Reminder: Not Everyone Online Is A Jerk

from the nice-to-know dept

Following the incredibly tragic story of Abraham Biggs' live broadcasting his suicide, plenty of "web 2.0" critics such as Andrew Keen jumped on the chance to blast the "anomie, cruelty and narcissism that characterises much of the web." Of course, if you think social networks are evil, you're going to interpret events that way, but, of course, as has been pointed out before, communication tools don't discriminate over who can use them -- so of course there are some awful people who use them, just as there are many good people. Communication tools don't change that. And, for every tragic Abraham Biggs story out there, it seems likely that there are many, many stories like Ayelet Waldman, who talks about how her online community of friends saved her from committing suicide. Of course, those stories don't get nearly as much attention, so folks like Keen can pretend they don't exist and that social networking communication tools are mainly used for shallow, meaningless conversations.

38 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Andrew Keen Predicts The End Of Gardening And Pickup Basketball

from the if-it's-not-paid,-it's-not-worth-doing dept

So I already wrote about Andrew Keen's ridiculously laughable assertion that the economic downturn would spell the end of all unpaid activity online -- such as blogging, contributing to Wikipedia and developing open source software. The whole thing was so laughable, I asked Keen to put some money behind some of his predictions, though to date I have not heard from him. I'm guessing this means he really does not believe what he writes.

However, I have to bring this up again, because Jesse Walker over at Reason Magazine does such an amazing job demonstrating the basic logic fallacy in Keen's thinking that it's too good not to repeat:

Andrew Keen predicts an end to backyard gardens, playground basketball, basement jam sessions, amateur painting, and open mic nights for the duration of the economic hard times, because "the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry."

Oh, wait. Hold on. He only predicts an end to unpaid-but-pleasurable labor on the Internet

No one ever does anything that doesn't result in immediately getting paid, apparently.

23 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Andrew Keen: Put Some Money Behind Your Predictions?

from the who-actually-listens-to-this-guy dept

Andrew Keen, of course, is a guy who has written a laughably bad book about how only experts like himself should be able write things, because all those "amateurs" get stuff wrong. There are some who believe that Keen's entire personality is satire, because everything he accuses "amateurs" of doing, he does himself. He gets many facts wrong in his book. His writing is amateurish at best. His interpretations are laughable. He relies on incredibly weak reasoning -- all of which are things he insists that amteurs do, but pros such as himself don't do, because they have editors and such. The most amusing, of course, may be his condemnation of Larry Lessig, whose position he gets almost 100% factually incorrect.

So far, I have yet to read anything by Keen that isn't easily torn apart as laughably false, which reinforces the idea that everything he writes is satire. His latest piece, pointed out by Slashdot, is no exception. In it, Keen announces that the current financial crisis will put an end to open source and "free" business models because the crisis will mean that people actually have to make money.

Spot the rather obvious logical fallacy? The one even your sixth grader could point out? Right. Keen has set up a totally bogus strawman, that "open source" and "free" mean you don't make any money. As anyone who actually looks at the details knows, that's simply not true. Keen is so blinded by the word "free" he misses the fact that when people discuss the use of "free" as a part of a business model, they're talking about using it to make money. Instead, he seems to assume that "free" is the end of the discussion.

"One of the very few positive consequences of the current financial miasma will be a sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor. Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals."

Funny, but part of the reason why all of those "user generated content" businesses took off in the first place was that after the dot com bubble burst, people had a lot of spare time on their hands. So they were more willing to contribute and take part in these things. Keen also seems to not realize that much of that user generated work and open source efforts are not about "utopian ideals" but very practical reasons that involve non-monetary benefits. People contribute to open source software not because they're idealistic, but because it helps them elsewhere. People blog and post videos on YouTube not because they're idealistic, but because they get value out of doing so.

The altruistic ideal of giving away one's labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and VCs queued up to fund revenue-less "businesses" like Twitter. But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley's wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project.

You know, I remember another business that had absolutely no business model right after the last bubble burst, even though venture capitalists had dumped $25 million into it at a very high valuation (which many -- including myself -- thought was ridiculous). That company became Google. According to Keen, that couldn't have happened, because who would ever invest in a company with no business model? Does Keen have no sense of history?

"I'm pretty sure, if not certain, that the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry. Being paid to work is intuitive to the human condition; it represents our most elemental sense of justice."

Again, that's not what happened during the last downturn, but why let facts get in the way? Also, this is still based on the false premise that there's no actual benefit for people and that they're only doing things for "utopian" ideals. That's simply untrue. If contributing to an open source project helps get you a well-paying job, is that utopian? If building an open source tool helps you jump start a different business, is that utopian? If blogging, Twittering or posting videos to YouTube helps you communicate cheaper, faster and better than other tools, is that utopian? Hardly. But Keen seems unable to consider these possibilities.

"So how will today's brutal economic climate change the Web 2.0 "free" economy? It will result in the rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash.

Well, I certainly hope so, since we hand out plenty of cash to contributors at The Insight Community, but I still think Keen is wrong here. He again is dismissing or purposely ignoring the non-monetary value that people get. Let's look at his "winners" list:

"It will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google, TheAtlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu over YouTube Inc. , Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN's professional journalism over CNN's iReporter citizen-journalism.

Well, first off, some of those aren't actually competitors, so it seems rather unfair to suggest that's the case. However, I'd like to make a bet. While there are different estimates as to how long any recession might be, the general consensus is that we should hopefully start pulling out by the end of 2009 or early 2010. So, let's pick a few of these that we can measure, and I'll bet Andrew Keen $100 (really money, Andrew) that in two years, on October 22, 2010, Wikipedia still gets more traffic than Knol, that Google is still much, much, much bigger than Mahalo (if they're even considered competitors any more), and that YouTube gets more traffic than Hulu.

If any one of those is untrue, I'll write him a check. As for the other comparisons he makes, they don't seem to be particularly reasonable comparisons, so I don't see how to fairly evaluate how one wins over the other. TechCrunch is a part of the blogosphere, so how does that make sense? In fact, TechCrunch came out of the same "utopian" ideals that Keen dismisses. Michael Arrington started it for fun, with no plans to turn it into a business, but that's what it became. I thought Keen thought that wasn't possible? iReporter doesn't compete with CNN's professional news staff -- they work together. iTunes doesn't compete with MySpace -- they're in totally different businesses.

So, let's put some real money on this, Andrew. Or does Andrew Keen not really believe what he writes?

16 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Rewriting Copyright History, The Elitist Way: Compare File Sharers To 9/11 Terrorists

from the stunning dept

When we first debunked Hank Williams' problematic attack on Mike Arrington for suggesting, reasonably, that copyright law had reached the point that it needed a serious rethink, someone told me that Hank Williams is trying to become "the next Andrew Keen." Keen, of course, wrote a book last year about how the internet is somehow destroying culture, with the basic thesis being that "culture" is defined only as professionally produced content. Effectively, his argument was that non-professionally produced content simply can't be good, so by competing with professionally produced content, all that amateur content was somehow damaging professional content. The logical errors in this thesis are pretty easy to spot, but we'll just mention the obvious one: if professional content is so much better than amateur content, what does it have to fear from amateur content? In fact, Keen's whole thesis is so ridiculous, and the book praising the reliability and accuracy of "professional" media is so riddled with errors, distorted truths and outright falsehoods, that some have suggested (credibly) that Keen is merely satire. Everything that Keen claims is bad about amateur media, he does -- repeatedly.

Either way, it appears that he's a bit jealous of Hank Williams taking up his role in these debates, as he's finally chimed in on Arrington's original piece, just a few weeks late. Keen's take is so filled with errors that it definitely seems to support the "satire" theory -- and for now we're going to go with that theory, and assume it's the case. But, for a few howlers in the piece, try these on for size:

"Arrington's stance, of course, epitomizes the permissive attitude about intellectual property that has already destroyed the music business and is now threatening to kill the holy trinity that includes Hollywood, the television industry, and the book trade."

This would be the music industry that is seeing every single aspect of its business on the upswing (other than the sale of plastic discs)? This would be Hollywood that had its best year ever in 2007? Ah, right. Destroyed, huh? This is "professional" content at work.

In 1999, when Napster first assaulted the recorded music industry with its peer-to-peer technology, we heard similarly open-minded nonsense from Web 1.0 moguls like MP3.com founder Michael Robertson and Public Enemy's Chuck D. Almost 10 years later, the catastrophic consequences of Napster's mass piracy are all too tragically evident. In 1997, global recorded music sales were $45 billion. By next year, it is estimated that they will have fallen to around $23 billion -- an almost 50 percent drop in sales in a little more than a single decade.

This is classic Keen. Total misdirection in how you define the market and selective quoting of facts. You see, markets for obsolete products shrink, but the overall market is not shrinking. It's like the analyst reports that whined about the market for "PDAs" shrinking just as smartphones were taking over. Did we say that smartphones destroyed the market for PDAs or did we just recognize that the market evolved? Keen leaves out the fact that concert revenue is at record highs. He leaves out the fact that more people today are making music than ever before in history, and more people are able to listen to more music than ever before in history. By any real measure, it would appear the music industry is thriving, even if the obsolete part (selling recordings) is fading.

And, then, there's Keen's coup de grace, comparing those who want to listen to music to the 9/11 terrorists in a sentence riddled with errors:

"The truth, of course, is that the theft of digital content is no more "natural" than holding up little old ladies on street-corners or crashing civilian airliners into tall buildings. And it's the responsibility of thought-leaders like Arrington to use their privileged positions to educate the innocent about the evils of digital thievery."

• Error 1: Calling infringement "theft."
• Error 2: Saying that it's irresponsible for someone who notices that the majority of the population is breaking a law to suggest that perhaps it's time to rethink that law.
• Error 3: Suggesting actions done by the majority of the population is the equivalent of the 9/11 hijackers.
• Error 4: Saying that any "thought-leader" has a "responsibility" to take a particular stand
• Error 5: Saying that infringement is a problem of "innocents" run wild.
• Error 6: Putting a moral angle ("evil") on an issue that is merely one of business models

So many errors in just such a short quote. You'd never see that from a professional writer... oh wait.

We'll finish it off one more howler:

By stating his opposition to criminalizing "natural behavior," Arrington is not only legitimizing online theft, but he is also undermining the credibility of entertainment companies, such as Hulu or Blinkbox that have invested major resources into building entirely legal Web businesses. Defending YouTube's flagrant disregard for intellectual property laws is tantamount to justifying criminal behavior....

Ah, you see, in Keen's satirical world, companies like Hulu and Blinkbox that offer up professionally produced content deserve to have their business models protected by the government and criminal laws. But those that support amateur content are criminal enterprises. The fact that Keen seems unable to grasp the difference between a service provider and a user in terms of criminal liability is the least of the problems here. The fact that Keen seems unable to grasp the fact that these are merely different business models for distributing content -- and the one he dislikes is winning in the market -- suggests an unwillingness to actually understand what's happening here.

What it comes down to is that folks like Keen and Williams have decided that there's a certain class of content that "counts," and that's "professional" content. All other content is a problem -- especially if it interferes with an obsolete business model. Basically, they've decided that they like one particular (poor and increasingly obsolete) business model for a particular group of companies, and decided that interference with that business model must be a crime -- even if the end result is exactly the opposite of what they predict (i.e., there's more content being produced today than ever before -- it's just that it's happening using a very different model than the one they like). Luckily, we live in a world where business models adapt and change, and the companies and pundits unwilling to do so will simply fade away.

39 Comments | Leave a Comment..