The fact that all the films were put online is perplexing as Academy voters have other and better means of viewing the films, including through the Academy-provided DVDs of all the Live Action and Animated short film nominees sent to all voting members. Making the films available online creates no competitive advantage.

Unlike Webbies or Ani's, the Academy Award is designed to award excellence in the making of motion pictures that receive a cinematic release, not an online release. Since 2006, we have built theater audiences significantly and created widespread interest in the films themselves and their place in the movie theater. This release of the films on the Internet threatens to destroy 8 years of audience growth and the notion that these film gems are indeed movies--no feature length film would consider a free online release as a marketing tool!

The wording after the asterisk reads:

*What’s an asterisk doing in our award? CBS will go to any lengths to keep you from enjoying ad-skipping technology – even censoring its own writers and throwing out their decision to name Hopper ‘Best In Show.’ Your vote is the only one that really matters.

The broadcaster was reportedly worried that having one of its subsidiaries give an award to a Hopper DVR would possibly hurt its case in court. However, now that it’s been revealed that the device did indeed win the award — even if will never receive the actual accolade — it has only turned into a public relations boost to Dish and the Hopper.

Abstract

MonkeyBrains is a local ISP in San Francsico.  North Korea just launched a satellite; we want to as well.

The Cost Breakdown of Launching a Satellite

A quick internet search reveals that this is the cost for getting a satellite into orbit:

• Satellite manufacture: $150M
• Satellite launch: $120M
• Launch insurance: $20M
• In-orbit insurance: $20M
• Satellite operations (15 years): $15M

Faster Internet!

Our initial research seems to indicate having a satellite in orbit may not speed up your internet at all. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access#Geostationary_unsuitable_for_low-latency_applications].  However, if more research doesn't bode well for a geostationary satellite, we will take all of the $325M to fund either:

• Fiber to the home.
• A balloon tethered to the Farallon islands.
• a hovering drone over the Bay.

Trust Us

Some people just can't beleive we want to make the Internet Faster and Cheaper (and more Out of Control) than it already is.  Your money will be spent well, and San Francisco (and possibly -- if funds allow) the entire Bay Area will benefit.  We have set this fundraiser as Fixed Funding, so there is no risk of sending MonkeyBrains a little bit of money from your wallet without many other people feeling the same way.

Courts have long confronted this unauthorized-but-accurate use of another company's name. In a 1924 Supreme Court case the court considered a New York company that took a French company's cosmetic powder, blended it with a binding agent, and sold it as a compact including both the New York company's and French company's names on the packaging. The Supreme Court allowed the defendant to do this, provided that the defendant include a prominent disclaimer that the district court in the case initially imposed, informing the public that the two companies are not affiliated. Writing for the majority, Justice Holmes observed:

[W]hat new rights does the trade-mark confer? It does not confer a right to prohibit the use of the word or words. It is not a copyright. . . . A trade-mark only gives the right to prohibit the use of it so far as to protect the owner's good will against the sale of another's product as his. . . . When the mark is used in a way that does not deceive the public we see no such sanctity in the word as to prevent its being used to tell the truth. It is not taboo.

Many courts have adopted this case's approach to this question: you can use the trademark so long as you are not misleading the public into there being an affiliation between you and the company, other than your use of the company's product in your product. For example, a 2004 case from the Southern District of New York allowed a company that makes tuna salad display on the lid of its container – in letters about as large as the company's own brand name – that the salad was "Made with Bumble Bee Tuna," over objections from the famous tuna company.

...when I was in Boloco today (field research!) I couldn't help but see the dozens of jars of Nutella in the back, and thinking about the dozen-or-so other locations around Boston with similar stacks of Nutella jars. Those will be replaced by a competitor's product, in a chain that seems to be growing with each passing month. Not to mention the thousands of Bostonians who have heard about this case and will naturally root for the local guy; you get the feeling that this whole experience is going to leave a bitter taste in [Nutella's] mouths.

• SB Nation's network of 300 blogs redesigned all their logos for a re-launch -- with just a single designer, Fraser Davidson, in 7 weeks. Designing 300 logos is hard enough, but add in the complication that none of these logos should in any way infringe upon their related sports teams' official trademarks.... [url]
• Imagine some popular corporate logos redesigned for a hipster blog or startup. You don't have to imagine it, there's a Tumblr blog for it. [url]
• The evolution of corporate logos is kinda fascinating. Apple's first logo in 1976 is really different from its current minimalistic logo. [url]
• Some logos have hidden messages in them. The Big Ten collegiate conference logo has a little nod to the fact that there are actually eleven teams in its organization. [url]

"A survey conducted by plaintiff shows that approximately 35 percent of respondents identify The North Face as being associated with The Butt Face trademark when shown a sample of contempt respondents' T-shirts. Not only are contempt respondents now engaged in the widespread sale and promotion of The Butt Face branded goods, but Why Climb Mountains, LLC also has filed for registration of The Butt Face trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office."

""The South Butt and Olop [South Butt's sister line] are genuinely committed to the fundamental concept that the consuming public is perfectly capable of discerning the difference between a direction point on a compass and that part of the body from which solid waste is evacuated," [Albert] Watkins said in a statement."

While chatting about his experiences in Kanpur, where he's spent some part of his life while he was studying for the IIT entrance test, the topic veers to the menace of piracy in Indian cinema. But surprisingly, Anurag is one of the few filmmakers who feel that piracy is justified. "Main aaj jo kuch hoon, piracy ki wajah se hi hoon. It was through pirated versions of my movies that people got to see my work," he says and goes on to elaborate, "I feel that cinema is something that should reach the maximum number of people. If the audience does not get to see affordable cinema, it will turn to cheaper, pirated entertainment."

"If we want to see a successful Hollywood today, often we have to take the help of piracy because it's not necessary that that film is legally available in your city. That's why filmmakers need to understand that their work should reach more and more people, because today cinema is not all about entertainment. In fact, I feel that we filmmakers should use cinema as a tool to make a strong impact on society. And if people are watching such meaningful cinema through piracy, I believe it only helps to deliver the filmmaker's message to the masses."

As a filmmaker, he is known for Black Friday (2004), a controversial and award-winning Hindi film about the 1993 Bombay bombings, followed by No Smoking (2007), Dev D (2009) Gulaal (2009) That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011) and Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).

As a screenwriter, he wrote the scripts for the Filmfare Award-winning Satya (1998) and the Academy Award-nominated Canadian film Water (2005).

In 1999, Kashyap won the Best Screenplay award for Satya at the Star Screen Awards. The next year, his short film Last Train to Mahakali won the Special Jury Award at the same awards. His feature film debut Black Friday won the Grand Jury Prize at the 3rd Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (2005), and was a nominee for the "Golden Leopard" (Best Film) at the 57th Locarno International Film Festival (2004).

He was listed on the The DNA power list: Top 50 influentials, a list of 50 most influential Indians in 2011. Kashyap currently serves on the board of Mumbai-based NGO, Aangan Trust, which helps protect vulnerable children around India.

Q: So what's the deal with the $3,333.33 banana split you have on the Napa store's menu? Are you out of your mind?

A: I put it up not really as a joke, but for something fun for people to read while they're waiting in line.

I really hate the most expensive (dot dot dot) when most of the expense is for the serving dish, like the most expensive cocktail that comes in a crystal chalice. We serve the most expensive sundae, but the food cost is one-third of the price. It's three scoops of organic ice cream; a banana, organic of course; and is topped with three syrups made from three extremely rare dessert wines - a 1960s vintage Port, a Chateau D'Yquem and a German Trockenbeerenauslese. It also comes with a cellist who will play anything you want while you eat the sundae.

Q: What other expensive ice cream packages do you offer?

A: We offer a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro with a real guide and me. Once we climb the mountain, we will chip away at the glacial ice and carry it back to camp, where we will churn as much ice cream as the customer can eat. The trip includes first-class airfare, five-star accommodations, a $10,000 donation to a nonprofit African environmental charity and a souvenir T-shirt for $60,000 for one and $85,000 for two.

So far we've had no takers.

However, one person has purchased our "100 pints personally delivered." That's when I wear a green tuxedo and deliver the ice cream anywhere in the U.S. for $3,333.33.

So I sold my book to a mainstream publisher and they sucked. I am going to go into extreme detail about how much they sucked, so I'm not going to tell you the name of the publisher because I got a lot of money from them. I'm just going to tell you that the mainstream publisher is huge, and if you have any respect left for print publishing, you respect this publisher. But you will not at the end of this post.

To be clear, I wrote my book, and they paid me my advance, in full. Three months before the publication date, the PR department called me up to "coordinate our efforts." But really, their call was just about giving me a list of what I was going to do to publicize the book. I asked them what they were going to do. They had no idea. Seriously.

They did not have a written plan, or any list, and when I pushed one of the people on this first call to give me examples of what the publishers would do to promote my book, she said "newsgroups."

I assumed I was misunderstanding. I said, "You mean like newsgroups from the early 90s? Those newsgroups? USENET?"

"Yes."

"Who is part of newsgroups anymore?"

"We actually have really good lists because we have been working with them for so long."

"People in newsgroups buy books? You are marketing my book through newsgroups?"

At the next phone call, I asked again about how they were going to publicize my book. I told them that I'm happy to do it on my blog, but I already know I can sell tons of books by writing about my book on my blog. So they need to tell me how they are going to sell tons of books.

"LinkedIn."

"What? Where are you selling books on LinkedIn?"

"One of the things we do is build buzz on our fan page."

I went ballistic. There is no publishing industry fan page that is good enough to sell books. No one goes to fan pages for publishers because publishers are not household brand names. The authors are. That's how publishing works.

• Print publishers have no idea who is buying their books.

Amazon knows their customers. Publishers don't. Amazon won't give them the information and what little the publishers can draw together demographically comes from brick-and-mortar sales. This is a handicap, to be sure, but the publisher Trunk dealt with compounded this problem by performing impossible mathematics:

When I pointed this out to my publisher, they told me that for my book, they expected to sell more than 50% of the books in independent bookstores. And then they showed me slides on how they market to people offline. They did not realize that I ran an independent bookstore while I was growing up. It was the family business. I ran numbers for them to show them that if they sold 50% of the sales they estimated for my book, they would single-handedly change the metrics of independent booksellers. That's how preposterous their estimates were.

• Print publishers have no idea how to market online.

Print publishers have been too arrogant to learn how to run a grassroots, metrics-based publicity campaign online. They cannot tell which of their online efforts works and which doesn't because they can't track sales. They don't know how many people they reach.

• The profit margins in mainstream publishing are so low they are almost nonexistent.

The most breathtaking example, I think, of how terrible margins are, is that if I sell my own book with a link to my publisher, I make a little less than $1 per book. If I sell Guy Kawasaki's book  on Amazon, I get a little more than $1 per book in their affiliate program. So it's more profitable to me to use my blog to sell someone else's book than to sell the book I published with a mainstream publisher.

I said, "Great. Because I think you are incompetent. And also, you have already paid me. It's a great deal for me."

Here's how Radical Media describes its "entertainment" division:

AS THE LINE BETWEEN advertising and entertainment blurs, our Entertainment division is a solution to a changing media landscape. In conjunction with our Design + Digital Group and Integrated Marketing team, we work closely with our agency, network, and brand partners to integrate their visions into the DNA of the content we create.

In addition to films and music videos, Radical Media also makes television commercials and, well, "transmedia."

Here's where it gets really confusing: While Radical Media is essentially an advertising firm, it was purchased in 2010 by the RTL Group, which owns 46 television channels and 9 radio stations and is Europe's largest mass media company. In other words, a media company owns an advertising firm that moonlights as a media company. Huzzah!

• Automatically serving ads without a human editor to judge the appropriateness of the content can be a really bad idea -- especially when placing ads on news items. Yahoo News recently inserted ads for Express clothing on a news photo -- unfortunately the photo pictured a distraught man who survived an attack by Taliban militants. [url]
• KFC ran a commercial in the UK a few years ago that set a record for complaints -- because viewers thought it encouraged bad manners and mocked people with speech impediments. This commercial has held on to its record to this day, but there probably aren't many agencies vying for the title. [url]
• Pizza Hut knows its customers love pizza, but does a love of pizza correlate with disliking math? This commercial needs to show its work on how it arrived at its conclusion. [url]
• Kenneth Cole is trying to raise "awearness" with some edgy ad campaigns. But one of its billboards generated some backlash from teachers when it suggested that teachers' rights were at odds with student interests. [url]

the weirdest thing right now is that everybody KNOWS about it. i’m now famous for my kickstarter.

which is a little depressing. i wish that i could steal all that enthusiasm and high-fiving i’ve getting from strangers in the street (literally) and re-route it to the album when comes out. i don’t want this album to be remembered as “the kickstarter record.”

i do want this record to explode. and i want this record to explode because it is awesome.

"You've got an opponent who has the capacity to reach millions of people with a click of a mouse and there's no fact-checker. They can say whatever they want."

“It’s very difficult to counter the misinformation when the disseminators also own the platform.”

The networks have embraced the idea — originally hatched by cable networks — of introducing initial episodes of their shows through other distribution outlets like YouTube before they have their premiere on their own schedules.

A chastened Christoforo is now looking for forgiveness from the Internet community he unwittingly antagonized, saying in an interview with MSNBC.com's In-Game he was "caught on a bad day" and that he hopes they will "let sleeping dogs lie."

"They've pretty much ruined me in the past 24 hours," Christoforo said. "It was humbling a little bit, but life goes on. I'm not going to die."

Yet despite all the drama, Christoforo said he hasn't lost any of his other accounts, aside from Avenger. "It hasn't affected my business yet," he said. "Clients have brought it up, but they've mainly laughed about it. I haven't lost any clients."

"I didn't know who that guy at Penny Arcade was," he admitted. "If I had known, I would have treated the situation a little better. PAX is a great show. What he does is what I've been idlolizing since I was a kid. It's admirable he's put that together. He has a lot of connections, ones I want too."

Regarding the litany of names Christoforo's e-mail called up as potential supporters - a list that included everyone from Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski to the mayor of Boston - he said the tactic was meant to "impress, not to threaten" and didn't come through correctly because "you can't see tone of voice in email."

"I don't know the mayor of Boston," he admitted. "That was taken totally out of context, I was just joking around. I am from Boston, though, and I know a lot of people people who own clubs. I know some influential people, like the guy who runs the door at the convention center.

"He called me a bully, but he was being a bully ... especially when he emailed me out of the blue, saying 'That's f***ing s***ty, you're banned from PAX,' I was like 'Who the f*** are you? That's how you introduce yourself? ... I dont want to call him out, but he could have gone about that a totally different way, he could have said, 'Hey, I run the show, that email was a little unprofessional, if you don't do something to apologize I don't want you at my show.' But he just came at me and said, indirectly, 'Hey, f*** you, you're banned from PAX.' Is that what you'd call professional? I wouldn't."

Christoforo also said his response was driven in part by what he saw as the disrespectful tone of the messages that came before it. "Not that I don't have respect for anybody, but if someone's badmouthing me or being a little punk or being a jerk, they don't deserve respect," he said. "You can't expect to go up and say 'Hey you piece of s***,' and expect respect. Send an email, introduce yourself. ... I trust everybody until they give me a reason not to respect them. I'm not a tough guy, not a bully, but at same time not going to take s*** if it's uncalled for.

You placed a pre order just like any software title the gets a date moved due to the tweaks and bugs not being worked out and GameStop or any other place holds your cash and im sure you don’t complain to activision or epic games so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else. The benefit is a token of our appreaciation for everyone no one is special including you or any first time buyer . Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your 2 will be gone fast. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself.

"Ultimately, if I was able to control the customer, it never would have happened. I've dealt with thousands and thousands of customers with similar complaints, they were all asking the same question. When is it big enough that it hits the news? When it hits Penny Arcade, when it hits a guy who has the biggest affiliations in the industry."

So what lessons has Christoforo taken from his brush with Internet infamy? "I'll definitely stay away from customer service emails," he said. "I could have nipped this all in the bud by being a little nicer. You never know who knows who, and lesson learned. We all have bad days and they caught me on one."

"At the end of the day, I'm a human being, and it feels like the entire world was bullying me," he said. "I want people to like me, I don't want people to think I'm a bad person. ... I made a mistake. ... I hope I can make something positive out of it."

When Primary Wave took over Cee Lo’s management, shortly before the release of “The Lady Killer,” he still had a relatively low profile as a solo artist. But the company seized on the early viral success of “Forget You” to make Cee Lo a ubiquitous face.

His over-the-top performances at half a dozen award shows -- performing with the Jim Henson Company puppets at the Grammys, playing a piano that spun 360 degrees above the crowd at the Billboard awards -- proved highly successful. His television campaign for the year has also included “Saturday Night Live,” an appearance on the NBC comedy-drama “Parenthood” and his own talk show on the cable channel Fuse (“Talking to Strangers”).

Primary Wave also booked numerous commercial endorsements for Cee Lo, in traditional TV spots like a 7Up commercial that has been running since October, as well as a Web video series for Absolut Vodka and personal appearances for Duracell and Pretzel M&M’s.

We’re not renting a booth at pax east this year , bigger and better shows to be at we got nothing from the show . Oh so you know this guy has sold over 500 thousand dollars of product in Dec and is my main distribution arm landing us in GameStop , fry’s , Myers , Best buy , Activision , MLG , play N trade and a lot more . Were in 6 countries and you’re not going to take my money for a booth that’s a crock I can guarantee I’ll get a booth if I want one money buys a lot and connections go even further. He’s a native Bostonian from Little Italy . Who are you again ?

OK Mike whatever you say lol , are you sure hour not in Boston I spoke to the person who ran the show in Boston last year. If you let some little kid influence you over a pre order then we don’t want to be a your show ,Ill be on the floor anyway so come find me , I’m born and raised in Boston I know the people who run the city inside and out watch the way you talk to people you never know who they know it’s a small industry and everyone knows everyone. Your acting like a douchbag not that it matters pax east pax west , e3 , CES , Gamer Con , SSXW ,Comic Con, Germany I’m all over the place. If we want to be there we will be there with industry badges or with a booth you think I can’t team up with turtle beach , Callibur or Koy Christmas , I can’t get Kevin Kelly to pull some strings or G4 , Paul Eibler Ex CEO of take 2 , Rich Larocco Konami , Cliff Blizinski Epic who were working with on a gears version , Activision who were working with on a MW3 and Spider man Bundle , The Convention Center Owners themselves , Mayor of Boston come on Bud you run a show that’s all you do and lease a center in Cities you have no pull in its all about who you know not what you do. I’ll see space where ever I want , with who I want when I want and where I want so many ways around you and so many connections in this industry its silly. Anyway , I have no issue with you Sean Buckley Engadget, Scott Lowe IGN and the list goes on and on. Little kids unhappy with a PRE ORDER starting trouble and you email that to us , he’s a customer unless you’re his boyfriend then you should side with the company not the customer. Be Careful

It seems the plot has thickened a bit further. Apparently, as pointed out by @williambgoss on twitter, Ocean Marketing has been lifting articles from across the web for their blog with little to no attribution of sources whatsoever. An article published on Forbes is clearly posted wholesale on the Ocean Marketing blog with no sourcing roughly two weeks after initially hitting the web. Moreover, the same is done with a BizReport article, appearing as Ocean Marketing's "original work" no less than two days later.  

"You have the power Mike Please make it stop"

I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed I didn’t know how big your site was and I really didn’t believe you ran Pax , So for what’s its worth I am very sorry. Your post has obviously made my life very difficult and I have not slept yet dealing with all the spam and personal information intrusion as well as my family being smeared on the internet.

No, no I don't think so at all. Certainly as a gamer I don't think what's going on is a good thing. Triple-A is as much about marketing these days as it is about production values.

Take a game like BulletStorm, for example. That game was supported and well reviewed but just didn't break out. It wasn't a failure, but it wasn't a success that could fund a series of projects either. That's a game that I think people loved but it's not one that gets the $100 million marketing budget, because that amount of money is only spent on a few sure-fire hits and annualised sequels.

There's a lot of great games out there that don't take off. How many games have you loved that sell less than three million units? There's probably dozens. Those games can't get made in today's games economy. So no, I don't think it's a good thing that the middle-class of games have gone away.

I'm not an expert here, but there is a huge impact from non-commercial marketing these days with things like Facebook and Twitter. If you don't spam people then you can be very useful to your customers. We were not forward-thinking in that area, but we're really driving in this space now and have more than one million Facebook fans.

But other forms of marketing and PR are starting to change things. The focus is changing from shoving TV ads in people's faces to actually building a community.

I don't know if there will be the same amount of TV adverts in five years' time. No one gets fired for buying TV ads, because they make sense, but soon they will start to make less and less sense. I think what could happen is a lot of money can be saved with less TV adverts and that itself, perhaps, could free up more money to take more risks and be more creative.

I think another thing that's changed is the way people are willing to spend their money. Consoles need to adapt to this. Game revenue has moved to the service model and the microtransactions model. Consoles need to start being comfortable with that. They need to be able to do something where small virtual items can be sold and bought for 20¢ without a long certification process and a price approval process.

Right now we're not even allowed to change the prices of virtual content. We're not even allowed to set the prices. I just don't think this protectionist approach is going to be successful in a world where the price of virtual items changes on a day-today basis.

Double-A games will never come back unless we get rid of this notion of a game being $60 or not released. The console manufacturers need to let this happen. The best way of driving developers to PC is telling them they have no freedom in what prices they can set for virtual items. It would be great to have the level of freedom that, say, Steam gives you.

We release our Citizenship Report at the same time as our Annual Financial Report to give our broad base of stakeholders a full view of Microsoft’s financial and non-financial performance. Corporate responsibility means more than returning value to shareholders – it means engaging with stakeholders to address our responsibilities in the areas of environmental, social and governance issues. We believe all corporations have, as part of their license to operate, a responsibility to contribute positively to society on a global scale. To quote our company’s founder, Bill Gates: "It takes more than great products to make a great company."

So let's just take a look at the things Microsoft has been doing to "contribute positively to society on a global scale". Here's one detail:

We have increased corporate charitable giving year-over-year since fiscal year 2008, despite economic challenges. Our employees volunteered more time—more than 380,000 hours in the U.S. alone. We also contributed more cash and in-kind support to nonprofits—$949 million globally.

That's nearly $1 billion of cash and in-kind support to nonprofits – a big number. There's a web page devoted to these activities, with this paragraph giving some more information:

In FY2011 we donated more than $844 million in software to 46,886 nonprofits in 113 countries/regions.The value of software we have donated globally since 1998 is more than $3.9 billion. The FY2011 value of software donated now includes employee software donations; previous years’ in-kind giving numbers do not.

This means that of the $949 million dollars "contributed" to nonprofits, $844 million -- 88% – was actually software, presumably Microsoft's, since it's unlikely it went out and bought it from competitors.

What's harder to judge is how much that $844 million worth of software actually cost Microsoft: the specific phrase used is "fair market value". This has quite a well-defined meaning in US tax law:

The fair market value is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the people who put up the web page about Microsoft's contributions to nonprofits were following that definition exactly. But equally, it seems likely that the gist is the same: it's a kind of rough price that you'd usually find in normal markets selling the products in question. And those prices are almost certainly well above the cost of manufacturing, especially if the software was delivered online, or if multiple installations were permitted.

So the actual cost to Microsoft of that donated software is likely to be only a small fraction of the $844 million "fair market value" cited. This inevitably tempers our admiration for Microsoft's ten-figure generosity somewhat.

But there's something else. Microsoft wasn't just handing out a bunch of any old products: it was giving away mostly Windows and Office, judging by a table showing a breakdown by region. Both of these are well-known for the lock-in effects they produce: once you start installing applications and creating documents with them, it's quite hard to move to a completely different platform like Apple or GNU/Linux. Most people don't even try.

So these free copies not only cost Microsoft considerably less than the $844 million figure it used to calculate that near-billion dollar total for its corporate brochure, but it wasn't really altruistic at all. With hundreds of thousands of copies of Windows being distributed (417,030 were supplied for refurbished computers alone), there is a very high probability that Microsoft will be benefiting financially – and not just in terms of goodwill -- from upgrades and follow-on sales for many years to come.

Making copies available at zero or very low prices is something that Microsoft has done time and again whenever there was any danger of customers "defecting" to open source. For example, in 2009, Russia planned to deploy free software throughout its education system. That didn't happen, in part because Microsoft offered to license Windows for $30 a copy (article in Russian.) It's part of the rough and tumble of the highly-competitive software business.

Still, it's a little rich for a company as profitable as Microsoft to try to dress this up as “corporate charitable giving.” It's really nothing of the kind: it's marketing, pure and simple, and Microsoft should be big enough to describe it as such.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

"The game favors people that can produce quality music and then turn right around and produce more quality music-which is not a given," Atlantic Records VP of A&R Zvi Edelman says. His signee, Wiz Khalifa, leveraged free, original mixtapes like 2010's "Kush & OJ" and 2011's "Cabin Fever" into the building of a dedicated fan base that helped, along with an intensive touring strategy, make his Atlantic/Rostrum Records debut, "Rolling Papers," one of the few hip-hop debuts to sell more than 500,000 copies (it's now at 570,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan) in 2011.

A batch of newcomers -- such as J. Cole, Big Sean, Dom Kennedy, Mac Miller and Smoke DZA -- has adapted to the consumer demand for free, original rap music. The philosophy is often described this way: As a reward for artists remaining loyal to them (by giving away original music), fans return the favor by buying concert tickets, merchandise and "real" albums from record labels. The result is a give-and-take relationship that keeps rappers in control of their brand and marketing, and iTunes playlists full of free albums disguised as "mixtapes." The payoff is an active fan base, which labels and management hope stimulates retail purchases.