One of the things that we always hear about new business models from critics is that they can't possibly "replace" some of the old business models. Often the talk is about how they're only good for "small" things, and how they simply can't scale. Of course, this seems to underestimate the nature of early experiments and how things grow over time. For example, Kickstarter has certainly become quite an amazing tool for helping to fund projects in the past couple of years. However, when discussing Kickstarter in the past, I've heard people complain that while it may be great for "small" projects of a few thousand dollars, it couldn't ever fund something "real," like more traditional sources could.

And yet... we've discussed how last year, Kickstarter users funded nearly $100 million in projects, and this year it's predicted to go much higher. And, already, we saw Kickstarter pass its first few million dollar projects. Then, late last week, the folks behind the Pebble e-paper watch announced that they were using Kickstarter to do pre-sales of their new iPhone and Android versions (previously they'd only offered a Blackberry version). The watch itself is certainly pretty cool. A smartwatch which is totally customizable, has a variety of apps, and basically acts as an interface with your phone (and it looks good). And lots and lots of people agreed. Within just 28 hours they had already passed $1 million. $2 million ticked off soon after. It's now approaching $4.5-million, making it the highest revenue Kickstarter project ever—and it's the fastest to get to those kinds of numbers.

No, we're still not talking about the huge budgets around Hollywood blockbuster movies -- but we're already going well past what the most expensive albums cost to record. But, more importantly, it's not difficult to see the trend lines here. And, Kickstarter has only been around for about three years. Go back to the beginning of Hollywood. How long did it take the traditional methods to get around to funding $3 million movies?

As Kickstarter (and similar platforms) become more and more popular, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility to see a major motion picture funded via such a platform. This isn't to say (as I know someone will accuse) that this is the only way that such things will be funded. But it does highlight, yet again, that if there's demand, there will be ways to fund these things. If you don't think the future is full of amazing opportunities, you're simply not paying attention.

While the proposed Obama 2013 budget for the federal government is supposed to be about cutting extraneous expenditures, one area where it's seeking more money is to expand the Justice Department's copyright enforcement efforts. You see, this is what happens when you hand the Justice Department over to the RIAA and MPAA. DOJ is seeking an extra $5 million to focus on these kinds of efforts, to hire 14 new employees, including nine lawyers, claiming that it's "had an increase in the number of cases that we're dealing with in IP." Oh really? You mean like the case of Dajaz1? The site that the DOJ illegally held and censored for over a year? Perhaps if they had a few more lawyers on staff, someone would have taken the time to realize that they were supposed to give the domain back within a specified time frame. Or perhaps they could have used those people to realize that the site was posting music sent by the copyright holders. Of course, that's not what would happen. Instead, they'd just focus on seizing more sites and creating more collateral damage. The real question, of course, should be why are we allowing the government to be Hollywood's private police force?

While we've faulted the Obama administration for its many, many failings on the promised transparency front, the one area where they actually had done some good was with their work on the IT side, where the CTO and CIO had created some pretty cool websites sharing important data with the public, and pushing federal agencies to be a lot more transparent about their federal IT spending. Just last week, they announced plans to open source the famed ITDashboard.gov software, noting that it "was a major component of the process the Federal Government employed to save over $3 billion in just its first two years of deployment."

And now they're shutting it down.

There were some rumors last week, but reports are now saying that it's confirmed that the government will be shutting down a variety of its "open" data sites, including ITDashboard, data.gov and others, because the House has only allocated $2 million for electronic government activities, rather than the $35 million the White House requested:

"We need at least another $4 million just to keep USASpending.gov operating this year," the official said. "We are looking at a pass-the-hat approach, but it could be challenging to get that done in time."

The White House requested $35 million for the e-government fund in 2011. The House allocated only $2 million in its bill, H.R. 1. The Senate, meanwhile, would provide $20 million for the e-government fund.

"The continuing resolution says we can only spend what we would reasonably expect to get during the fiscal year, and we have no reasonable expectation to get more than a couple of millions of dollars," the source said.

There are some efforts underway to try to save the sites, and people are pointing out how incredibly backwards this proposal is. In an effort to save a few million upfront, it will inevitably cost jobs and a lot more money on the back end through less efficiency in government.

I'm all for cutting unnecessary government spending, and I'm not necessarily convinced that these projects need $35 million per year (though, given how much terrible paywalls cost, perhaps this is a bargain), but this just doesn't make much sense at all. It's one area where the government has really been doing some good, increasing both efficiency and transparency... and the response is to cut off their funding?

I'm sort of amazed at the silly and childish political games being played concerning attempts to cut funding here and there, but, seriously can anyone give me a logical explanation why the same folks who are so quick to demand that we stop funding NPR and PBS are so vehemently in favor of sponsoring NASCAR? Frankly, as a fan of both NPR and PBS, but not a fan of governments overspending, I actually think the complaints against pulling the funding from both are a bit overblown. I think there are some creative things that both NPR and PBS could do to make up the difference if they lost federal funding. However, if we are going to cut public broadcasting, then it seems only reasonable to cut sponsoring NASCAR as well, doesn't it? I'm curious how folks who claim to support smaller government are defending such sponsorship of a private, for-profit operation with taxpayer funding?

As you probably recall, the Obama Department of Justice includes many of the content industry's favorite lawyers. Now, thanks to the $410 billion omnibus spending bill approved by Congress and Obama, the FBI has nearly $10 million more dollars to spend on intellectual property enforcement. The money will fund 2 field officers at each existing Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property unit as well as the creation of a new unit at FBI headquarters to work specifically on multi-district IP cases. This news comes soon after Obama spoke warmly about innovation and start-ups -- two things which hardly need more IP headaches -- so it will be important to watch carefully who he appoints as the newly created IP Czar (though things hardly look good thus far).

The new Obama administration was supposed to represent a revolution in participation and transparency -- and while there have been some moves in that direction, there's plenty that's troubling, such as its recent decision to declare negotiations on an intellectual property treaty a state secret. However, more troubling is this fundamental disconnect between what the administration seems to think "participation" in the process means -- and what it really should mean. Rather than actually having people participate, it seems the administration is a lot more focused on having people sell.

That's not the same.

We saw it in the stimulus plan -- which was written by the same political insiders, and then the various email lists and social network connections were used to try to get the public to support the bill -- and now we're seeing the same thing with the budget. Apparently, the DNC is putting on a big push to use the 13-million emails collected during the campaign to help urge passage of Obama's budget, with David Plouffe claiming this is "the first major engagement" of that public list in the legislative process.

But that's the problem. This is a bit late to be engaging everyone. The budget's already been written. Shouldn't participation included more openness earlier in the process and more of a real way to participate to get these people to actually buy into a budget that they had input on? But that's not what we're getting. We're getting the same stuff, handed down from on high by the same political operatives, and being told that the people's "participation" is to help this budget get passed.

I would imagine people would be a lot more excited about doing that if they'd actually been asked to help out in the process. I'm glad that the administration is trying to reach out to people more, but so far it's doing so in a very fake way. It's not getting people to really participate in the process at all. It's just looking at them as a way to help sell. That's not the same.