Free software is famously close to its users, drawing on them for warnings about bugs (and sometimes fixes), as well as ideas and suggestions for future developments. But I don't think any project has previously gone so far as to encourage ordinary users to make financial contributions directly in support of new features they want. That's precisely what Canonical, the company that oversees the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, plans to do:

Today, we're making it easier for people to financially contribute to Ubuntu if they want to. By introducing a 'contribute' screen as part of the desktop download process, people can choose to financially support different aspects of Canonical's work: from gaming and apps, developing the desktop, phone and tablet, to co-ordination of upstreams or supporting Ubuntu flavours. It's important to note that Ubuntu remains absolutely free, financial contribution remains optional and it is not required in order to download the software.

By allowing Ubuntu users to choose which elements of Ubuntu they're most excited about, we'll get direct feedback on which favourite features or projects deserve the bulk of our attention. We're letting users name their price -- depending on the value that they put on the operating system or other aspects of our work. That price can, of course, be zero -- but every last cent helps make Ubuntu better.

As this notes, even if people don't offer money, their views on what's important to them can still be gathered, and that's valuable information for developers who need to prioritize their work.

In principle, letting people support new features of interest sounds like a good idea, since it gives users a chance to vote with their wallets. But it comes in the wake of a plan to let people search for items on sites like Amazon from within the Ubuntu operating system, for which Canonical would presumably get paid if purchases were made as a result. As the hundreds of comments on the blog of Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, indicate, this has raised a number of concerns about privacy and the direction of the Ubuntu project.

Some might see both moves as evidence that Canonical still isn't making as much money from the Ubuntu ecosystem as it needs to, and that Shuttleworth is looking to bolster income. Four years ago, he admitted that Canonical was "not close" to breaking even, and that it would "require time and ongoing investment" to make it do so. Given Ubuntu's place as probably the most popular GNU/Linux distribution, users must hope that Shuttleworth will still be happy to invest in Canonical, and hence in Ubuntu, for a while yet. Perhaps that's another good reason for Ubuntu fans to start paying at least some of the development costs under the new scheme.

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There are all sorts of correlations to be made between various personality aspects with success or enviable skill. No one discounts the hard work and roughly 10,000 hours needed to achieve some degree of mastery at a task, but on top of the blood, sweat and tears, there's always the nagging concern that a special gene or innate trait is necessary to achieve the greatest rewards. Determinism oftentimes creeps into our interpretations of scientific studies, and here are just a few examples to ponder.

• The Marshmallow Test is flawed in a way -- a single test of a toddler's ability to delay gratification doesn't predict as much as people may have thought. A simple change to the original 'Marshmallow Test' can significantly change how long a toddler is willing to wait for his/her sugary treat. [url]
• A test for "game intelligence" could predict successful soccer players -- but the conclusion is based on just 57 elite soccer players from Sweden who happen to do better on a standardized test for executive functions. These cognitive tests could be useful as a tool for developing better soccer players -- or they could create players who are just good at taking tests. [url]
• Novelty-seeking personalities have been correlated with some aspects of long term well-being. Neophilia also correlates with attention deficit disorder, compulsive spending and gambling... so a balance of personality traits seems to be optimal as usual. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Remember that Congressional report from last week that warned everyone to fear Huawei, the Chinese telco equipment maker? Much of the fearmongering was around Huawei's close ties to the Chinese government (and military specifically) with no actual allegations, but plenty of speculation that there could be espionage issues. Of course, now, details of a White House report have leaked, claiming that they found no evidence of Huawei spying. They do point out that there are problems with Huawei equipment that could lead to exploitable security flaws -- which is certainly an issue. Of course, that seems like an issue that security experts to deal with, rather than politicians...

About a dozen years ago, Amazon's Jeff Bezos (taking a fair amount of criticism for his one-click patent) helped fund a project called BountyQuest, which offered up prize money for those who were able to bust bogus patents. To his credit, the first patent they put forth was Bezos' own one-click patent -- except then very little happened, and BountyQuest faded away. While it has occasionally used its own patents (such as suing B&N over that one-click patent), Amazon tends to be on the receiving end of tons of ridiculous patent lawsuits, leading Bezos to speak out about the broken patent system yet again in an interview with the UK publication Metro:

"Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we’re starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system and see if those laws need to be modified because I don’t think some of these battles are healthy for society. I love technology, I love invention, I like rapid change, and really it’s the golden age of wireless devices and mobile devices."

I'd argue that the "starting to" understates where we are in this process. There's significant evidence that the problem has been around for a long, long time already. Of course, I'm curious just what kind of legislation Bezos thinks is right. Having his voice added to the debate on patents certainly would be helpful, given how so many in Congress still seem to think that there isn't a real problem here.

One of the interesting things to come out of the recent brainstorming session we had with artists and entrepreneurs had to do with the lack of really open discussions about experiments that fail. On the entrepreneur side, every so often you see someone write up a "post mortem" of a failed startup. But it's rare to see artists post a "what went wrong" discussion. This is completely understandable. Most people don't want to focus on what went wrong, and greatly prefer to focus on what went right. Admitting failure in any sense often has a stigma attached to it -- and while entrepreneurs can "walk away" from a failed startup, giving them some distance, for artists, a failed experiment in their artistic career (which is often "their life") isn't so easy to walk away from. And many of the artists in the discussion agreed that they could probably learn a lot from the failures of others, such as how to approach things differently and what not to do themselves. This is a topic I'm hoping to explore more in the future, as any reports of "what went wrong" really do seem worth looking into.

This one isn't completely a "what went wrong" story -- it's more of a "what went too right and we weren't prepared for it" story. The folks at Good Old Games, who we've written about a few times before, recently put up a pay what you want bundle for Larian Studios' Divinity anthology of games. The setup is very clearly influenced by Humble Bundle. You can pay what you want, and if you beat certain levels you can get more things. There's also a leaderboard, and hitting certain checkpoints opens up new content for everyone.

Sven Vincke, of Larian Studios, recently wrote a really interesting post about how the "pay what you want" results were quite different than they expected. Despite having the examples of Humble Bundle and others for what happens when you do this kind of thing, Vincke still expected that people would pay very little for the game -- but that they'd get wider distribution. And they planned accordingly -- with the various "unlockings" based on the number of supporters, rather than the amount raised. But things didn't work out that way.

When the PWYW was conceived, we thought that we’d have a lot of sales at the absolute minimum, which basically is 1 cent, and this assumption was actually never challenged. The idea of the PWYW campaign was to on the one hand celebrate 10 years of Divinity and offer Divinity virtually for free (1 cent really is low), thus increasing the installed base of Divinity fans, but on the other hand also to put the Developer’s Cut in the spotlight.

The Developer’s  Cut (and Beyond Divinity) were made part of the campaign as a kind of bonus and to not completely ruin ourselves, we introduced the rule that to access the Developer’s Cut, you needed to be in the top 10% of customers. Whether or not that was a sound strategy is a different matter and open for debate, but that was the idea.

What happened however is that for some reason, people started looking at this like some sort of Kickstarter (this was the very first time something like this was done on GOG), and in the very first hours of the campaign, we saw the average pricing go to heights we never expected. Somebody even paid a 1000US$ for one of the games!!!

Yes, that seems like a reason to celebrate, but it also meant that the key plan -- to get the games more widely known and distributed -- wasn't working as intended, and the plan to unlock certain content at key supporter levels was looking unattainable. However, adjusting midstream might make people think that the whole thing was a flop -- when that wasn't the case at all. Clearly they were getting more support dollarwise than they expected, but the number of supporters was much lower. So they finally decided that the best way to handle this was just to be incredibly transparent about it, and explain why they were changing the levels to unlock stuff:

Because in reality, it is doing well – it’s just doing the opposite thing of what we expected. From a revenue point of view, we’re seeing the best results we’ve ever seen on GOG in such a short time span for our games. But that wasn’t the initial idea

So in the end we realized that there wasn’t a way of fixing this without admitting that we just predicted everything wrongly. And if we’d want to still offer those videos (and tech demo of LMK) as a reward for people keeping on participating in the PWYW campaign, then we’d have to lower the different tiers.

Which more or less is what we’re doing this evening. We’re going to lower the tiers to numbers that we think fit the current trend more or less, except for the last one, which we’re putting high on purpose. Well actually, I’m putting it high, because all the others in the team wanted to put it lower. But I decided to be stubborn

One of the things that I think is important to remember about all of these different business model experiments is that they are experiments. We still don't know what fully works, and lots of stuff goes wrong. Sometimes it's a complete failure, and sometimes (as in this case) it's just different than expected, so pieces of it don't work the way they planned. But, the main reason many of these programs work in any way is that there are fans who really like to support the content creator, and when the content creator opens up and explains the situation honestly, that only increases the loyalty and the connection. That's what likely happened here as well. While this one really is a success story, it's still great to see an examination of "what went wrong" in the midst of success -- and it would be awesome to see more of this kind of analysis.

As we mentioned, a week ago on Wednesday, October 10th, we spent the entire day in an "Artists & Entrepreneurs Working Group" brainstorming session. For me, personally, it was a truly fantastic experience: a chance to get together a bunch of people who don't normally talk -- and then to actually work together in an open fashion to listen to each other, to understand each other and to look together for actual solutions to challenges we all face. The day was basically a blank slate, with a very loose agenda: in the morning, we'd discuss challenges, in the afternoon brainstorm thoughts about how to deal with those challenges, and then conclude by seeing if there were any specific things that we could start doing now.

The whole thing was very much an experiment. Unlike conferences that segment themselves down to one-hour increments of panels and interviews, here was a chance to spend a day together, without specific agendas, focused on really talking and brainstorming with the goal of doing something productive and helpful. In many ways, the experience was exhilarating. It's something you don't often get to experience: lots of really smart people, with very different experiences and perspectives, not giving prepared speeches or covering the same old ground but actually discussing things openly, making connections, brainstorming new ideas and actively thinking about big problems.

Part of the idea behind this event was that for too long the discussion has basically been the same: get a few people who disagree about something to sit opposite each other on TV, on a panel, on the web, or anywhere else, and argue with each other for a short period of time. In such events people too often come with lots of prepared points and then talk past each other, with nothing productive coming out of it. Panels and debates can be good, and they have their place -- but we thought that entrepreneurs and artists are a lot more similar than they are different. We're all running out own businesses in many ways. And we're all creating something new and wonderful. It seems like there's tremendous common ground in our shared situations.

And yet, at the same time, there are some very real differences. So we thought, if we looked at that as an opportunity and sought to better understand those differences, with a focus on looking for ways to help each other, could we create something that wasn't "the same old debate?" Could we, instead, focus on doing something productive?

That was an ambitious goal -- but it's one I think we accomplished. The event itself exceeded my own expectations (by a wide margin). Bringing together a large group of really smart people (many of whom have very strong opinions) for an entire day, without an agenda, and saying "hey, everyone, talk!" seemed like it had the potential to be a complete disaster -- but it was the exact opposite. It resulted in a beautiful, inspiring, thought-provoking discussion that is going to continue, and will hopefully lead to many more wonderful things. The group was impressive. We shamelessly piggybacked on SF Music Tech (with encouragement from SFMT's master of everything, Brian Zisk, who also allowed us to host a sort of "preview" panel at SFMT). However, we went beyond just music, and the variety of perspectives was refreshing. There were musicians there, but also authors, filmmakers and even a painter and a designer/roboticist, among others. There were those who worked closely with artists, including indie labels and artists' representatives. And, of course, there were entrepreneurs from a variety of companies, including Humble Bundle, Bandcamp, IndieGoGo, Smashwords, CASH music, TopSpin, Pandora, Songkick, Bandzoogle, Bookmooch and a few others.

In the morning we discussed challenges that people faced. That was the extent of the official agenda -- and after briefly introducing the event and highlighting some responses from the survey I'd asked people to fill out earlier, the group was off and running, bringing up a variety of different issues and challenges and discussing their own experiences openly.

It will be interesting to see some of the other attendees share their thoughts about the event, but the key challenges that I heard as the discussion went on were:

• Resources: It's tough to do what you want to do if you don't have the resources to do it. This is kind of a universal one, and not at all surprising. Obviously, this applies to both artists and entrepreneurs, but in different ways and to different degrees. A lack of resources can be not just a challenge, but something immensely stressful as well.
• A missing roadmap: It was interesting just how often this one came up. One of the biggest challenges everyone admitted to facing was the fact that there is no roadmap for what you should do these days, and no single definition of success. The path (especially on the artist side, but also to a degree on the entrepreneur side) is a lot less clear than it may have been in the past -- and that uncertainty can make life difficult. It's one thing to follow steps A, B and C and face different challenges at each. But it's something else entirely if you have no idea where to go next. And part of the discussion was that the roadmap is very different for everyone. There are successful "working class" musicians who make a living day in, day out, and there are big "rock stars." They define success differently. Similarly, there are entrepreneurs who want to build a good, profitable business (sometimes called "a lifestyle business") and there are those who look to be the equivalent of rockstars: raising tons of money, becoming the next big IPO, etc. Plus there are all sorts of personalized dreams that will be a bit different for every person. How you get from here to there changes depending on how you define success, and that makes it all the harder for people to plot out their "roadmap" by finding good advice and sharing strategies with each other.
• Education: Perhaps connected to the roadmap issue, this one was about learning what's out there, and what the possibilities are. The challenge here was somewhat different for entrepreneurs and artists, it seemed. Entrepreneurs wanted to figure out how to better educate people about what they themselves were doing, while artists wanted to better educate themselves (and others) about career strategies and the entrepreneurial side of being and artist. For entrepreneurs, some looked upon education as going hand in hand with marketing (which could potentially turn off some artists). For artists, there was a clear desire to better connect with other artists, and some concern that artists don't talk enough about these things among themselves.
• Discovery: This is obviously a big challenge on both sides. For entrepreneurs it's about finding new customers and users and for artists it's about finding new fans. Everyone was interested in ways to do more of this, but admitted that it's a very big challenge in a wide open digital world. Too often people think that if you do something great, the people just show up. That happens, but it's rare. You can be a great musician, but people still have to find out about you. You can build a great tool or service, but if no one uses it, what good is it? Having people learn about you and like you is a challenge that many people seem to underestimate.
• Policy: There were some concerns about where government policy might get in the way of certain things -- whether it's preventing artists from doing what they want, or making life challenging for entrepreneurs. We had some discussions about areas where artists and entrepreneurs could agree on policy issues. Also, there were significant concerns about who has the most influence on policy, and whose interests they really represented.

Highlighting challenges is one thing, but solving them is another. People seemed quite enthusiastic about taking these challenges and seeing what could be done to ease them, or turn them into greater opportunities, so the afternoon was spent mostly brainstorming -- sometimes tossing out crazy ideas, sometimes digging in on specific details, and openly discussing a variety of possible things that could be done.

In fact, part of what was so encouraging was that the constant theme, throughout the entire event -- from basically everyone, no matter where they came from -- was "what can we do to help." Obviously, not everyone agreed with everything that was suggested -- but in the spirit of brainstorming, people seemed to consistently build on what others were saying, seeking the key insight that we could build on and focusing the conversation on those opportunities.

From my perspective, I learned a lot about where some of the misunderstandings between entrepreneurs and artists come from, where there are often misinterpreted expectations and objectives. As a group we mentally chewed on a variety of ideas, often recognizing that there were no "easy" solutions, but that there had to be something better. Could there be better material to educate each other? Would a unified source for information do that? There was a recognition that different artists have very different experiences.

We had discussions about how people defined success, and how priorities shifted over time. We discussed ways to get more people talking about these things. We discussed concerns about what others might do with things that we brought into the world -- whether it was content or tools and services.

Over time, we began to hit on a few key points, and areas where there were possibilities to actually make a difference. There was a fair bit of interest in the possibility of building a large copyright database, along the lines of what Ian Rogers has suggested in the past, that covers licensing terms for any work, as well as just general ownership info (since sometimes it's not at all clear who owns the rights to certain works for the purpose of licensing them). Some also suggested that such a database could include additional useful metadata as well (prior to the session, one musician pointed out how nice it would be to have a database that would make it easier to find out who did audio engineering on tracks you liked, to make it easier to seek them out for your own recordings).

There was some discussion over whether or not this was something the Copyright Office should do, along with some concerns that there was no way that it could do it without massive, massive changes. And, not to be left out, there were some discussions about US vs. international policy, since although we were mostly a US-based group, we did have at least one foreign-based artist in attendance, who had some different issues to deal with. Out of all of this, we put together a list of things that we thought we could actually do something about:

• Continue this conversation: There seemed to be agreement across the board that (1) the all day discussion had tremendous value in a lot of ways, both in generating ideas and getting people to think through possibilities, but that (2) a one day event, no matter how focused on being practical and productive, wasn't really enough time to come to any grand conclusions. But everyone agreed that we, as a group (with some additional folks) should be continuing the conversation in some way, whether it's online or through more in-person brainstorming sessions. That task was put on me, and I'm working on it.
• There's an opportunity to create & curate useful info: There's a lot of info out there, with no shortage of advice being offered to artists and entrepreneurs, which is potentially overwhelming and can make it difficult to zero in on what's actually useful. They suggested that the education component could be helped by having better curation of such content. Others suggested that perhaps specific events could serve this purpose, with the example of "filmmaker labs" being tossed out. One concern raised: none of this content will get consumed if it's not presented in a fun and interesting way that attracts people. If it's just piling together a bunch of content into a haystack, that won't help people as much. Figuring out how this could be done and who should be involved is an ongoing discussion, with one concern being how to ensure that such a source doesn't become myopic and start pushing one set of ideas when the landscape is truly open and still evolving.
• Getting data: This came up both for the purpose of better education through aggregate data, and also to drive towards a possible rights database. There was a suggestion that, if Apple could be convinced to share its data, that could be a starting point -- though that would cover mostly music (but some TV and movie stuff as well). There were mixed opinions on whether or not Apple could ever be convinced to open up this data.
• Standardization: An interesting point that was raised was that part of the reason for a cloudy roadmap and an abundance of choice for artists (that makes things difficult) may be the near-complete lack of standardization. That is, there are a number of startups that often seem to be reinventing the wheel or working on similar types of tools, and that there might be much more value created (for everyone) if there was some standardization at the platform level. Say, for example, a common format for storing and communicating all of the info about an artist and their catalogue between various sites and services. Then different service providers could seek to build tools and services above that, and let the competition occur at that level. This would provide a somewhat more defined setup and less confusion over what services can help in what ways. It might also lead to better integration between different services, allowing artists to do a lot more. This was left as an issue for some of the entrepreneurs to continue discussions over, to see if there was a way to make it happen.
• Policy Issues: Going back to the copyright / metadata database discussion, there were some thoughts on whether or not there were ways to get the policy world to recognize how useful and valuable such a database would be for almost everyone. There was some concern about the few players it might disrupt (publishers, for one) who value keeping some of that data proprietary, but a general sense that the overall benefit of such a database for artists and entrepreneurs would be tremendous.

Seeing as the conversation went from 9am to 5pm, there was obviously a lot of other things discussed -- but these were my own key takeaways. I'm sure that some of the others there had their own takeaways as well. For me, the day was really quite energizing. Getting a lot of really smart people together to discuss interesting ideas, opportunities and challenges -- and doing so in a productive manner -- was really a tremendous amount of fun. I'm already working to keep the conversation moving and see where we go next. In total, about 45 people showed up during the day -- with a core group of about 25 making it from start to finish (the absolute troopers) and another 20 stopping in for parts or having to take off early.

This obviously is not the end of the discussion by any means, and one thing that is part of the plan is to continue to get more people involved to get more insights. On the whole, though, considering that this was completely a first-time experiment -- in which we had no clear format and no real agenda, and we mostly just let the conversation go wherever it went -- I think it was quite successful. We haven't changed the world, but perhaps we can start making good things happen.

Special thanks go out to everyone who attended, whether for the whole day or just a part. Extra special thanks to the smaller group of folks who helped me think through the event in the months and weeks leading up to it, letting me toss out ideas and giving me feedback on how the effort might be more productive and fun. Also, thanks to Hattery for providing us with the unique space (with slightly odd acoustics), and to Google for sponsoring, so that we could provide everyone with bagels and coffee in the morning, and sandwiches and chips at lunch.

On the whole, the event has me really excited about possibilities for the future -- including more gatherings like this one. We'll be continuing the discussion between artists and entrepreneurs, and are hoping to hold more events going forward, while also seeing if we can really take some of the ideas and suggestions and help make them a reality. One legitimate concern raised towards the end was that there were a lot of good ideas, but ideas without execution are meaningless, and execution without leadership is rare. I think a big next challenge will be finding people who will step up and take ownership of some of the suggestions to see if they can, with wider support, turn them into something real. That, of course, is the biggest challenge of them all -- but, given the excitement about the possibilities, it seems like a challenge worth tackling.

Yesterday, we wrote about the latest in the long running saga that is Stephanie Lenz's battle (with the help of the EFF) over whether or not Universal Music was right to issue a DMCA takedown for her 29 second video of her toddler son dancing to a (barely audible) Prince song. Once again, here's the video. As we noted in the story, it seemed unlikely that Lenz and the EFF would prevail in getting Universal Music to pay up for the bogus takedown. Joe Mullin, who was in the courtroom during the latest hearing provides some additional details that highlight just why this is going to be difficult for them. The problem isn't necessarily the case or the situation, but the fact that the parts of the DMCA used to push back against bogus takedowns are ridiculously weak. It has been determined that only in cases of "subjective bad faith" would there be fees awarded. That means EFF has to show that Universal knew that this was fair use, and then decided to issue the takedown anyway.

[District Court Judge Jeremy] Fogel said that it isn't clear that EFF has met the high burden of showing that Universal exhibited "subjective bad faith."

EFF would have to show that there's no way the video was not fair use, first of all. In addition, EFF lawyers would have to show "there was some concerted activity on Universal's part to blind itself to that fact—that even knowing they had nothing to stand on with regards to fair use, they put out a takedown." Even if EFF could show that Universal Music acted recklessly or with negligence—that wouldn't be enough.

That's a pretty tall order, and a clear weakness in the DMCA in preventing bogus takedowns (an all too common phenomenon). While the EFF properly points out that Universal's employee who sent the DMCA "had no idea what to look for," that still might not be enough to show subjective bad faith -- just laziness.

Additionally, there is some skepticism about if it's worth fighting this through, since the amount of money at stake is minimal:

The amount of damages EFF is fighting for is tiny, in the grand scheme of things. And Fogel also expressed skepticism that EFF could ask for much in damages. He has already limited the amount they can ask for. EFF is asking for compensation for 10 hours of Lenz's time, spent dealing with the takedown notice before she contacted EFF, based on the Pennsylvania minimum wage at the time of $6.25 per hour. They're also asking for compensation $1,275 for the time that EFF attorneys spent advising her pre-suit.

Despite the fact that not much money can be won, in an interview with Ars, [EFF's Corynne] McSherry said that the principle is still important, so that content owners will pause before they shoot out takedown requests.

I understand the principle argument -- but courts often aren't that interested in spending time on such cases, which they believe are wasting time from cases that are more important. At the very least, Judge Fogel appears willing to let a jury weigh in on this one, and has noted that despite all of the hurdles EFF and Lenz face, it's not a complete slam dunk for Universal: "A reasonable fact-finder could conclude, that this is an action taken in subjective bad faith."

And so the case moves on. I'm still betting that Universal Music will be happy with the end result, and I worry that the resulting precedent will be used to justify more broad and bogus takedowns. Hopefully, I'm proven wrong.

If all goes technologically to plan, then beneath this text, we'll be running our YouTube stream of my chat with Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman, authors of The Knockoff Economy. The chat will happen from about 11am to 11:30am PT via live streaming. If you're tuning in late, you can watch the full recording below. If you haven't yet read the book, you should -- but first you can check out excerpts on the importance of those who "tweak" the work of others, and on what the music industry can do, based on lessons from other industries or professions that don't have monopoly restrictions on competition.

Sloppy use of the term "copyright" is nothing new. Plenty of people use the word incorrectly, usually by treating it as interchangeable with "intellectual property" and lumping patents and trademarks in with copyrights. While this is often a minor mistake that doesn't affect the message being conveyed, it's still wrong, and in a world where intellectual property is becoming a hotter topic of discussion, it's the sort of thing publications should really be more careful about. So it's amusing but somewhat annoying to see the popular comedy site Cracked (which has tackled such topics before) publish a list of "Things You Won't Believe Are Copyrighted"... without a single example that actually involves copyright. Of the five examples listed, three are about trademarks and two are about patents, and while the article makes some effort to distinguish the difference, it misuses the word "copyright" multiple times throughout. It also erroneously claims that "copyright law" is in the U.S. constitution—another common mistake that we see all the time, and which copyright maximalists would love you to believe is true.

Of course, in typical Cracked fashion, the article still includes some fantastic and hilarious passages about topics that will be familiar to Techdirt readers, such as their introduction to the problem of patents over genes in living organisms:

We've all had that moment where we're looking at an infomercial on TV and we think, "A blender that's also a hat? I thought of that first! I should have gotten a patent." It takes a special kind of person to proclaim the same thing while visiting a zoo, though.

And, more specifically, patents that cover elements of human DNA:

How the hell is that possible? Well, it's argued that when a gene is removed from the body and isolated, it becomes a separate chemical entity that can be patented. You know, like when you take someone else's lamp from their house and isolate it, it automatically becomes yours. Then you rent that lamp for thousands of dollars to people trying to do cancer research.

Or the fight over the trademark on the word "YUUUP!" between Dave Hester and Trey Songz:

Having carefully analyzed both sounds, we've reached the conclusion that they both sound like dickwads. Also, if Songz decides to agree to Hester's terms, what the hell is he supposed to tell him? "Yeppers"?

So while it's nice to see Cracked paying attention to these stories and bringing wider attention to the abuse of intellectual property law, while also offering some laughs, I hope that in future they'll try a little harder to be accurate—especially when, just last week, they had another article calling out other media for inaccurate/incomplete reporting. There was no need to keep referring to "copyright" throughout an article that has absolutely nothing to do with it, and conversely, there are plenty of actual examples of ridiculous copyright abuse to form one of the site's trademark lists (see what I did there?)

At this point, it's not a surprise since we've covered this in study, after study, after study, after study, after study, after study before, but Joe Karaganis' recent "tease" of his latest "copy culture" study shows that the biggest "pirates" also tend to be the biggest buyers. Now, as we've said before (and will now say again), no one is suggesting in any way that this means there's a causal relationship between infringement and sales. Not at all. But it does mean that those who focus on "attacking" those who infringe, and labeling them "pirates" and pissing them off with various anti-fan strategies are making a huge mistake. These are people who can and do buy. The focus, instead, should be on providing them with improved legal and authorized ways to get what they want in a format they want. Time and time again, we've seen that this is the only real strategy that works long term.

The study also highlights (yet again) just how much people share with friends and family -- something that no amount of copyright "enforcement" is going to stop. That's something that most people think is completely normal and "reasonable" for the most part. So it's little surprise that large parts of people's music collections seem to come from friends and family, especially the younger generation (where it's even greater than downloading from the internet). This, once again, suggests that the absolute wrong strategy is to focus on greater enforcement. It's not going to stop that kind of sharing at all. It seems entirely counterproductive, and only serves to piss off those who are most interested in the music (and often the most interested in paying if given a good reason to do so).

The end result is the same as always. The problem is not "piracy." It's just a symptom of failing to properly respond to the market. The market doesn't "just want stuff for free." I keep seeing people claim that piracy definitively decreases sales, but we know that's not true. We've seen some cases where it has helped sales -- so what explains the difference? I'd posit it's pretty simple: piracy decreases sales if you don't embrace what your fans want. However, if you do treat your fans like fans, give them ways to support you, don't act like they're criminals, and actually adapt to the changing market, you can turn what would otherwise be a negative into a positive. But it involves quite a bit of work, and that's the big challenge.

We've talked in the past about how Nobel Prize winning economist Eric Maskin has done research questioning the value of patents in software and in other industries. So it's not surprising -- though still fantastic -- that he's responded to the recent NY Times piece by Charles Duhigg and Steve Lohr that questions the value of our broken patent system. Maskin has sent a letter to the NYTimes arguing that the article did not go far enough:

...the article doesn’t go far enough.

It argues that software patents may reduce innovation because they are too broad, vague and loose — criticisms that are well taken.

But if these were their only shortcomings, then simply tightening patent standards would solve everything. Unfortunately, the problem is deeper than that.

Specifically, in the software industry, progress is highly sequential: progress is typically made through a large number of small steps, each building on the previous ones. If one of those steps is patentable, then the patent holder can effectively block (or at least slow down) subsequent progress by setting high license fees.

His conclusion? In such industries (which, by the way, may go beyond just software), we should probably just get rid of patents altogether:

...in an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them.

This view is not new in economics circles, but it's good to see more people realize that the patent system may be doing exactly the opposite of what we're told it does.

UPDATE: Cerys from Kobo has responded with further details on the pricing bug and what Kobo is doing to rectify the situation:

A bug in our online system resulted in a small group of US-based customers being offered international pricing instead of their in-country pricing. In the large majority of cases, there was no price difference, but for some books where publishers set two different prices, the international one was displayed. This issue has now been resolved. We will be working directly with those customers affected over the next month to examine their accounts and provide them with a refund should it be owed. We will be contacting affected customers directly, but in the meantime if anyone has any questions related to their account, we ask that they please call our Support Line at 1-855-732-3662. 

Canadian ereader manufacturer Kobo hasn't really endeared itself to its customers in recent months. A few months ago, it botched the debut of its Kobo Touch ereader in Japan, falling well short of the promised 30,000 launch titles. In addition, its desktop software tended to turn new ereaders into shiny bricks. As the complaints mounted, Kobo's parent company, Rakuten, decided the best course of action was to hide all online reviews.

A new set of issues has arisen, this time centered around Kobo's ebook store. eBook prices at Kobo seem to be strangely liquid, responding to stimuli only known to Kobo itself. The Digital Reader dragged these pricing inconsistencies out into the open earlier this month. While holding off absolute judgement until more data was in, Nate Hoffelder took time to point out the mutating prices, which bizarrely increased for many logged in customers.

While some retailers like Amazon like to selectively discount prices in order to get you in the door, other sites like Kobo prefer to jack up the prices charged to their regular customers.

Earlier today Mike Cane hooked me up with a friend of his on Twitter. @RevBobMIB was browsing the Kobo eBookstore this morning when he noticed something odd. The pricing seemed strangely inconsistent, and after checking the price of the ebook mentioned above he discovered a fascinating secret about Kobo.

As you can see in this screenshot and this screenshot, Kobo offers some of their customers a lower price than the price offered to other customers. Here is a composite, and please note that I have seen these prices as well:

Hoffelder pointed out that prices may vary in different markets and some price fluctuation is normal, depending on geographic location. But Kobo's inexplicable price shifts aren't related to market or geographic variances.

Kobo is changing the prices shown to a single customer, browsing from a single computer, getting online from a single IP address.

This post generated plenty of response, including some commenters raising the theory that this was possibly a database bug and not Kobo attempting to draw in new customers with low prices while making up the difference by gouging returning customers.

After exchanging some emails with a Kobo programmer, Hoffelder was able to draw out the real story.

A lot has happened in the couple weeks since I reported that story. After exchanging a few emails with a Kobo programmer it became clear that this was not a simple bug, nor was it a consistent one. While I still don’t know how the bug works I do know that the simple and obvious solutions don’t fix it.

And oh yeah, the bug is still happening today.

So, not a "feature," but a bug. This clears Kobo of any ill will towards its most loyal customers, at least in terms of pricing. But, it hardly clears Kobo of any wrongdoing in terms of customer service. Digging into this a bit more, Hoffelder found evidence that this bug had been adjusting prices for at least a month:

My earliest confirmed report comes from MobileRead, and it is dated 10 September:

Is anyone else getting different prices on the checkout page? For instance, I want to get “Catching Fire” and it’s listed at $5.99. I click on the “buy now” button and the price jumps to $11.97. I contact Kobo’s customer service and they said that I should be logged in as to get the correct pricing. I log in and the same thing happens. I contacted them again, and they told me that the correct price is $11.97. But it’s still listed at $5.99?? Any ideas??

So Kobo has had this bug on their website for at least a month. As bad as that sounds the actual situation is very likely worse.

Some input from readers suggested the problem has been around for much longer than that. "Unverified reports" date the bug back as far as December 2011, and that Kobo customer service has known about the issue for at least 6 months.

Another report pulled from MobileRead (from February 2012) mentions something that sounds quite a bit like the price bug, but one that the purchaser didn't notice until it was too late.

Oh I had a similar issue. The price of the ebook I bought was much more lower on the website than what I was charged for on my credit card, that took a few weeks to resolve as well. They gave me a credit for the difference, but I did phone them about 4-5 times and emailed them at least once a week.

And then there's this, dating all the way back to December 2011.

When I go to the Kobo store I will see a book for $7.99 but when I log in the price updates to $8.99. Is this because the default price is in $US but when I log in using my Canadian they update to $CDN? I’m just wondering.

This doesn't bode well for Kobo's already-shaky customer service track record. A bug that alters prices not only during log in/log out but also during the actual checkout process isn't the sort of thing that should go unfixed for a month, much less (possibly) the greater part of the year. (Speaking of the checkout process, there's no verification screen during the purchase process. Once your purchase information is entered and the customer clicks "Buy Now," there's no turning back, and no way to verify the price is correct before it's charged to their card.) But Kobo seems very uninterested in providing even adequate customer service.

Based on my own experiences, the 2 readers who claim they contacted Kobo customer service are very likely telling the truth. I have seen in the past at least one occasion where Kobo customer service got a complaint from a customer, responded, but appeared to not have forwarded the complaint to the relevant party inside the company who could have fixed the error.

Speaking of Kobo’s questionable customer service, there was a period of at least 3 months last year where Kobo gave out this blog as the warranty repair site for the Slick ereaders. I kid you not.

I know a number of people will step forward to defend Kobo, but I’m not sure how. A month-long bug which over-charges some readers is indefensible. Customer service dept failing to forward a bug report is indefensible.

If you want customers, especially loyal ones who will increase your market through word-of-mouth, the worst thing you can do is subject them to ineffective customer service and a roulette wheel masquerading as a pricelist. There are still plenty of happy Kobo customers, but I wouldn't expect that number to grow anytime soon. And with this parade of misdeeds and miscues swiftly becoming the public face of Kobo, I fully expect that first group's numbers to start shrinking.

We've talked about how innovative ride hailing company, Uber, was pushing regulatory boundaries across the country, often showing how restrictive local regulators could be towards innovation. In many cases, Uber has been able to generate enough public support that local taxi and limo regulators ended up backing down. But you can't win 'em all. Uber has admitted that it's pulled the plug on UberTaxi in New York City.

While Uber is most well known for its "black car" service, it's also been moving aggressively into the taxi world (which is why it's getting sued in Chicago). NYC's Taxi and Limo Commission (TLC) has fought against this move, since the law technically requires cabs to be hailed directly from the street -- and the TLC claimed that hailing from a phone violated that. Uber, however, claims that the TLC has admitted privately that the service is legal. Either way, the TLC threatened cabbies who used Uber, and that limited the number willing to take part, which probably made the service a lot less interesting for users. And, for now, the service has shut down.

The TLC, for its part, seems to suggest that this is only temporary, and it would like to bring such services back -- but it needs to conclude existing contracts:

"In recent months, as e-hail apps have emerged, TLC has undertaken serious diligence and is moving toward rule changes that will open the market to app developers and other innovators. Those changes cannot legally take place until our existing exclusive contracts expire in February. We are committed to making it as easy as possible to get a safe, legal ride in a New York City taxi, and are excited to see how emerging technology can improve that process. Our taxis have always been on the cutting edge of technological innovation, from GPS systems to credit card readers."

Hopefully that's true, but the devil is in the details... we'll see what happens early next year.

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Rupert Murdoch's paywall at the London Times isn't looking like a huge success. That won't come as a surprise to Techdirt readers, but does raise the question: if newspapers can't use paywalls alongside ads to fund journalists, what can they turn to? Here's a revolutionary idea: why not let the people who know and care most about the title -- the readers -- get more closely involved? That's precisely what the Berlin-based newspaper Die Tageszeitung, affectionately known as "Taz", has done. Here's the Guardian's description of how it came about:

For years, Taz -- circulation 60,000 -- was funded by state handouts. But with the fall of the [Berlin] Wall in 1989 came a drop in subsidy -- and by 1992, the paper faced bankruptcy. Enter the Genossenschaft, or co-operative: a group of concerned readers who valued the paper's independence, or its ability, as one has it, "to put its finger into the wounds of our economic system". The group invested its savings in the paper, and the paper was itself saved.

That bold move seems to have worked: today, the co-operative has a healthy 11 million euros (about $14 million) in the bank. It's owned by 12,000 readers, each of whom pays a minimum of 500 euros (about $650) to have an equal say in setting overall policy, discussed at the annual general meeting. Interestingly, that egalitarianism is also to be found in the newsroom:

"You're a very free journalist here," says deputy editor Reiner Metzger. Reporters are free to follow their own hobbyhorses, which he says makes life tough as an editor. "People argue very hard. We don't have a hierarchical structure where someone can say: shut up now." Salaries are pretty flat, too. Metzger is paid only [$650] more than the most junior reporter -- though he gets additional support for his children.

It's a fascinating approach, one that also seems to address the concern that in the age of the Internet, hard-hitting investigative journalism is a luxury that can no longer be afforded. Sadly, it seems unlikely that Rupert Murdoch would be willing to take a pay cut to around junior reporter levels to try it out for the Times.

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