Judge Says 'There's An Ad For That...' And It's Ok For Now

from the let-it-play dept

Recently, AT&T sued Verizon over its "There's A Map For That" ad, that mocked AT&T's 3G network coverage, while playing on the Apple iPhone slogan of "there's an app for that." It seemed like an odd thing for AT&T to do, as it really just called more attention to the ad and the differences in 3G networks. Now, to make matters even worse, a judge has refused to issue an injunction stopping the ad. That doesn't stop the lawsuit, though, and the ad might still get taken down if AT&T wins, but it's unlikely Verizon's ad campaign is going to last until the lawsuit is finally decided, anyway. So for now, all it's done is driven a lot more attention to the ad, in which Verizon comes out favorably.

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Once Again, You Don't Compete With Innovative New Services By Being Lame

from the in-case-you-weren't-paying-attention dept

A couple years back we pointed out how the entertainment industry kept trying to "compete" with new (legal and not-so-legal) online services, but always seemed to do so by being incredibly lame. And, you don't compete by being lame. It appears that this message still hasn't quite gotten through to some yet. With the movie industry facing new challenges concerning online distribution and innovative services like Redbox, here are two stories of old school players trying to "compete" but missing out on the part where they make their offering compelling.

The first comes from Josh in CharlotteNC, who points out that Blockbuster is trying to compete with Redbox and its widely available kiosks (and Netflix with its larger library of downloadable movies) by setting up kiosks in its stores where you can download movies. But... you can only download them to proprietary SD cards, and then it can only play on special proprietary hardware that participants in this program need to have. How is that a better experience then, well, anything? If you want a movie that can be downloaded, why not just let people download it at home? Why have people go out to download it?

Then we have a story sent in by Loydster, about how Sony Pictures is offering owners of new Sony/Bravia HDTV's the chance to download and watch the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs before the DVD release. While that is actually a nice tie-in between Sony's content business and its consumer electronics business, Sony (of course) has to screw it up. That's because the company thinks it can charge $25 to download the movie. The company seems to admit that it's charging this much because it doesn't want to piss off its retail partners (like WalMart), but it's difficult to see why it's worth doing the project at all if the pricing is going to be so ridiculous.

Experimenting with ways to compete is good... but being so obviously lame is not.

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Firebowls, Copyright And Crowdfunding (Oh My)

from the will-people-understand-the-nuances? dept

A bunch of people have been sending in John T. Unger's story, claiming that someone who copied his artwork is now suing him in federal court over copyrights. The general sentiment from the submitters, it seems, is to support Unger's position. I avoided writing about this for a while, because the story is actually a lot more complex, and since I think Unger is going too far, I thought it might upset some folks. Plus, the story is pretty complex. Thankfully, the good folks over at Consumerist actually really did an excellent job laying out a pretty balanced look at the issues that doesn't automatically side with Unger.

Here's the summary of the situation:

• Unger makes "firebowls" -- decorative metal bowls that you light a fire in (I had no idea such things existed).
• He copyrighted the design of his firebowls.
• He then discovered that Rick Wittrig was making firebowls that look remarkably similar, but are a bit cheaper.
• Unger got angry and sent a cease-and-desist
• Wittrig filed a lawsuit to claim that Unger's registered copyrights are not legitimate, as there shouldn't be any copyright on utilitarian objects.
• Unger writes up his side of the story (small artist being ripped off!) and asks people to fund his legal defense using popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter

As Consumerist notes, it's easy to quickly side with Unger without understanding the full story, saying that he's an artist who got "ripped off," but that's not at all clear. Yes, it does seem pretty likely that Wittrig copied Unger's designs (they match quite closely and at no point does Wittrig deny copying the designs). But it is a pretty big question as to whether or not Unger's work really is covered by copyright (or should be). Now this whole story is the type of thing that people often bring up when I write about why copyright isn't needed. This -- they say -- is a perfect example where copyright is necessary. Unger is mad because this other guy is "ripping him off" and passing off Unger's designs as his own. Except, again, that's not clear at all. Copyright was designed as an incentive to create -- not a system to block all competition. In the fashion world, as we've noted repeatedly, knockoffs are quite common, and have helped the industry thrive. It actually helps make the brand name originators of the design worth more, because people want the "real" original kind.

So, without copyright, what can Unger do? Well, he's actually already doing it. He put up a site that points out that Wittrig copies him, get lots of attention for it, and a lot more people now know about these kinds of decorative firebowls. My guess is that Unger is suddenly selling a lot more than he was before -- and that'll be true whether or not Wittrig gets the copyrights tossed out. And, in the meantime, having Wittrig around as competition should be good for Unger, pushing him to continue innovating and coming up with new designs.

Separately, I have to admit to some fascination over the use of Kickstarter's crowdfunding platform to fund a "legal defense" rather than just as a way to sell products. Even if I don't think Unger should have much of a legal argument, I think it's a cool use of the platform, which also drives more interest and attention to his own bowls.

So, in the end, I think Wittrig should be free to make these firebowls and to sell them in the marketplace and compete with Unger. At the same time, though, I think Unger should be free to draw lots of attention to his own firebowls combined with the sympathy-inducing story of how he originated the designs that Wittrig copied. In the end, then, they'd both be better off, as it ends up getting both of them a lot more attention for the bowls, and those who feel sympathy for Unger, or who just want to support the "original" artist, will pay up for his versions of the bowls, whereas those who would rather save some money will pay Wittrig. In the end, both of them end up being better off, and no copyright battle needs to happen. Unfortunately, in an age where so many content creators have been taught to use copyright as a crutch, that's not what we get.

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But Wait, Wasn't Muni-Fiber Supposed To Take Away Incentive For Private Fiber?

from the caught-in-a-lie dept

Over the past few years, there have been numerous lawsuits by telcos against various municipalities that have decided to launch municipal fiber broadband projects. Most of these lawsuits have failed -- but the main argument from the telcos is that it's unfair to have to compete against the government, and it would take away incentives for the telcos to actually invest in infrastructure to provide for those towns. Of course, that doesn't make much sense. That would mean that any competition would decrease incentives to invest. One of the nastier legal battles took place in Monticello, Minnesota, where the local telco TDS fought hard (and lost) its battle to stop muni-fiber from showing up. But, now, suddenly TDS is announcing its own fiber broadband, giving people 50 Mbps service for $50/month. What's the likelihood that TDS would have done this if it didn't have competition from muni-fiber? The reason municipalities look to muni-fiber is because there isn't enough competition and the telcos aren't investing in infrastructure (or really serving customer needs). So the end result here is that by introducing more competition, consumers and citizens are better served. So what's the problem with it again?

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Canada Decides That Canadian Ownership Is More Important Than Real Telco Competition

from the regulatory-failure dept

The biggest problem in the telco world is the lack of competition. Most of the worst abuses by various telecom providers is because there really isn't enough competition to make it worthwhile to treat customers better. The best thing that governments can do to encourage better broadband/telco services is to encourage competition. Apparently, Canada has different priorities. A new mobile firm was set to open up shop in Canada, called Globalive. However, Canada apparently has some rules about how telcos need to have Canadian ownership. And while Globalive was originally judged to meet the criteria in bidding on spectrum, a different government bureaucracy has now said that it doesn't meet the Canadian ownership requirements. In other words, to the Canadian government, having local ownership is more important than real competition. This is basically a form of protectionism that (like most forms of protectionism) ends up harming consumers.

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Booksellers Claiming That Competition And Lower Prices Are Bad For Consumers

from the yeah,-that's-convincing dept

Clay Shirky points us to a letter sent by the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to the Justice Department suggesting that a book price war between Amazon and Wal-Mart is potentially illegal. What they appear to be saying -- as Shirky also noted -- is that lower prices are a bad thing:

While on the surface it may seem that these lower prices will encourage more reading and a greater sharing of ideas in the culture, the reality is quite the opposite. Consider this quote from Mr. Grisham's agent, David Gernert, that appeared in the New York Times:

"If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King's new novel or John Grisham's 'Ford County' for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best sellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers."

Basically the booksellers are saying they can't compete in the marketplace. That may be true, but if it's not actually harming consumers, what is the problem? There is no rule that says books must cost $25. If companies can figure out how to sell books for less, in ways that work for their bottom line, then what's wrong with that?

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iPhone To Be Offered From Multiple Carriers, eh

from the in-God-Phone-We-Anti-Trust dept

Given all the talk in DC lately about anti-competitive exclusive cellphone distribution arrangements, it's very interesting to see a rumor broken by the Globe and Mail about the iPhone in Canada. According to The Globe, Rogers will soon lose its iPhone exclusive as both TELUS and Bell Mobility add the iconic device to their Christmas line-up. Bell and TELUS are migrating away from the CDMA technology they have used up to 3G, towards the more globally compatible GSM evolutions. To minimize costs, the two carriers are building a single shared-infrastructure network, on which they will both sell services. While Rogers, the long-time GSM user, will have the wider network footprint and offer iPhones fall-back to their 2G data networks when out of 3G coverage, that advantage is countered by TELUS and Bell offering 3.5G HSPA+ speeds to Rogers' 3G. Under current coverage conditions, iPhone urbanites might prefer the new entrants, while sub-urbanites may prefer Rogers.

What is most interesting here is the break from Apple's conventional one-country-one-carrier strategy, which has attracted the attention of more than a few countries' regulators. The Canadian case will be the first market where competing carriers offer the iPhone, without a regulator forcing Apple's hand. Perhaps Germany will follow Canada: there are rumors that T-Mobile will lose their exclusive deal with Apple by year's end, and British/Spanish carrier O2 will enter the market with preferable iPhone plans. In the USA, most of the hot water Apple is swimming in is because the FTC isn't happy with the iPhone app approval process, which nixed the Google voice app. But while the FTC branch is focused on the App Store, some Congressional Reps are voicing their displeasure at the exclusive iPhone deal with AT&T. Governments around the world aren't sure what to make of exclusive phone distribution deals - which, strangely, never seemed to raise an eyebrow until the iPhone. In France, the Orange-Apple 5-yr exclusive was smacked down by the feds who argued that an exclusive arrangement would add "a new element of rigidity in the sector which is already suffering from a lack of competition." But here's where I'm not so clear.

I agree that exclusives, when examined in isolation, are anti-competitive. But overall, I'm not clear on how a 2007 new entrant (Apple), with a disruptive device that lit a fire under the incumbent vendors, could be perceived as "anti-competitive" in terms of net results. In fact, the exclusivity has undeniably forced the competing carriers to work their butts off to come up with a comparable device, seeking it from the likes of Nokia, Samsung (which are scrambling to respond, though they'd never admit it), or newer players like HTC or INQ. The exclusive deals seem to be spurring competition. In contrast, in a world where every telco carries the iPhone, the telcos actually can worry less about offering something else that's equal or better. I suppose someday it could make sense to go after Apple exclusives, but why not wait until the net effect on society is actually negative in some measurable way? A good rule for government should be, "When in doubt, leave it alone."

Meanwhile, the Canadian case will certainly offer Canadians more choice among iPhone providers, and most notably iPhone plans. Canadians tasted the bitter flavor of inadequate competition when iPhone data plans were first announced there in mid 2008. Three-year contracts, no unlimited data plan, high per-MB pricing, and a triple lock-in. Yes, Canada may soon see more service competition around the iPhone -- but will Canada see more or less device competition?

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

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'Approved' Fansub Anime To Compete With Licensed Version

from the sub-competiiton dept

We've discussed the state of "fansub" anime video and video games in the past, whereby many fans will team up and help translate a release for different markets. While there have been some complaints, many in the anime community have figured out how to embrace this and use it to their advantage -- in some cases using the fansubs to determine what other markets to look at for official releases. Earlier this year, we wrote about how one developer from 07th Expansion was thrilled about the fansub work being done -- thanking the fansubbers for "loving" his work so much.

An anonymous reader points out that 07th Expansion recently sold the rights of a new game to the company MangaGamer, which includes the right to translate the game. But the fansubbers were already working on their own version. So, would there be a clash? Apparently not. Both versions are moving forward legally with the approval of 07th Expansion. MangaGamer even did a good thing, offering to hire the fansubbers to do the translating for the official version, but they were unable to do so for work reasons. This did follow one bad move -- where MangaGamer asked the fansubbers to take down their version -- but after MangaGamer went back and learned of 07th Expansion's embracing of fansubbers, it changed its mind, and told the fansubbers they could continue with their effort.

Of course, even with the "competition" from fans, MangaGamer should have a huge advantage. The fansubbers admit that they're slow and doing it as a hobby -- so they fully expect MangaGamer to beat them to market by a long shot. But it's nice to see MangaGamer realize that this isn't the end of the world and to just compete in the marketplace, even without an exclusive monopoly on a translation patch to the game.

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Taxi Owner Copies Innovative Business Model Of Free Shuttles He Just Forced To Shut Down

from the regulatory-capture dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how some of the taxi companies in Tampa, Florida were upset about free competition. Some smart business folks had setup local transportation options, that subsisted on advertising and tips, rather than fares, and thus were able to avoid having to buy a (sold out) taxi cab license. But, of course, the existing cabbies freaked out and complained, and convinced the city council to declare that the free cabs had to buy licenses as well... while conveniently noting that none are available. Basically, the cab drivers got the city council to drive this competition out of town.

But, now there's a bit of a twist. A bunch of folks have sent in the news that one of the guys who pushed the city council the hardest has now suddenly set up his own free shuttle offering in place of the competition that was run out of town. He makes no qualms about the fact that he's copying the idea of the shuttles he just knocked out of business, saying they had a good idea -- he just didn't like the fact that they didn't have to buy a taxi license. Neat trick, huh? Get the government to drive your competitors out of town, and then copy their best ideas.

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No Free Competition Allowed In Tampa Bay Taxi Business

from the competition-is-bad dept

Back in June, we wrote about how cab drivers in Tampa Bay were trying to get the city council to outlaw new competitors in the form of free ad-supported transportation from some owners of electric vehicles. Like so many cities, Tampa Bay's cab system operates on a license system, which the city and the existing cabbies work closely to limit, and do make sure prices remain artificially high. However, the free electric vehicles had thought they got around this by noting that the permit system only applied to cabs for hire. Since they weren't charging, they weren't covered. Until now.

EEJ alerts us to the news that Hillsborough County transportation officials have announced that the free electric vehicles need to get permits as well -- except, oh by the way, there aren't any available. Too bad. At least one of the electric vehicle operators plans to go to court to fight this, but it may be an uphill battle. While the officials are hiding behind "safety" claims, the truth is that it's a typical move of regulatory capture by the cab companies, limiting competition so they can keep their prices artificially high and avoid any sort of business model innovation.

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Patents Not Enough Of A Monopoly, According To Biotech Firms

from the say-what? dept

Apparently, a bunch of big biotech firms feel that the patent monopolies they already have over certain drugs aren't enough, and they are demanding Congress enact laws that also stamp out any competition from similar drugs (known, back here in the real world, as competitors). You would think that after centuries of understanding how bad monopolies are for the market that the gov't wouldn't kowtow and simply hand over such things -- but it is. Of course, the biotech firms already have patents, so it's questionable why they also need an additional gov't granted monopoly period to block out "biosimilar" drugs, other than the fact that they don't like competition.

They claim, of course, that they need this exclusivity to recoup their costs in developing the drug. However, the deeper you look at the details, the less true that really is in practice. Much of the really core biotech work is done under gov't grants anyway, and often at research institutes. These private firms pick up the trail later in the game in a lot of cases -- but still get full patent rights. The actual cost of developing these things has been massively overstated, often lumping in marketing costs to R&D. It is true that clinical trials are crazy expensive and a huge burden on biotech and pharma companies, but that's a separate issue. There are numerous proposals about ways to take the clinical trial burden expense away from pharma. Lumping those mandatory gov't induced expenses into basic R&D is misleading. Furthermore, even in the face of competition, time and time and time again, we've seen that the original provider still commands a large and noticeable premium, from which it can easily recoup its costs. This is nothing more than blatant monopoly rents with a Congress too clueless about basic economics to resist.

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Mark Cuban Remains Confused About Free

from the wait,-what?!? dept

Last week, in writing my review of Chris Anderson's new book, Free, I noted that Mark Cuban's initial critique of it was quite misguided, in that he made the quick (and flat-out incorrect) assumption that the story of "free" means that "everything is free," and thus it ignores costs. That's simply not true, and thus represents a big strawman that ignores the actual point of the book (though, to be fair to Cuban, it's a very common strawman found in many of the arguments against the book). Cuban has now taken a second shot at critiquing free, and I'd argue it's at least more interesting on a first pass, pointing out: when you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free. That sounds like a worthwhile read, though I find it hard to believe. Here's the meat of Cuban's argument:

Lets look at the rule that eventually KILLS all freemium based content plays:

There will always be a company that replaces you. At some point your BlackSwan competitor will appear and they will kick your ass. Their product will be better or more interesting or just better marketed than yours, and it also will be free. They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo. You get the point. Someone out there with a better idea will raise a bunch of money, give it away for free, build scale and charge less to reach the audience. Or will be differentiated enough, and important enough to the audience to maybe even charge more. Who knows. But they will kick your ass and you will be in trouble.

I don't think anyone denies any of that. Except... here's the main problem that kills Cuban's point: this applies to any company, whether it uses free or not. What he describes is not unique to free. It's the story any company faces, and we're seeing how the companies that have "embraced" free have acted as that sort of "black swan" competitor to the companies that haven't. Look at what is happening in the recording industry or the newspaper industry, where they're struggling to understand new models.

Cuban tries to suggest that this is something special about the "free" space, but I can't fathom why it's any different than any company:

Its not that they can’t make money offering free. They can , have and will. The problem is that they know that its literally impossible to be the king of the mountain forever. But that won’t stop them from trying. And that is exactly what will kill them.

"Free" is just a price. If the cost of your product is $3 and someone figures out how to build a competitor for $1 (or free!) then you face the same problem. In fact, I'd argue you're better positioned to adjust if you understand the basic concepts behind free (which Cuban either doesn't, or he's bluffing for some odd reason), because it suggests you know what parts of the business to leverage as a resource, and which to charge for. So, I'm confused. What about what Cuban says is specific to "free" business models and why can't those who embrace "free" adapt if he seems to believe that others can?

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Cab Drivers Angry About Having To Compete With Free As Well

from the it's-called-competition dept

There's just something about having to compete with "free" that gets people really, really angry. It's silly of course. In traditional competition, if someone lowers their price and it's lower than your own costs, you simply have to figure out other ways to compete (such as by adding more benefits and value). It's the same thing when you compete with free -- but for some reason, people see that big $0 and they stop thinking, not realizing it's no different if someone is charging $0 or if they're just charging less than you. You need to figure out some way to compete. EEJ points us to a story from a couple months back, noting that in Tampa, Florida, some entrepreneurially minded folks have started up free transportation services using electric vehicles. The operators of these vehicles make their money by wrapping the cars in ads and accepting tips. Other than that, the ride is free.

But... wouldn't you know it? Local cabbies are pissed off and demanding regulations to stop this sort of competition. Rather than coming up with better ways to compete, they feel the need to run to the government and get protectionist help. Doesn't this sound familiar? Amusingly, it's actually taxi regulations that have created some of this problem in the first place. At least one of the electric car owners notes that he approached the city about getting a license, but he was denied, because of the artificial scarcity the city places on cabs via such regulations (which help keep the cost of a cab ride artificially high). But... the loophole is that the regulations only apply to hired transportation. If the transportation itself is "free" then there are no regulations.

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BT Throttling Online Video For Competitive, Not Congestion, Reasons

from the not-nice dept

While the broadband providers often talk up the need to break network neutrality in order to avoid "congestion" problems, most people have recognized that's just a smokescreen. The congestion issues are not an issue at all. Broadband costs have been going down, consistently, and most network engineers admit that with basic upgrades (nothing out of the ordinary), there's no bandwidth crunch to worry about. The real reason why broadband providers are interested in breaking network neutrality is because many of them want to get into the content business -- and they don't want to compete on even ground.

Case in point? BT. The British telco is starting to heavily throttle all video -- especially the BBC's online video player. This is the same BT, by the way, that just two years ago was saying there was no need to traffic shape or break net neutrality, and that it could handle all traffic issues with basic upgrades. So what happened? Well, it appears BT didn't like the competition from online video providers, so it decided to pretend it needed to do this for congestion purposes.

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The Real Culprit For The Decline In Music Sales? Video Games

from the it-ain't-piracy dept

Last week, I did yet another presentation at a music industry conference (hoping to get video of it), where one of the points I raised was that competition from things like video games has been one of the major competitive market elements that the recording industry never seems willing to recognize, when it talks about its declining sales -- instead, always insisting that "piracy" is to blame. Yet, Charles Arthur looked at some of the numbers in the UK and recognized that if one assumes that discretionary spending on these sorts of things remains about equal, it certainly looks like the decrease in music purchases has simply been replaced by video game purchases. In other words (once again) this is a business model issue. The recording industry hasn't give people good reasons to buy, while the video game industry has.

Related to this, by the way, is that this shows what a lie it is for the recording industry to insist that hundreds of thousands of jobs are "lost" and millions in tax revenue goes missing because of its losses. If, for some reason, people continued to spend as much on music, then it's likely that the video game industry would be smaller, and the job "losses" would be there. In other words, those job "losses" in the music industry almost certainly turned into job gains in other sectors (which somehow never make it into those reports). And the "tax revenues" likely remain about the same, as the greater taxes paid by the video game industry make up for the smaller tax bill in the recording industry.

Now, this is a rather simplistic study of things, and a much more detailed study could be done to support the shift in consumer preference. But the simple claim that all of these losses are due to "piracy," rather than other competitive forces, has increasingly come under serious doubt.

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Thomson Reuters Lawsuit Against Competing Software Product Dismissed

from the reverse-engineering-allowed dept

Last year, we wrote about the troubling lawsuit filed by Thomson Reuters claiming that George Mason University, the makers of an open bibliography software, Zotero, had violated its copyright by reverse engineering the file format used by Thomson Reuters' own proprietary bibliography software, EndNote. Zotero could open bibliographies created in EndNote and then resave them in an open format -- a very useful tool that should be perfectly legal -- but which Thomson Reuters claims violated its license agreement, which bars reverse engineering. Luckily, a judge has tossed out the lawsuit, though (as of right now) it's not entirely clear what the reason for the dismissal was (the ruling doesn't appear to be anywhere online, and the reports on it don't seem to have the details either). Hopefully, Thomson Reuters takes the hint and drops the case, but there's probably a half-decent chance that it will refile the suit or appeal. However, one hopes that the company realizes that felony interference with a business model isn't a crime, and reverse engineering has been held to be perfectly legal. Also, wouldn't it be nice if the company focused on competing by innovating on tools and features, rather than trying to sue competitors out of existence? Update: There's a great analysis of the complaint, that goes much more deeply into the details -- and corrects some misperceptions in this and the earlier post (though, I'd still argue it's copyright law that makes the license enforceable in the first place).

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The Intellectual Property Asshole Competition

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

Now this ought to be fun to watch. We've written plenty of stuff about the ongoing legal fight between artist Shephard Fairey and the Associated Press. And, every time we write about it, someone always points out that Fairey is often just as bad as the AP. Despite being an "appropriation" artist, who regularly uses the works of others in his own work (something we think is great), he's also been known to legally threaten others for doing the same with his own work. So, it looks like someone has decided to poke both with a stick, to see who gets provoked first. That someone is artist Evan Roth. ChurchHatesTucker alerts us that Roth has launched his "Intellectual Property Asshole Competition" where he is selling, via his website, hand-painted version of both the Mannie Garcia/AP photo and Shepard Fairey's poster... and will see who is the first to send him a cease and desist. While we never think it's a good idea to infringe for the sake of infringement, this ought to be fun to watch.

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Lock Up Your Content... And Have All The Traffic Go To Your Competitors

from the it's-how-it-works dept

Kevin Stapp writes in to highlight a simple fact that has been discussed time and time again: that if a newspaper locks up its content behind a paywall, it will lose a ton of traffic beyond just the regular readers who refuse to pay, because the sites that send you links (and traffic and new readers) will simply point elsewhere. As an example, Kevin points out that with Slashdot's post about Craigslist suing Henry McMaster, it initially had a paywall-blocked WSJ link... but quickly added a free link from another news source. This is a key point that old school newspaper folks keep forgetting. They think that their job is to deliver the news, and the readers' job is to read the news. But that's not the way it works anymore. These days, the community helps spread the news -- and by making that more difficult, you decrease your value to everyone, and make it more difficult for readers to help spread the news and promote your paper's coverage.

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We Need A Freedom To Tinker Law... Not Just A Right To Repair

from the take-it-further dept

The EFF has a post about the proposed "Right to Repair" law that would stop the practice of car companies locking up diagnostic codes and information in onboard car computers.

These codes have been used to force car owners to go to dealers, rather than independent car repair shops, basically using the DMCA to backstop the plan. This is (of course) an abuse of the DMCA in many ways (it wasn't intended for this purpose at all). So while it's good to see this bill put forth to deal with this specific problem (and, as the EFF notes, amazing to see the Libertarian Party and the Green Party both sign off on it), the real issue is the fact that this bill needs to be there in the first place -- and the fact that it's only limited to car repairs.

Ideally, the solution would be to get rid of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules, but the EFF suggests a more universal "Right to Repair" Act. I'd even take it a step further and say, why not a "Freedom to Tinker Act"? This goes beyond just "repairing," and to basic tinkering -- which is often found at the root of innovation. Companies are abusing copyright law in many ways to prevent any kind of tinkering whatsoever, beyond just repairing. Doing so clearly goes against the entire purpose of copyright law, and it would be great to stop that kind of abuse.

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New FTC Chair's Views On Google, Broadband Competition And Behavioral Advertising

from the sounds-decent-so-far... dept

We've been receiving a series of different reports from different folks about a recent interview that new FTC boss, Jon Leibowitz, gave on CSPAN. Leibowitz has been in the FTC for a while, though, he's yet another former entertainment industry lobbyist in the administration (he was VP of Congressional Affairs for the MPAA from 2000 to 2004). So far, however, he seems to be taking quite reasonable positions on a variety of topics (though, some questionable views on other areas). Questioned about Google's dominance in the market (something that the FTC has been investigating for a while now), he pointed out that dominance is "the American way" and not necessarily an antitrust violation:

Google has certainly has a dominant position in search advertising. There's no doubt about that. From our perspective, just having a dominant position doesn't in any way violate the law. It's if you do something -- as the Justice Department in the 1990s alleged that Microsoft did -- to exclude competitors illegally, that's when it becomes a problem.

If you get to a dominant position or a monopoly position by virtue of your own acumen, that's really the American way.

Then there's broadband competition, where he definitely does appear to be concerned about the lack of competition and the lack of transparency from current broadband providers:

We believe consumers need to have notice and consent about what they're getting. It's very, very important that these providers tell consumers about the speed they're getting, and whether (ISPs) are making any types of management decisions in terms of the network that affect consumers....

In a perfect marketplace where you had more competitors, you wouldn't need the government necessarily to be terribly involved. Particularly in the consumer protection area, we have a big roll to play. Broadband is a deregulated product. That's good, we like deregulation generally. But when you have deregulation, you also have law enforcement to make sure people do the right thing.

And, then, there's the question of behavioral advertising, where he believes that opt-in, rather than opt-out, makes a lot of sense:

I think some of the more enlightened companies do do opt-in. I think a lot of them don't. I think the better practice is always opt in.

On the whole, then, he seems to not be too quick to bash companies for being successful, and seems to recognize that competition and transparency are important issues. Those are all good things. There are some fears however, that he's a bit quick on the trigger when it comes to regulating over that behavioral advertising issue, and doesn't seem to mind metered broadband, so long as customers know what they're getting.

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