's rarely framed that way at all. Most folks are simply looking at ways to help enable the market to be more efficient, knowing that doing so benefits everyone. There's no "against" anyone -- other than those who want to somehow block this efficiency because they prefer to rest on their laurels and old gov't granted monopolies. The innovators in Silicon Valley aren't trying to stick it to Hollywood. They're trying to provide better tools to enable content creators of all kinds to create, share, promote, distribute and experience content.

Also, I'm curious which "free culture" academics "beat the drum for a government-mandated compulsory license and government-mandated pricing for all content." I've yet to see any. Yes, there are some who have suggested voluntary licensing, but I'm not aware of any who are pushing for government mandated pricing of all content. I, for one, am vehemently against such things.

Finally, after bashing these "free culturists" for not understanding "basic economics" and insisting that free culture has no economic basis, Castle flunks his economics final by stating: "Absent these rights there is no market, and therefore there can be no market failure." I may have to break out the red grading marker on this one to explain the F grade. Mr. Castle, I'm afraid you've incorrectly defined your market. It's a rookie mistake. "Free" doesn't mean there's no market. Down there in sunny Los Angeles, television has been quite a successful business... which gives its content away for free. And it works, because they put in place a business model that leverages the free content to make money. How hard is it for Castle to realize that there are other business models for the music industry as well? How many examples must we show before he realizes that free doesn't mean you don't get paid? And, finally, why is Arts+Labs allowing such ridiculously illogical thinking to appear on its website as commentary?

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Increasing Concerns Raised Over Google's Book Search Settlement

from the a-bad-deal-for-everyone dept

When the settlement between Google and authors and publishers, over Google's book scanning project, was announced, many saw it as a big victory for everyone -- as it allowed Google to continue moving forward with plans to scan books, while also creating a "business model" for authors and publishers. However, some of us were very troubled by the implications of the settlement. It seemed clear to us that Google had a strong argument for why its actions were perfectly legal. Settling did a number of dangerous things. It failed to clear up the legal issue at all (effectively making it cost prohibitive for anyone else to work on a similar project). It set in permanent place a business model which seemed hugely bureaucratic and inefficient. That business model is basically set in stone and set by the terms of this agreement, rather than any real market mechanism. Finally, it signaled (loudly) to the world that Google was plenty willing to pay a few million dollars to settle with opponents, even when it had a strong legal position, knowing that it would make life more difficult for competitors.

It appears that as the details have come out, more and more people are troubled by what the settlement actually will mean in the long run. Robert Darnton, the head of the Harvard library system (which had already complained about the settlement) has written a thoughtful piece, detailing his worries about how this creates an effective monopoly, and the many, many downsides that this causes.

Prior to this settlement, we had been one of the bigger defenders of Google's book scanning program against those who worried that it was creating a de facto monopoly. That's because there were no exclusive agreements. However, with the new settlement, while again others could enter in theory, Google has effectively priced the rest of the market out. Prior to this, there was a reasonable argument to be made that anyone could scan books and create an index, so long as they weren't displaying too much of the books. Now... Google has set a market price of $115 million, plus a set-in-stone business model, as the entry price. It's pocket change to Google, but it's a big barrier to others.

This is definitely raising concerns from a variety of other sources, who were at least cautiously optimistic when the deal was announced. The EFF now points us to James Grimmelmann's worries about the deal (pdf). While Grimmelmann does support the deal and say it will be net positive for society, he then goes through a pretty detailed list of problems with the deal, almost all of which go back to the idea that this deal gives Google effective monopoly power over digitized books.

Finally, as for my initial fear that this would signal something of an "open season" on Google, with demanding money from Google for Google daring to provide the service of helping others find their works, we're already seeing some of that in the early stages. Some in the newspaper business are using the book settlement as a template for how Google should pay them too.

In the long run, I think Google is going to regret this deal. Yes, in the short term it handed Google a monopoly and removed a distracting lawsuit from the table. But, it did some very dangerous things that will harm Google in the long term. It signalled Google's willingness to pay up even when it shouldn't have to. It set in stone a business model way before anyone knows what the best business model is for online books. And, finally, in knocking all competitors out of the market, Google has taken away its own best incentive to continue innovating and serving customers at the best of their ability in the book search realm. The end result may be a worse product that isn't nearly as useful (and revenue generating for Google) as it would have been if it had real competition in the market.

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Did The EU Actually Do Something Right In Its Efforts To Fight Google Dominance?

from the sorta dept

Over the past few years, we've seen various European governments freak out over Google's dominance over the internet, complaining that since it was an American company, it was a problem and "something must be done." Usually this took the form of handing over a ton of taxpayer money to some ill-defined project that would compete with Google, but which usually just turned into a way for private companies to get free money. However, one project to come out of these efforts actually does look interesting. The EU has launched Europeana, a site that attempts to offer up, digitally, various cultural artifacts of Europe -- and do so in creative and useful ways. Rather than just showing documents, for example, it ties together various multimedia to make things a lot more useful.

Considering that much of the cultural content being digitized for this project is already in the hands of the government, they're pretty much the only ones that can do this, and it does seem like a great way to expose more people to these cultural artifacts. So, consider us at least a bit surprised that something useful came out of all of this. Of course, this is hardly the "Google-killer" that's always discussed when talking about these projects. Even the article linked here seems to act as if this is a major triumph over Google, though it's not clear why. This isn't a competition, and putting this info online isn't somehow defeating Google. It's just another source of information, and that's a good thing. Of course, even in doing something "right" it looks like the EU screwed up a bit -- as they didn't plan for the amount of traffic the prototype site received, and it quickly went down.

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Copyright And Its Harm On Culture

from the understanding-culture dept

A bunch of folks have sent in Cory Doctorow's essay on why he considers himself a "copyfighter," noting that sharing content is what creates culture -- and the attempts by Big Content to block sharing of content are effectively an attempt to stomp out culture, such that only they can determine what is culture (or so they believe).

Content isn't king: culture is. The reason we go to the movies is to have something to talk about. If I sent you to a desert island and told you to choose between your records and your friends, you'd be a sociopath if you chose the music.

Culture's imperative is to share information: culture is shared information. Science fiction readers know this: the guy across from you on the subway with a gaudy SF novel in his hands is part of your group. You two have almost certainly read some of the same books, you've got some shared cultural referents, some things to talk about.

When you hear a song you love, you play it for the people in your tribe. When you read a book you love, you shove it into the hands of your friends to encourage them to read it too. When you see a great show, you get your friends to watch it too -- or you seek out the people who've already watched it and strike up a conversation with them.

I would go even further than Doctorow does. I'm less concerned about the impact on culture, as I am on the impact on communication itself. Communication is at the heart of pretty much all economic activity -- and thanks to technology, these days, pretty much all communication involves some sort of "copying." Yet, because a rather recent industry was built up on the idea that "copying" was rare and was only done on professional built content, it's now trying to shut down and stomp out new means of communication just because, as a part of its nature, it allows for the copying of professional content as well. Yet, in doing so, they're slowing down basic communications, and with it, the core of economic activity and growth.

The attempt to apply ever more draconian copyright laws may appear to be in the interests of those who have relied on such artificial scarcity for years, but the end result is a significant restriction of economic activity, which harms everyone -- including the companies who are in favor of such copyright laws and enforcement. Purposely limiting a market is a dangerous short-term practice that has significantly negative long-term consequences.

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Old School Comedians Complain About The Internet

from the when-I-was-your-age-I-performed-to-3-people-in-a-shack-and-I-liked-it dept

Well, it seems bound to happen in just about any profession that has been impacted by the internet in some way. Eventually, the "older generation" is going to whine and complain about "the way things used to be." Apparently that's even true of stand up comedians. A bunch of stand up comedians are apparently worried about the internet's impact on young up-and-coming stand-ups, because (I kid you not), they're worried that the internet lets young standups have too big an audience. The reasoning is basically that it's better for young comics to fail in front of small audiences, learn their lesson and get better. Of course, what none of the complaining comics explain is why those "bad" young comics will have that big an audience in the first place if they're so bad. No one's going to watch them.

These same comics seem to ignore the flip side of the coin -- which is that a good young comedian can actually use the internet to amplify his or her comedic talents in order to get noticed and move on to bigger and better things. A great example of this would be Andy Samberg, who basically made a name for himself online, before being snapped up by Saturday Night Live. It certainly doesn't seem like there's any lack of young comedic talent these days compared to in the past, and it seems like the internet often creates a much better feedback loop for those young comics. But, of course, since it's "not the way we did it"(TM) it must be bad.

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Short Term Profits Over Long Term Principles; Google's Caving On Book Scanning Is Bad News

from the unfortunate-reality dept

Today the tech/business press was filled with stories about how Google has settled the lawsuits from authors and publishers over its book scanning project. Google is paying $125 million, and will be changing some of how its book search system works. Authors and publishers will allow books to go online, but it locks Google in to a specific business model that might not be the most reasonable and, most importantly, it does not answer the legal question concerning the overall legality of book scanning. Pretty much any way you look at it, Google caved here -- and this is unfortunate for a variety of reasons.

Two years ago, there was a story in the NY Times about how Google's legal department saw all of these lawsuits against the company as a way to stand up on principle and make better law. Specifically, the company positioned itself as being willing to fight certain lawsuits on principle in order to get precedent setting rulings on the books in support of openness, fair use, safe harbors and many other important issues. The company suggested that, rather than settle, it would fight these lawsuits knowing that it alone, with its big war chest of money, could fight some of these battles that tiny startups could never afford.

It may not be surprising, but it's safe to say those days are long gone. We've been seeing it time and time again, from Google's decision to pay off entertainment companies not to sue YouTube to the decision to pay off the Associated Press for including its headlines in Google News. Perhaps one of the biggest legal battles, however, was over Google's book scanning project. Google took it upon itself to scan numerous books and make the results searchable online. The company put significant restrictions in place, such that it's almost impossible for someone to do a search and read the entire book that way. You can only see a few consecutive pages. You can't print. However, you can search and find new and interesting books that you might want to buy. I know I've bought dozens of books this way.

Not surprisingly, authors and publishers sued Google over this, and went around claiming how awful it was -- even though it was really not all that different than creating a much better card catalog for books. The purpose was to help people find more books that were useful, rather than to break any sort of copyright. And, in fact, studies showed that books that showed up in Google's search improved sales. In other words, it should have been a win-win situation all around. But, like so many content providers, authors and publishers falsely overvalue the content and undervalue services that make that content more valuable.

However, more important that was the simple principle of the whole thing. Last year the New Yorker ran a fantastic article explaining how having authors and publishers quibble over copyright issues while preventing the widespread archiving and sharing of information may turn out to be one of the most ridiculous arguments ever, while our culture get locked up and fades away.

So, it's quite upsetting to see Google cave on this. The settlement does not establish any sort of precedent on the legality of creating such an index of books, and, if anything pushes things in the other direction, saying that authors and publishers now have the right to determine what innovations there can be when it comes to archiving and indexing works of content. Unfortunately, this was really inevitable. As was the case with Google caving on YouTube and the Associated Press, it becomes a situation where Google realizes it can throw a little cash at the problem to make it go away -- while also creating a large barrier to entry for any more innovative startup. From a short-term business perspective this might make sense, but from a long-term business perspective (and wider cultural perspective) it's terrible.

It will only encourage more lawsuits against Google for trying to innovate, as more and more people hope that Google will settle and throw some cash their way. Furthermore, it greatly diminishes the incentives for making books more useful, and that's damaging to our cultural heritage. While it was always silly to believe that Google ever really operated on a higher principled stance, rather than a short-term business focus, this settlement is tremendously disappointing.

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Larry Lessig On How To Save Remix Culture

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Larry Lessig has a fantastic op-ed essay in the Wall Street Journal that tries to defend "remix culture" from draconian copyright laws that have made it illegal to build new creative works on the works of others. Not surprisingly, he makes some important points:

This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can't kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison.

Copyright law must be changed.

It's definitely worth reading, and then considering the five suggestions he puts forth for how copyright can be fixed, though I disagree with him on whether or not his suggestions would actually work. I think they would significantly improve things from the way they are today, but Lessig still seems to think that there's a way to "thread the needle" by distinguishing between commercial works and non-commercial works. The more I look, the less possible I think it is to distinguish between the two in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, Lessig's solutions are focused very much on trying to "balance" the rights of amateur creative types with professional creative types. However, I think if you look at the economics and historical record, there's no need to create "balance." If content creators started adapting new business models, both can succeed tremendously, without having to worry about any kind of balance. A true solution suits both sides perfectly, benefiting both, without either side having to "balance" with the other.

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The Power Of Ambient Awareness

from the getting-to-know-you dept

When I first heard of Twitter I didn't get it. I saw some friends using it, and tested it out for a bit, but again concluded that it just didn't make sense to me to be able to write short, 140-character, explanations of what I was doing -- or to read similar blurbs from other people. But about a year ago, I started using it again, and quickly discovered that it was much more useful and interesting than I had ever expected -- often in totally unexpected ways. Since then, I've run into a bunch of folks who seem to feel exactly the same way. They absolutely did not understand Twitter until they actually started using it, and then suddenly found it incredibly useful in totally unexpected ways. So, I can absolutely understand the many, many people who continue to mock Twitter as being useless -- I felt exactly the same way -- but haven't been able to explain why it is actually useful.

However, Clive Thompson has done an excellent job with his latest piece for the NY Times Magazine, explaining the concept of "ambient awareness" that describes Twitter and things like Facebook's news feed. It's not so much about telling everyone everything you're doing, or knowing everything that everyone is doing, but it does give you an amazing ambient view into what's going on in the lives of whoever you follow, and in an odd way makes you feel much more connected to them than you might otherwise. I know that I've become much closer friends with some folks entirely due to Twitter just because I'm more aware of what they're up to on a regular basis, rather than only talking to them infrequently.

I think the problem is that many people, myself included, originally think of Twitter in similar terms to email or instant messaging, where you're really expected to provide your undivided attention and to respond to what is sent to you. But Twitter doesn't work that way. It really is an "ambient" flow of information about what's happening with lots of different people, which makes you feel much more connected with them. It's great to see Thompson do such a good job explaining why, because despite experiencing it, I couldn't have put the concept into words like he did.

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How Copyright Is Holding Back The Creative Class

from the we're-all-the-creative-class dept

While not enough people recognize it, the real purpose of copyright law is to provide an incentive for the creation of more content. The government felt that there was a market failure, where not enough "content" would be produced without a limited monopoly, and thus, copyright was born. However, that happened back in the day when creating content wasn't easy. You pretty much had to go through a professional process. These days, thanks to new technologies, creating content is exceptionally easy -- and thus, a big part of the very basis for copyright no longer makes sense. We're drowning in content -- and it's not because of the "incentive" of copyright. There are plenty of incentives for creating content these days and very few have anything to do with copyright.

However, because of that bright line, where copyright was really designed for professional content creators, you end up with bizarre conclusions about how communications should be owned. This stems from the fact that these new technologies have blurred the boundaries between content and communications. Traditionally, professional content was about a one-to-many communication system. However, today, most content is really about many-to-many communication. This isn't new. Nearly four years ago, we pointed to some early work by Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter (who are still doing good work in this field) pointing out how copyright law doesn't make sense for many-to-many communications.

But with that border being made increasingly blurry (and it's only going to get more so), it's causing more and more people to recognize how troublesome existing copyright law is -- because all it does is hinder that kind of communication. That is, rather than acting as incentive for content creation (as is it's basic purpose), it's instead hindering content creation. That's because it only targets one increasingly less relevant type of content creation, while hindering the increasingly more popular one. This realization is occurring to more and more people, and the latest is Jeff Jarvis, who has come to the conclusion that the "creative class" is a myth. And he's right. These days, we're all the creative class -- and copyright is holding us back.

I've long disagreed with those who say that copyright kills creativity, for I do believe that there is no scarcity of inspiration. But I now understand their position better. I also have learned that when creations are restricted it is the creator who suffers more because his creation won't find its full and true public, its spark finds no kindling, and the fire dies. The creative class, copyright, mass media, and curmudgeonly critics stop what should be a continuing process of creation; like reverse alchemists, they turn abundance into scarcity, gold into lead.

In the essay, Jarvis also dives into a fuller recognition of the economics of scarcity and abundance:

But we are shifting, too, from a culture of scarcity to one of abundance. That is the essence of the Google worldview: managing abundance. So let's assume that instead of a scarcity there is an abundance of talent and a limitless will to create but it has been tamped down by an educational system that insists on sameness; starved by a mass economic system that rewarded only a few giants; and discouraged by a critical system that anointed a closed, small creative class. Now talent of many descriptions and levels can express itself and grow. We want to create and we want to be generous with our creations. And we will get the attention we deserve. That means that crap will be ignored. It just depends on your definition of crap.

Welcome to the party, Jeff.

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Silicon Valley Isn't Ignoring China; It's Looking For The Opportunity

from the looking-for-opportunities,-not-threats dept

Echoing some of Rebecca McKinnon's claims that we discussed recently, VentureBeat is running an OpEd piece by Rebecca A. Fannin, claiming that Silicon Valley has its head in the sand about the rising "threat" of competition in China. While there certainly may be some folks who aren't paying attention to China, my take on the situation is quite different.

Silicon Valley, as a broad generalization, doesn't worry about "threats." Instead, it tries to treat them all as opportunities. So, if Fannin is upset to see folks focusing on Twitter and the iPhone rather than the fact that China is building up a healthy and rapidly innovating tech economy, she may be focusing on the wrong thing. It does little to "fret" about the next big threat. There are always people warning about this or that big threat. A dozen years ago, it was how Japan was going to take over the tech industry. That didn't exactly happen. Sitting around and worrying about a threat doesn't make much sense.

Instead, it makes sense to pay attention to opportunities. And, many, many, many people in Silicon Valley view China as a huge opportunity. And, yes, new companies and technologies will flow out of China -- and it will present formidable competition -- but, again, competition isn't a real threat, it's an opportunity to do something even better and more innovative. So, I'd disagree with the assertion that Silicon Valley has its head in the sand about the rise of Chinese innovation. We're just focusing on how to make them opportunities.

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Keeping The Benevolent Dictators Of Silicon Valley Honest

from the is-that-any-way-to-build-an-internet? dept

I don't think I've ever had more people send me a single blog post than a blog post from earlier this week by Rebecca MacKinnon discussing her worries about "Silicon Valley's benevolent dictators." It's an interesting read that brings up some excellent points. It starts off pointing out the rather insular view many folks have in Silicon Valley about "the rest of the world" and the sort of hubris that comes out of the Valley on a regular basis. That, of course, is nothing new, and is a criticism that has been leveled at Valley inhabitants for many, many years. And, indeed, there is a "clubby" nature to Silicon Valley at times, that has both good and bad sides to it.

MacKinnon points out, correctly, that Silicon Valley-ites also tend to put blind faith into the idea that technology = freedom, and freedom = good, in a rather libertarian sense. Again, that's been said before. But then she points out something of a contradiction in all of this libertarianism, by noting that in fighting against any government regulation while putting all our faith in technology, we actually end up with a system of "benevolent dictators" made up of the folks who control the technology we put our faith in. That is, she worries that in rejecting government regulation, we've approved a defacto dictatorship in the form of the companies we put our trust in. In some sense, this is channelling Jonathan Zittrain's pessimism about what happens when those benevolent dictators turn away from benevolence.

Basically, what both MacKinnon and Zittrain are pointing out is that technology is just a tool. It can be used for good or for bad purposes, and it's part of Silicon Valley's hubris to assume that good will automatically win out in the end. That is, we've been mostly blessed, because the people putting such tools into practice are doing it for good (benevolent) reasons, but there's always a risk that someone else will do something much worse with it. It's a fantastic point, and one well worth thinking about, but I think the assumptions are a little bit wrong.

It's not necessarily a blind faith that "technology" and "capitalism" are flat out "good," but more a recognition that an expanding market tends to open more opportunities for everyone, and the end result of that expansion is good at a macro level. Capitalism tends to remove the barriers for growth, while technology (or, more specifically following Paul Romer's thesis, "ideas") are what then creates that growth. Capitalism is about removing the barriers, and technology and ideas are about enabling that growth. That doesn't mean that there aren't downsides to both -- but the net gain does appear. And, one thing that has become incredibly clear throughout history is that it's nearly impossible to take away that net gain once it appears. And, conversely, asking the government to create those net gains instead almost always fails, due to the difficulty in accurately regulating a market.

In other words, by removing the barriers and enabling the potential, you've almost guaranteed that when someone tries to use the tools for less-than-benevolent reasons, it only opens up strong demand for someone else to provide the equivalent (or better) in a benevolent way again. And, at the same time, in asking the gov't to manage the benevolence, you almost guarantee less opportunities to actually provide good tools, because you've added hurdles they need to jump through. Yes, there can be bumps in the road -- and, no, it's not always a fun process along the way. But enabling for growth is not blind faith. And, there are plenty of checks and balances in place that should these "benevolent dictators" turn authoritarian instead, the end result (or "revolt" as the case may be) can often be strong enough to deal with it.

So, yes, there may be some benevolent dictators in Silicon Valley -- but they'd be hard pressed to successfully ditch that benevolence without paying a huge price.

Related to this, I've recently been doing a presentation for various corporate execs (almost all from outside the US) on "What Makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley." It's probably my favorite presentation, because it's fun and it usually challenges a lot of the assumptions many people have about why Silicon Valley has been so successful for so long -- that is, while it discusses some of the "common" reasons, it focuses more attention on the hidden, unexpected and accidental reasons for why Silicon Valley became what it did.

The last time I gave it, I ended up getting into a huge discussion with some European execs who pointed out that many of the explanations seem to run almost entirely counter to what many countries who try to set up their "own" Silicon Valley think. That is, many folks look at Silicon Valley and try to replicate the outward manifestations (a good university, some venture capitalists) and miss the underlying details that create the real culture of Silicon Valley, because they almost seem counterintuitive. And the most basic element of this is enabling the free exchange of ideas (that engine for growth). Instead of doing that, most focus on protecting ideas and limiting that free exchange, falsely believing that hoarding information beats sharing information (even with competitors).

So, what happens is that other countries set up their own Silicon Valleys by focusing on protectionism (greater intellectual property rules, non-competes, hugely funded labs), and ignore the power of the cross pollination of ideas and people throughout Silicon Valley, which make it that much more difficult for any single company to abuse the trust of the people they serve. Should any company turn away from benevolence, that openness almost guarantees a more open competitor shows up in return (sometimes with the same employees from the older company). That openness drives innovation, but also keeps these benevolent dictators honest.

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Culture Clash Could Doom Microhoo!

from the internal-frictions dept

We don't link to anthropologists much on Techdirt, but Grant McCracken recently wrote a really interesting post on the cultural dimension of corporate mergers. McCracken points out that culture matters a lot in a company's success. Every really successful firm succeeds by developing a distinctive corporate culture that boosts productivity by giving employees a shared set of assumptions about how to do business. In many cases, employees become like the proverbial fish in water: the corporate culture is so pervasive that the employee barely notices it. In other cases, employees explicitly debate the meaning of their shared corporate identity: Google employees commonly debate the most "Googly" way to approach a particular problem.

When two firms merge, the existence of a shared corporate culture can no longer be assumed. Differing cultural assumptions among employees are likely to produce new frictions. One company might be more bureaucratic, work longer hours, have different procedures for evaluating new products, or have any number of other differences in the way they do business. Any of these disagreements can be a barrier to the smooth functioning of the merged company. If the two separate firms are to become a single, organic one, management must find a way to convince employees of the acquired firm to embrace the culture of the acquiring firm. If they fail, the company will limp along with simmering disagreements over strategy and tactics. That was a big part of the problem with the AOL Time Warner merger, for example.

These kinds of cultural assumptions are particularly important in the software industry, where success is often driven by the ability to recruit and retain the most talented programmers. One of Google's key advantage over the last few years has been the perception that it's a more cutting-edge place to work than Yahoo! or (especially) Microsoft. Many smart programmers view Microsoft as too big, bureaucratic, and slow-moving to develop really innovative products, and since they want to work on hot new technologies, they often go elsewhere. Acquiring another multi-billion-dollar company is likely to exacerbate this perception, especially if it causes some of Yahoo!'s best programmers to jump ship in the process.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Adults Encroach Upon Youth Turf Online

from the your-mom-poked-me dept

As technology starts to develop at a quicker and quicker pace, a generational digital divide has started to form between the children, who are growing up amidst all of this new technology, and their parents, who are left to play catch up. So, though most adults are now familiar with technologies like email (which has been around for decades now), more are starting to use instant messaging and social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. We're not referring to the so-called "online predators" that have been the subject of numerous tv specials. As mom and dad embrace these technologies, today's youths complain that grown-ups are encroaching upon their "turf" and would prefer that they stay on their side of the generational digital divide. Online youths have been quick to embrace the sites like Facebook as somewhat of a social theater where they where they publicly canoodle with crushes, post pictures of the previous night's escapades, and comment openly on each others' profiles. Now, as adults get hip to the internet, these once private worlds are now at risk of being invaded. Back when these adults were kids, there was never really a fear of their parents invading their parties, or crashing their proms, so now some youths feel it necessary to keep a "grown-up friendly" online presence, thereby ruining the appeal of such sites. It might behoove Facebook to introduce more selective sharing levels, lest their most avid users start to lose interest in actually using the site. That said, this problem of over-sharing is not unique to youths -- for quite some time now, adults have been getting into trouble over their online profiles as well.

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You Don't Create A Silicon Valley By Government Fiat

from the takes-a-bit-more-than-that dept

Two separate articles came out in two separate newspapers based 3,000 miles away from each other this past weekend -- but together they demonstrate exactly why so many places have had difficulty creating their own, local versions of "Silicon Valley." Especially during the dot com bubble, it seemed like every country and every state wanted to create some area that was a "local" Silicon Valley. There were silicon islands and silicon prairies and silicon alleys and silicon mountains... and almost all of them went nowhere. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle talks about how the original Silicon Valley was created, through a mixture of strong educational institutions, easy flow of capital and a culture that focused on risk, experimentation, entrepreneurship -- and the free flow of ideas. While the government played a big role in early Silicon Valley culture, it was as a customer, not as the creator of the culture. Contrast that to the story in the Washington Post about how Prince William County set out to create a high tech hub, which is still struggling to get much traction in the high tech world. Rather than paving the way for those critical components to form, the county simply set aside some land and (it appears) some marketing efforts to promote the county as a good place for high tech companies. That seems to be about all that many other "silicon somethings" did in the past decade as well -- forgetting that there's a lot more involved in creating a true high tech hub.

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