Techdirt. Stories filed under "techdirt"

Last Week To Order The Techdirt Holiday Bundle In Time For Christmas!

Leigh Beadon — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:32:00 PST

Our Holiday Bundle of gear in the Insider Shop has been a hit this season—and if you want to give one as a Christmas gift, time is running out. This Friday, December 14th, is the final deadline for Christmas shipping in the US, and to be safe (given the unpredictability of holiday mail) we recommend ordering sooner rather than later.

For only $99 (over $50 off the regular price), the Holiday Bundle includes:

A Techdirt zip hoodie
A Techdirt coffee mug
Your choice of the DMCA Tee, the Seized Tee or the Logo Tee
Access to the Insider Chat for one year
Access to the Techdirt Crystal Ball for one year
5 First Word/Last Word credits per month for one year
An Insider Badge on your profile and comments
A group Google Hangout with Mike Masnick

Plus, don't forget about our ongoing t-shirt sale! When you buy three or more t-shirts in any styles and sizes, you get them all for 15% off. The discount is automatically applied in your cart.

Happy holidays, and a big thanks to everyone for supporting Techdirt through our Insider Shop! By the way, if you want to give us a present this year, you can always drop something in our tip jar.

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Come Celebrate 15 Years Of Techdirt (And 50,000 Posts)!

Mike Masnick — Wed, 3 Oct 2012 16:15:00 PDT

We recently wrote about Techdirt turning 15. A few weeks later, without anyone (including us) noticing, we also published our 50,000th post. Every day I'm in awe of the community here and the conversations and discussions that we've had. In the back of my head, it still feels like the early days, when I'd publish something and know that absolutely no one would read it -- even though that doesn't appear to be the case any more. I'm thrilled that I get to "virtually" spend time with all of you every day, and to celebrate, we thought it would be great to see some of you in person too! We're having a 15th Anniversary Meetup/Happy Hour in San Francisco next Wednesday, October 10th from 6pm to 8pm. The event is being hosted by our good friends at Hattery Labs and should be a lot of fun. It's free, but we have limited space, so please sign up to get on the guest list before we run out of space... We look forward to seeing many of you next week!

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Help Us Expand The Insider Shop By Voting On Ideas For New Techdirt Gear

Leigh Beadon — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:30:00 PDT

We want to keep our Insider Shop stocked with an always-expanding selection of fresh Techdirt gear, so we've set up a Step2 thread for you to vote on product ideas and submit your own.

Our Seized Tee and DMCA Tee have both been very popular, so we're definitely looking for your input on new t-shirt ideas—but we're also interested in whatever else you dream up! For now, we want to dedicate this thread to physical Techdirt gear—we'll be launching another thread in the future to discuss the new blog features and subscription packages. There are a few ideas already there, both for new products and for variations on our existing lineup. Head on over and help us decide what we should offer next.

Remember, you need an account to vote and comment on Step2, but your Techdirt account works there too.

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Fifteen Years Ago Today, Techdirt Was Born

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:40:08 PDT

We don't tend to be too sentimental about these things, but a few weeks back, I realized that we were rapidly approaching the 15th anniversary of the start of Techdirt in its earliest form. On August 23rd, 1997, I sent out the very first "Up To Date" email newsletter, which was roughly modeled on Danny O'Brien's much more clever and much more knowledgeable (and sadly missed) Need to Know newsletter (for what it's worth, Danny discovered my mimicry a few months later, and has always been quite kind about it). The very first newsletter was sent to -- I believe -- three people, and was really an alpha test of the concept. It's obviously quite different from what Techdirt became, but you can also see some inklings. Some of the things in the newsletter were silly (underestimating HTTP as a protocol? Oops!). Some were pretty good predictions (CNET's SNAP portal being a joke, Netscape trying to charge for its browser being a recipe for failure).

Either way, today marks 15 years of doing this in one form or another. One week after this initial test, the newsletter went out to about 100 people -- mostly fellow students at Cornell's business school. A month later we were up to about 1,000 subscribers, and it built from there. By February of the next year the website finally came into existence (and with it, the Techdirt name, which beat out my second choice "bluedot" because a friend told me that sounded boring, while Techdirt sounded edgy). A year after that, the site itself morphed into a blog -- though the word "blog" still didn't exist -- using Slashcode 0.3 (which was a complete mess). And within a few years it was a part of my full time job.

Anyway, I wanted to share the moment, as I figured some of you might get a kick out of seeing that original offering. We're hoping to put together some sort of gathering in the fall to celebrate this anniversary (too much stuff going on to have it coincide with the actual date) and we'll share more info on that as we finalize those plans. Either way, none of the last 15 years happens without you folks being dedicated readers, commenters, submitters, link spreaders, etc. From starting out with a total audience of 3 people to the millions who now read our content every month, it's been quite a ride so far, and I hope to continue going strong for at least another fifteen years.

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First Word, Last Word And Letting Our Biggest Fans Help Shape The Conversation In Our Comments

Mike Masnick — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:12:34 PDT

With the launch of our new Techdirt Insider Shop, one of the new features we've enabled on the site is something we're calling First Word/Last Word, which you may have noticed appearing on the blog. The feature allows Techdirt Insiders with credits to help highlight key comments as either "The First Word" (on top of all the other comments) or "The Last Word" (beneath all of the comments, even if other comments are added after). You can designate one of your own comments, or feel free to designate a truly awesome comment from someone else.

Because this is such a new feature, I wanted to discuss a little of the thinking behind it. Despite blogging for well over a decade, I'm still amazed by how much controversy there is over blog comments. Some people insist that they're completely useless. Others spend many hours of their day engaging in discussion and debate in the comments. There are various attempts to try to "improve the quality" of comments out there, including banning anonymous comments, heavily moderating comments or doing things like having editors highlight the best comments. Others have integrated third-party platforms to manage comments, such as Facebook or Disqus. Gawker keeps pushing the bleeding edge with a series of commenting experiments that try to increase the importance of comments while decreasing the number of comments that actually get viewed.

Over the years, we've taken a very open approach to comments. We don't require a login to comment (though there are benefits to having one). We don't require people to identify themselves at all. And despite the default assumption some have that anonymous comments are bad, we quite regularly find that comments from anonymous users are some of our most insightful and funniest comments. To that end, we've always focused on trying to do more to highlight and encourage good behavior -- such as highlighting the comments voted most insightful and funniest, both with badges on the comments and in our weekly summaries.

With the First Word/Last Word feature, we're trying to take all of that a step further. We've seen how a single trollish commenter can sometimes (not always) derail an interesting conversation by getting in early and saying something completely brain dead, then watching (probably with laughter) as the thread disintegrates. Our expanded Crystal Ball may take care of that in some cases by giving insiders more early access to kick off the comments. But, not everyone's going to be able to rush in and be first. With "First Word/Last Word," Insiders with credits can help highlight one or two of the absolutely key comments on a story and put them in places of prominence to help define the overall conversation.

This is very much an experiment (and like all experiments could flop completely). But what fun is it if you never take chances? We've trusted our community for many, many years, and here's another attempt to trust those who become Insiders to help curate the absolute best comments for everyone to see. We hope you'll take part and help us develop an even more interesting and compelling comments section.

You can get your own First Word/Last Word credits at the Techdirt Insider Shop. Most purchases include at least one credit, and subscriptions like the Watercooler Package and the Behind The Curtain Package include a cache of credits that replenishes on a monthly basis.

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Announcing The New Techdirt Insider Shop

Mike Masnick — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:45:04 PDT

A few years ago, in the pre-Kickstarter (but post-artists-crowdfunding) world, we decided that there was no reason why some of the basic experiments for funding that musicians were doing shouldn't apply to blogs as well. So we launched our own "tiered" "CwF+RtB" (Connect with Fans + Reasons to Buy) store entirely as an experiment. By the end of the year, we made over $50,000 with it, which exceeded any modest expectations we might have had. Since then, it's always been on the list of things to do to update the store in a big way, and a few months ago, we finally decided to focus in on it. While it took longer than we expected, we're proud to launch the new version:

The Techdirt Insider Shop

It has many of the same offerings that the original had, but a bunch of new and expanded offerings as well. It's designed more as a store than a "tiered" setup, so shop around a bit. We'll have a few more posts highlighting some key features and merchandise, but for those of you already familiar with the Techdirt Crystal Ball -- which allows you to get early access to some stories and preview the headlines of others -- that's still around, but it's now been expanded, so you get to see some stories up to two hours early, rather than just one. And, if you sign up for a premium package, you can even get the brand new Crystal Ball Plus, which gives you pretty detailed access to all sorts of posts we're working on, including false-start stories that never make it onto the site, and some works that are very much in progress. If you're already a Techdirt Crystal Ball subscriber, your account has been upgraded to the new version, meaning you get to see more stories earlier, and you get some other features.

We also have some brand new features on the site for Insiders, including the new First Word/Last Word offering, which I'll have another post discussing in more detail a little later today. There's also the brand new Insider Chat which all of you should be able to see to your right. Certain Insider membership packages allow you to join in the chat. Without one of those... you can still view the chat, but you can't participate. Also, for those who sign up for longer term packages, we have a number of offerings, including special Insider Hangouts (using Google+'s Hangouts feature), which should be a lot of fun. Check out the store for a detailed explanation of all the new blog features that are available.

You want more gear? We've got more gear, including new t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, bottles and other assorted paraphernalia. We've got a brand new Seized t-shirt in honor of various domain seizures (more on that later!) and an updated DMCA takedown t-shirt. The original was our most popular seller, so don't miss out on the new, revamped version. We've also got a very special, limited edition Techdirt staff bundle -- of which only five are available to buy. These are special staff-only hoodies and an assortment of other goodies. If you don't want to splurge to that level (or if they all sell out before you get a chance) we've got some other hoodies to choose from.

Downloads? We've got downloads. You can "pay what you want" for the ebook version of my book Approaching Infinity (built off a collection of Techdirt posts) or our famed Sky is Rising report. Name your price and help support more such works in the future! Hell, if you don't want anything specific in return, you can also just donate some money.

There's plenty more as well, including getting lunch with me -- which we offered only as a one week special last time, but it was quite popular (and a lot of fun) -- as well as the indisputably Awesome Day with Techdirt (which a few folks did last time around, and it really was quite awesome). There are also various business services that tie back into how we normally make a living.

And, last and most certainly least, we still have options for those of you who hate Techdirt. Last time around, we offered to take a year off for merely $100-million, and surprisingly none of you took us up on it. We did have some requests for pro-rated offerings, so we'll now shut down for 24 hours for just $1 million (pocket change!). As for the big one? Well, we always hear the haters insist that price is equal to value, and no one appeared to value that $100-million offering enough... so the price is going up. You can shut us up for an entire year for the new, more luxurious price of $100,000,001. Hurry up. We may raise the prices again before you know it.

Either way, the store platform we've put together is a lot more robust, and we're hopeful that we can do a bunch of other things with it over the next few months and years, so shop away...

Please note that while we've been testing the new store & features extensively, when things go live, problems always pop up. If you spot any errors or bugs, please let us know and we'll get to them as quickly as possible...

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What Would You Like To Hear In A Techdirt Podcast?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 2 Aug 2012 15:58:09 PDT

Many years ago (many, many, many years ago) before "podcasting" existed (actually, before iPods existed), we briefly tried to do a "Techdirt online radio show," which had a terrible name I won't repeat here. We ended up doing two or three episodes, I think -- and the only one that was any good accidentally got deleted right after we recorded it. That said, in the intervening years, the whole podcasting thing sprung up and it's all pretty well established now. We've been tossing around the idea of doing a podcast ourselves. I've got some ideas for what I think it should be... but I'm also curious about what people here would like to hear in a podcast. There's no guarantee we'll end up doing exactly what anyone suggests, but we're hoping it provides some ideas. Would you like to just hear me and some of the other contributors talking about the week's news? Or would you want interviews with interesting guests? Something entirely different? Do you prefer longer podcasts or the quick hit types? Let us know what would be most interesting. Thanks!

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Techdirt Deemed Harmful To Minors In Germany

Mike Masnick — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:47:30 PST

Hanno alerts us to the news that Techdirt has apparently been deemed harmful to minors in Germany. The German Media Control Authority has apparently been pushing internet "youth filters" to protect kids from dangerous things online. So far, it has officially approved two internet filters. Hanno got his hands on one and discovered that Techdirt was one of many blocked sites (Google translation from the original German) -- as the filter declares that Techdirt has pornographic images and depictions of violence. We do?

Hanno reached out to a spokesperson for the JusProg filter, and got the usual runaround. "We do not want to censor political opinions." The spokesperson claims that the system is automated and looks at links. When asked why Techdirt was blocked, it was explained that since we use certain words "perhaps twenty times" in discussions about pornography and censorship, the system deemed us clearly a danger. Apparently, we can appeal to JusProg, but it appears that might require some familiarity with German... So, in the meantime, let's just hope that we haven't already damaged the youth of Germany too much.

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Techdirt 2011: The Numbers.

Dennis Yang — Thu, 5 Jan 2012 14:22:00 PST

Happy New Year everyone! Last year's "The Numbers" post proved to be quite popular, so we decided to do it again. 2011 was yet another banner year for Techdirt.

We handled around 14.7 million visits last year (up from 2009's 11M). Those visitors checked out the 3,923 stories that we posted and submitted 205,129 comments. Oddly, the #1 story for 2011 was one that was actually written in 2010, about the ubiquitous "Free Public WiFi" mystery. It turns out that a lot of people remain curious about all those "free public WiFi" ad hoc networks you see. Two stories about SOPA/PIPA graced the top ten, as well as the harrowing censorship tale of dajaz1.com. It appears that you folks are concerned about government censorship.

2011 was also a great year for the comment voting system. Congrats to Marcus Carab and Dark Helmet, who garnered the highest cumulative scores for insightful and funniest comments, respectively -- and, amazingly, each came in second place to the other in the category they didn't come in first. I sense a growing rivalry...

The top browser used by Techdirt readers was still Firefox (35%). Chrome, which lost by a narrow margin to IE last year, blew past IE's 15% to 30%. And there are still nearly 100,000 that are, despite all of the best efforts of Microsoft to convince you otherwise, still inexplicably using IE6.

Mobile usage jumped up to 1.6M visits this year, which is nearly a 200% increase from 2010. 615k of those visits came from iPhones, versus 566k for Android and 322k from iPad. In aggregate, Apple devices did beat Android. iPhone beat out Android last year by nearly 2:1, so clearly that gap is quickly closing.

Where did this year's traffic come from? Reddit jumped in the charts this year, referring 2.1M visits, up 277% from last year's 557k. I'm a little saddened to see that Slashdot is definitely not what it used to be -- referrals from them dropped by nearly a third last year. I suppose getting Slashdotted is no longer what it used to be. Continuing to perform quite well, however, are both StumbleUpon and HackerNews. Facebook also sent a decent amount of traffic.

To hear some of Google's enemies (including politicians in Congress) tell the story, the only way sites get traffic is via search engines -- and Google specifically. They act as though, if Google isn't sending you tons of traffic, you don't exist. Google definitely does send us a fair bit of traffic, but only about 20% of our actual traffic came from searches. We certainly value that 20%, but it definitely shows that you don't have to rely on search traffic to get traffic. Even more telling, here are the top three search terms that brought people to Techdirt in 2011:

techdirt
sopa
tech dirt

Where are you all coming from? It's really not that different than in 2010. The vast majority of you are from the US. Canada is second, followed closely by the UK. After that, there's a pretty sharp drop off to Australia, then Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. France, India and New Zealand round out the top 10. Last year, we noted that Japan narrowly beat out China to follow India as the leading Asian countries. This year (despite stories of how we're sometimes blocked in China), China jumped into second place in Asia, followed by South Korea, who leap-frogged Japan. Brazil was tops in South America and South Africa was tops in Africa -- same as in 2010.

All in all, people from 230 countries or territories visited Techdirt. Just like last year, there was a single visit from Christmas Island -- though, last year, we had someone in our comments suggest that the single Christmas Island visit may have been him, and not really from Christmas Island.

Last year, we noted that the only countries that we appeared to get absolutely no visits from were... North Korea, Western Sahara & Chad. Western Sahara and Chad, once again, failed to send any visitors... but, in a stunning development, we got two visitors from North Korea. And, in case you were wondering, Belarus, whose new laws will make it difficult for people there to access many websites, actually sent over 1,000 visitors last year. Also, I have no idea why, but the nearly 1,000 visitors from Gibraltar spent the highest average time on the site of visitors from any other country/territory -- averaging nearly 20 minutes per visit. People from Macedonia actually visited the most pages (on average) per visit -- at just under 6 on average from over 3,500 visitors.

And, of course, this isn't just about the odd facts, but about the overall community -- with many of you being quite loyal, which we appreciate to no end. 1.5 million of the visits -- or just over 10% came from people who visited Techdirt more than 100 times last year -- and the vast majority of those (just under 1 million) actually visited the site more than 200 times. You people rock.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for making yet another year of Techdirt awesome. Here's to a fantastic 2012.

Top Ten Stories, by Unique Pageviews, on Techdirt for 2011:

2011's Top Ten Stories, by comment volume

If You're Arguing That Someone 'Deserves' Copyright, Your Argument Is Wrong (823 comments)
Do A Little Dance, Make A Little Love...Get Bodyslammed Tonight (At The Jefferson Memorial) (457 comments)
Judge Bans Handing (Factual) Pamphlets To Jurors; Raising First Amendment Issues (429 comments)
TSA Agent Threatens Woman With Defamation, Demands $500k For Calling Intrusive Search 'Rape' (403 comments)
Revisiting The Question Of Who Deserves Copyright (376 comments)
PROTECT IP Renamed E-PARASITES Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America (376 comments)
Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos (374 comments)
Monkeys Don't Do Fair Use; News Agency Tells Techdirt To Remove Photos (372 comments)
Why Is The Justice Department Pretending US Copyright Laws Apply In The UK? (351 comments)
Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details... (341 comments)

* Note that only 2 of the most commented stories were also among the top 10 most visited stories, once again showing that traffic and the number of comments don't necessarily correlate.

2011's Top Users, by comment volume

The eejit - 3,963 comments
Jay - 3,433 comments
Marcus Carab - 2,255 comments
Richard - 2,209 comments
PaulT - 1,841 comments
Hephaestus - 1,662 comments
nasch - 1,456 comments
Dark Helmet - 1,426 comments
abc gum - 1,357 comments
HothMonster - 1,313 comments

2011's Most Insightful Users, as voted by the community

2011's Funniest Users, as voted by the community

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Oh Look, I've Done 40,000 Techdirt Blog Posts

Mike Masnick — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:10:22 PST

It would appear that this post will be my 40,000th blog post on Techdirt. 40,000. And that's just by me. If I include all the other bloggers, there are a bunch more posts. That's a lot of blogging. Along those lines, the Guinness Book of World Records apparently still has 17,212 blog posts by a single person listed as the most prolific. Perhaps it's taking them time to have someone count up all my blog posts. Anyway, it just seemed like a neat milestone that I figured I'd note, along with a huge thank you to folks here in the community who keep coming back and making it worthwhile to write, share and discuss. Here's to the next 40,000...

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And Now... Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Posts (i.e., Not Just SOPA)

Mike Masnick — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:21:00 PST

I recognize that all of the posts today have been about SOPA and the House Judiciary Committee hearings on SOPA. Some of you liked this. Some of you did not. We've never done anything like that before, focusing just on one issue for the entire day, but it is a big issue, one that I feel strongly about, one that I think impacts all of you... and one that there was a lot going on about. We still have plenty more to say about SOPA, and there will still be lots of posts about SOPA (especially as the bill continues through this process), but hopefully we'll be going back to a more balanced schedule, with stories on lots of other topics as well... Thanks for taking part in what has been an exhausting day, but for providing vigorous and interesting discussions and debates on the topic. Also, thanks to those who spoke out. Via the American Censorship Day effort, we've seen reports of over 23,000 emails per hour being sent to Congress, and other reports claiming nearly four phone calls per second going into Congress. Lots of you spoke out to Congress. Let's hope Congress hears.

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Changing How We Handle Advertising And Sponsorships

Mike Masnick — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:48:00 PDT

We're excited to announce today that we've moved in a new direction with the advertising and sponsorships we do on Techdirt, partnering with SAY Media to provide compelling, interesting and engaging forms of advertising and sponsorship. Let me just say, up front, that I recognize that there's a common thread among many who visit this site that all internet advertising is "bad." And I'll be the first to admit that all too often internet advertising is terrible. It can be annoying, intrusive, irrelevant or just plain useless. Because of that, most of us have pretty complete ad blindness. We either automatically ignore all of the ads we see, or we use tools like AdBlocker to avoid even having to deal with the ads.

But, for many years (since before I even started Techdirt), I've wondered what could be done if people realized that the ads were content too, and if you made those ads, by themselves, compelling and useful, then you could do much more with them. For the better part of the decade we've been banging the drum that ads are content too, and they should be treated as such: meaning figuring out ways to make them as compelling as possible on their own. There is no more "captive audience" and if our ads are boring, annoying or irrelevant, we fully expect you to ignore or block them -- and we won't blame you if our ads lead you to do that.

Instead, our focus is on getting marketers to realize how much more effective and compelling their campaigns can be when they stop even thinking about what they're doing as advertising, and begin realizing that the real opportunity is in teaming up to create compelling, useful and relevant content. We don't want you to be annoyed by our ads. We want you, the community, to actually be excited about and interested in the content presented there. And we're thrilled that SAY Media is the perfect partner for this endeavor. Just take a look at the Seven Principles the company articulates on its website: Obviously, number four matched exactly with what we've been saying for nearly a decade. But the other principles match what we've been saying around here for ages as well. We've also been banging the drum for years about understanding what's scarce and what's abundant, and have repeatedly called out that attention is one of the key scarcities out there, and it's our job to do our best to provide you with as much value as possible in exchange for your scarce attention. At other times, we've discussed the importance of storytelling and questioned people who think that influence is just a number.

Basically, this is a company who views the world in a very similar way to the way we do, has a brilliant team of exceptionally creative folks, tremendous reach, extraordinary knowledge and fantastic experience in creating unique, compelling and powerful marketing campaigns.

Of course, much of this is an aspirational goal. We don't expect to be there with perfectly compelling content-filled advertising and sponsorship right off the bat. This is a process, and it's a process we really just started. Beyond figuring out exactly what we can do, there is an education process in helping marketers also recognize the power and value of much smarter campaigns. Also, much of this process involves experiments, and if you want to have the truly exceptional success stories, it means taking some risks... and that means that we will occasionally fail (sometimes spectacularly) in meeting those goals. And we fully expect (even rely on) you in the community to let us know both when we fail and when we succeed. But we promise you this: our goal here is to provide truly compelling and valuable experiences for the community, through true engagement.

Finally, if you're interested in taking part in some truly unique, compelling and engaging marketing campaigns, please contact us. We'd be happy to work together with SAY Media and any company who embraces these same principles, to create truly unique marketing experiences. In the past few weeks, as we've prepared for this shift, our team and the folks at SAY Media have been coming up with a long list of ideas of fun things we can do. We just need the right marketing partners to join us and make these things possible. Hopefully some of you reading this right now are interested in being the right partner for a fun, interesting and compelling campaign.

Thanks for being a part of what's been a fantastic, lively and educational community for so many years. We will always strive to provide as much value back to you as possible, and this partnership will help continue that process.

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Announcing: Our First Insight Dinner Salon

Mike Masnick — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:14:44 PDT

We're thrilled to announce that we're co-hosting a cocktail reception and Insight Dinner salon in Santa Clara, California, on May 18th at 6pm, along with the Privacy Identity Innovation 2011 conference (pii2011), put on by the same team that produces the excellent Tech Policy Summit conference. The Insight Dinner is, not surprisingly, a companion to the pii2011 conference, which is running May 19th and 20th. Seating for the Insight Dinner salon is (very) limited and you can purchase tickets now.

A bunch of the speakers from the pii2011 event will be attending the dinner, and we'll have a lineup of really topnotch discussion facilitators as well. Along with a lovely dinner, there will be a salon-style discussion around Privacy in a Data-driven Economy: When Your Customers Are Your Product. Obviously, there's a ton of interest in privacy issues these days, especially given the new privacy bill introduced in Congress. For this discussion, though, we're looking to move away from the policy side of the debate to the practical realities for those working in the space: how do you deal with privacy issues these days? Some believe that there's a constant "war" with customers over privacy, but if you're violating customer privacy, do you risk losing those customers? We've lined up a bunch of great, knowledgeable (and, at times, outspoken and controversial) expert facilitators who will help us introduce the discussion, lead table-top discussions and get everyone involved in a fascinating discussion on a hot topic.

It should be a great time, so please come and join us.

While you can attend just the Insight Dinner salon, if privacy is a topic of interest to you, you really should consider attending the whole conference (I'll also be leading one of the panels at the conference). The conference takes place at the Santa Clara Mariott, and there are over 50 great speakers already confirmed, including Esther Dyson, Jeff Jarvis, Tara Hunt, along with execs from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Intuit, and representatives from the FTC and Commerce Department. The focus of the event is on where innovation is heading and how to best protect sensitive information while enabling emerging technologies and biz models.

Also, there will be a startup showcase, called the Innovator Spotlight, to show off some innovative new products and services in the privacy space that shouldn't be missed. Finally, the day after, on May 21st, there will be a separate, but related, open PrivacyCamp, which you can attend with a ticket to pii2011. For Techdirt readers, we're offering a 20% discount on tickets to pii2011, if you enter "4techdirt" as the discount code when you register for pii2011.

So... just to summarize: on May 18th come join us for our very first Insight Dinner salon; on the 19th and 20th, there's pii2011; and on the 21st, there's PrivacyCamp. You can purchase tickets for all of these, or pick and choose the parts you want to go to on the registration page. Attending pii2011 gets you in to PrivacyCamp, but Insight Dinner salon tickets need to be purchased separately, since we have limited space for that.

We look forward to seeing a bunch of you there!

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Techdirt 2010: The Numbers.

Dennis Yang — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:22:00 PST

2010 was a great year for Techdirt. We thought we'd share some stats about 2010 with all of you (and yes, we're a little late on this but we finally got around to pulling together the numbers).

We posted 3,798 stories, generating 152,683 comments. According to Google Analytics, Techdirt had 11,490,135 visits in 2010. So, if Techdirt were a National Park (and you readers were visiting us in real life), we'd be the #3 most popular park in the country, just behind the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Or if we were a museum, we'd be well ahead of the top ranked Louvre, who only did a paltry 8.5 million visits last year. Yes, I know those are unfair comparisons but it's still a fun way to view things in perspective. Of course, if any of you really do want to visit us in real life, we'd love to have you.

Separately, the traffic numbers represented continued growth over the course of the year. If we're just looking at our December numbers, traffic in December of 2010 was 62% higher than in December 2009, and that was after continued growth throughout the year. So, it looks like we ended the year with a lot more folks here in the community than we started with, which is always a nice thing.

While certainly a large part of our traffic is US-based, the community here really is quite global with visitors coming from an astounding 230 different countries or territories (and yes, we did recently have a discussion about how there were fewer countries than that in the world, but Google Analytics counts "territories" too -- so a big shout out to you, the one visitor from Christmas Island).

Not surprisingly, the top four countries were all English speaking countries (US, Canada, UK and Australia) but Germany clocked in at number 5, followed by the Netherlands, India, France, Sweden and Spain. After India, Japan was the leading Asian country, which narrowly beat out China. Brazil was the leading South American country, topping Argentina by a decent margin. In Africa, not too surprisingly, South Africa was tops with Egypt coming in second. Of course, it looks like we did not get visits from every country in the world. Among those with no visitors at all were North Korea, Western Sahara & Chad. Pretty much every other country I checked had at least one visitor, though there may be some tiny Pacific Islands that I'm unaware of that didn't send any visitors and which I can't easily spot on the map.

Within the US, just looking at states, our top visitors were from California and then New York (with Texas close behind). The state that sent the least number of visitors? Wyoming. Not like anyone lives there anyway (kidding Wyomans, kidding). If we look at the top cities worldwide, New York dominated in terms of visitors, with a surprise second place finish from London, beating out all other US cities (perhaps less surprising taking into account population totals). San Francisco, LA and Chicago round out the top five. DC comes in at number seven. Sydney, Australia is the second non-US city and number 9 on the overall list.

Most of you still use Windows, followed by Mac and Linux pulling up in third place. iPhone visitors topped Android visitors (2:1) but I would bet that's going to change over the next year. Firefox was the most popular browser. Internet Explorer (?!?) eked out a tiny victory over Chrome, though I can't imagine that staying true much longer.

In any case, thanks to everyone for making Techdirt the thriving community that it is. Here's to a great 2011.

Top Ten Stories, by Unique Pageviews, on Techdirt for 2010:

Best Buy Firing Employee Because He Makes A Funny Video That Doesn't Even Mention Best Buy - July 2nd
The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet - November 18th
'Hollywood Accounting' Losing In The Courts - July 8th
Facebook Threatens Greasemonkey Script Writer - March 25th
Why Congress Isn't So Concerned With TSA Nude Scans & Gropes: They Get To Skip Them - November 18th
Guy Building A Working (Yes, Working) Computer Inside A Video Game - September 29th
RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales - July 13th
Why The Wikileaks Document Release Is Key To A Functioning Democracy - December 1st
Sony Deletes Feature On PS3's; You Don't Own What You Thought You Bought - March 31st
More Casinos Succeeding With The 'That Jackpot You Won Was Really A Computer Glitch' Claim - June 7th

2010's Top Posts, by Comment Volume:

UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal - 599 comments
Defining Success: Were The RIAA's Lawsuits A Success Or Not? - 417 comments
The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet - 401 comments
Four Years In, How Successful Has Hollywood's Attack On The Pirate Bay Been - 376 comments
Can Someone Explain Why Circumvention For Non-Infringing Purposes Is Illegal? - 364 comments
Is Intellectual Property Itself Unethical? - 337 comments
Why Debates Over Copyright Get Bogged Down: Conflating Use With Payment - 315 comments
Give A Man A Fish... And Make It Illegal To Teach Fishing - 302 comments
Why Voting For COICA Is A Vote For Censorship - 300 comments
Composer Jason Robert Brown Still Standing By His Position That Kids Sharing His Music Are Immoral - 292 comments

It seems worth pointing out that there was almost no overlap between the stories that were most visited and those that had the most comments (only one story makes both lists). This is actually pretty common. Many people assume that more comments automatically means the most popular stories in terms of traffic, but that's almost never the case. Traffic and comments do not correlate nearly as much as you would expect. Some of the stories with the most comments often involve a very small number of people continuing to have a (often quite interesting!) discussion long after everyone else has moved on...

2010's Top Users, By Comment Volume*:

Dark Helmet -2,278 comments
Hephaestus - 2,277 comments
nasch - 1,597 comments
Richard - 1,539 comments
Technopolitical - 1,265 comments
Karl - 1,249 comments
average_joe - 1,156 comments
Rose M. Welch - 993 comments
PaulT - 982 comments
ChurchHatesTucker - 918 comments

*Mike had 2,964 comments so he's technically the top commenter, but I'm not counting him here.

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Preparing New Techdirt CwF+RtB Offerings, And Extending The Crystal Ball For Those Who Bought

Mike Masnick — Thu, 7 Oct 2010 14:57:00 PDT

We haven't talked much about our very own CwF+RtB offering in a while, but when it launched in the summer of 2009, one of the items was the Techdirt Crystal Ball, which gives you a peek into some posts on Techdirt before others have a chance to see them -- and it's become a popular feature for many. The deal was that it was a one year offering, after which we hoped people would renew. However, as we started to get close to that one-year deadline, we were working on some new ideas for new CwF+RtB offerings... and we didn't want people to feel compelled to re-up without us offering any additional "reason to buy." So we (quietly) extended anyone who bought a Techdirt Crystal Ball (which came with most other offerings as well) by a couple months.

Unfortunately, it's been a busy couple of months... and one of the reasons why we still haven't released the new offerings is that some of them actually involve some backend development on our part, which is ongoing. After realizing that we weren't going to have everything we wanted in place by now, we've actually extended everyone's 12-month Crystal Ball for an extra 12 months -- and we hope that when we're ready to release the new offerings, you'll find them worth buying as well.

In the meantime, as we're working on new offerings, I did want to see if anyone had other ideas of what they'd like to see as an offering. No promises, of course, but we're already planning to incorporate some user suggestions, and it would be great to hear about what others might find compelling.

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Techdirt Saves* Journalism (And Sells Some T-Shirts)

Mike Masnick — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:15:00 PDT

Today we're announcing an event that we're holding on June 16th, in the evening, at Google's offices in Mountain View. It's not your ordinary panel/speaker event. It's based on the Techdirt Greenhouse series of events that we've done over the years, where the focus is on getting lots of smart people together in a room and brainstorming to come up with solutions to certain issues. In the past, those have often been issues faced by a particular organization, but back in January, at Midem, we tried it on a specific industry: the music industry. The results were fantastic, so we've decided to start doing similar brainstorming workshops in other areas, and this one is our first, entitled "Techdirt Saves* Journalism."

Obviously, the focus is on brainstorming ideas to help the journalism market. It will kick off with three short presentations: one by me, one by Google economist Hal Varian, who's been doing a ton of fantastic work on newspaper economics, and one by Ian Rogers, the CEO of Topspin, one of a growing group of companies that is helping to reinvent the music business. That last one might seem a bit confusing -- since this event is all about the journalism industry -- but that's very much part of the point. These brainstorming sessions work best by bringing in people with very different perspectives. We don't want this to just be journalists/newspaper people, but have already begun inviting a wide range of folks with diverse backgrounds, well beyond journalism. There will be plenty of journalism/media folks there, as well. But we thought that Ian could provide some perspective about how some parts of the music industry have responded (successfully) to the challenge of the internet, and that could be great in getting people thinking differently and creatively.

These events are highly interactive -- so if you're coming, expect to participate. Following the brief presentations, attendees will be broken out into small brainstorming groups, and we'll have about an hour to workshop and brainstorm (with some guidance) to try to come up with creative ideas and ways to help save journalism. After that we'll regroup, share some of the best ideas, and then partake of some food and drink.

The event is being both sponsored and hosted graciously by Google -- which shouldn't come as a surprise, given how much effort the company is putting into trying to help the journalism business succeed (that Atlantic article is a fantastic read).

To commemorate this occasion, we're also releasing our latest t-shirt design. Given the massive success of our limited edition DMCA t-shirt (seriously, we sold way more of those than we expected), we thought we'd follow it up with a special paywall t-shirt. Sporting a typical online newspaper paywall design, you can use this paywall t-shirt to make sure folks pay up before finishing their conversation with you. After all, without people paying to talk to you, how would you ever be incented to produce the sort of quality conversations they want? If you'd like to attend the Techdirt Saves* Journalism workshop, you can reserve a spot here -- and we'll throw in the t-shirt! If you can't attend the event, but still want your very own paywall t-shirt, that option is right here.

We look forward to seeing you on June 16th!

* On the title of the event, Techdirt Saves Journalism, we're adding this particular disclaimer to ward off those who might have missed the joke and are about to accuse us of massive hubris. The reference is a mocking response to the regular headlines you see every few days about "newspapers are dying" or "so-and-so is 'killing' journalism." We figured that if there was so much hyperbole around an industry dying based on misread data points, we might as well hit back with a mocking claim that this single event will clearly save journalism. Oh yeah, also, one of our regular critics in the comments recently started claiming that we had said we could save journalism, even though we made no such claim. However, if we're going to get slammed for making the claim anyway, we might as well embrace it and see what we can do. So, for the really literally minded of you out there, we don't think this event alone will "save journalism." That's just a joke. But it should be insightful, enlightening and educational for all involved. And, who knows, perhaps some idea will be hatched that does, in fact, help journalism avoid the fate in all those headlines we keep seeing...

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Results From Our CwF+RtB Business Model Experiment

Mike Masnick — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 12:54:05 PST

Before getting into the "meat" of this post about how our CwF+RtB experiment worked out, I want to announce that we've "replenished" the store with some new t-shirts and hoodies. These are brand new -- not the same t-shirts and hoodies we had before, which are sold out. You have a choice of either a t-shirt or a hoodie with the full Techdirt logo, or my personal favorite DMCA takedown t-shirt which says on the front:
The content of this t-shirt has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice.

Consider the message on the shirt a good way to engage people in a conversation about the abuses of copyright law and the DMCA. The hoodies come with a copy of my Approaching Infinity book, while you can get the t-shirts without the book or with the book.

Also, we are doing one thing differently this time around. Rather than just waiting until we sell out to stop selling these shirts, we're taking open orders for two weeks only and then will make the shirts and send them out. So if you want this shirt from us, you have two weeks to order. And that's it. On to the post itself...

After seeing many musicians setting up various interesting/amusing "tiers" of scarce value worth buying, while also working to connect with fans, we decided to launch our own CwF+RtB tiers, at the end of July, as an experiment to see what we might learn. We knew that this sort of thing worked for music, but had no idea if it would work elsewhere -- say, for a blog. It wasn't designed to replace our existing business model, but just as an experiment to see what would happen -- and what we could learn that might help others implementing similar business models.

I should apologize, as this post detailing the results is way, way, way overdue. We had most of the results and lessons within about a month, but this is a big post to write up and I kept procrastinating. No good reason why: there was just always something going on in the news that seemed more urgent and every so often I do like to catch up on sleep.

The quick summary: we consider the experiment to have been a huge success.

We brought in approximately $37,000 total due to this experiment, mostly in the course of that first month.
Nearly $12,000 came from direct sales to individuals of the tiers between $5 and $150.
As was revealed in an article at Wired, another $5,000 came from an individual, Didier Mary, who was working on a business plan and bought the Techdirt Reviews Your Business Plan package. The package included an Insight Community conversation, which recently concluded, about his business model idea. Didier has told us that "it was a great experience" and very useful to him in moving forward with his plans.
Another $20,000 came from larger companies, which purchased Insight Community packages after learning about them through this effort.
The effort also resulted in potential future deals, as it led many more companies to contact us to learn more about the Insight Community.
Other companies, with whom we were already talking about the Insight Community, contacted us after we launched this, with one noting that if what his company had been discussing with us was on the list, he probably would have just "clicked buy" right away (though, with that company, we're still discussing a deal and have not yet completed it).
Ignoring the higher end Insight Community deals, the average amount paid by users was over $70. This was significantly higher than expected.
Sales came from 15 different countries around the globe. North America and Europe were obviously the biggest, but we also got sales from Asia, South America and Australia (no Africa). The international sales might have been bigger if we had launched international sales the same day we launched the overall effort. Unfortunately, we didn't have all the details on that sorted out until a week later, and I think we probably lost some international sales that way. The US Postal Service does make international sales much easier these days -- especially with its "one rate" boxes, but shipping is still really expensive, and many countries then add annoying tariffs on top of everything. This was annoying, but (unfortunately) unavoidable.
Our highest selling item was not the cheapest, second cheapest or third cheapest offering (contrary to the claims that people just want the cheapest item). Instead, the biggest seller -- by a pretty wide margin -- was the Approaching Infinity package, that included both a copy of my book and a t-shirt.
For quite a while, the hoodies (which we almost didn't offer) outsold the t-shirts... but in the end the t-shirts barely passed the hoodies.
The Techdirt Book Club outsold the Techdirt Music Club by a factor of three.
No one bought the Day with Techdirt package, though we actually got a lot of inquiries about that, with multiple people who don't live in California saying that if they were closer, they would have bought it. This is still available, though.
And, fear not, no one bought the $100 Million Silence Techdirt offer (still available as well!), though we did get a few people who were worried that someone would actually take us up on this -- and one satirical offer from someone claiming to be from the RIAA, which made me laugh, saying the RIAA would pay up, but wanted to guarantee "exclusive rights" to the RIAA, such that it would be able to "pursue appropriate legal action against any and all 3rd parties that make use of this silence purposely or inadvertently" including, of course "the right to pursue similar action against any individuals who are also not reading Techdirt and therefore infringing on our own licensed agreement to be the sole recipient of a Techdirt-free world." Brilliant.
However, the $100 Million Silence Techdirt offer did get the most traffic of any of the tiers, by a factor of three -- though, it also drove many people to check out the other tiers.

Lessons Learned

So, what did we learn? Lots of things:

This works! These sorts of models can absolutely work in connecting with fans and in making money.
All of you, in our community, are awesome. Not just for buying, obviously, but because the overall response we got was incredible. This included many really, really nice emails that made us feel great, along with happy emails and Twitter messages from people receiving their packages, and telling us stories about wearing the clothes, reading the books, etc.
It's fun making people happy. Really. It really gave all of us here at Floor64 a great feeling every time we heard back from happy community members.
Logistics and inventory management are more complicated than you expect. We sort of knew this ahead of time, but you realize it first-hand when somehow, somewhere copies of signed books go missing, and you suddenly need to ask for an author to send extras. Also, dealing with sourcing inventory from so many different people for the Book and Music club is doable, but takes a lot of time to manage. Though, I have to say, every one we worked with -- from authors and musicians to publishers, agents and record labels really were fantastic. We didn't have even the slightest trouble from any of our partners in this endeavor. Shipping out the products definitely was an effort, but we tried to make it fun, with a group of us working together to package up and ship stuff (and on this one, the team here, lead by Gretchen, did a fantastic job, going above and beyond to get everything organized and shipped).
Having lots of options was a good thing because we weren't very accurate in predicting what would sell. We came close to not offering the hoodies at all, but those were incredibly popular.
You can't keep everybody happy, but you should try! We had to set up a better process for "customer support" as we launched this (nice job, Dennis!) and then work with and respond to customers who had questions or (in a few cases) problems. A few times the problem was that we did not explain things clearly enough, and sometimes there were problems with shipments (or, in one case, a hoodie that was frayed). But we tried our best to make sure everyone was happy and hopefully succeeded (mostly).
What you're selling should match your audience. The Book Club sold really well. The Music Club, not as much -- despite being awesome (seriously, the combined Music Club items are really, really cool, and the music is great as well). But, in retrospect perhaps that made sense, as the books in the Book Club directly related to everything we talk about here. The Music Club, while supporting artists who did things that we talked about here, was a bit different, and required people to like the music as well, which is a lot more subjective. Bundling together four separate musicians with different styles was, perhaps, not a great idea. On top of that, we perhaps did not do enough to promote the music itself to get more people to enjoy the work of those musicians. Finally, while some of the offerings were "unique," others could be purchased elsewhere, which limited the "scarcity" of the overall package.
Some promotions worked really well. The first promotion we did was offering anyone who bought both the music and book clubs together a choice of either lunch with me or a free hoodie. This helped motivate a bunch of folks to step up and buy -- and resulted in a handful of lunches.
Having lunch with people was really, really cool. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous going into the lunches from the above promotion, but they were all really amazing, often in very different ways. Each individual was really interesting and the conversations were quite engaging and thought provoking and fun. I'm pretty sure every lunch ended up lasting well over the allotted hour. I ended up learning a lot and had a great time at every one. I'm hoping to set up more ways to do things like that, if not the same thing.
Even the tiers that didn't sell, still generated interest in other things we were doing. A bunch of people contacted us about the Day With Techdirt package, and while no one bought it, many of them bought other packages instead.
Not everyone who says they will buy will buy, but that's okay. It was interesting to note that some people who told us they would buy (or even announced it on their Twitter/Facebook feeds) never actually did buy for whatever reason. That's fine, of course. Everyone is free to do what they want, but it was interesting to note. Just because someone says they'll buy, it doesn't mean they will.
Communicating directly with everyone can be difficult. While others here handled customer service requests, I started getting a bunch of emails personally from people who participated, sometimes with long and detailed questions. I tried to reply to most of these, but it was difficult, and I'm sure I missed a few.

Anyway, that's the basic summary. This really has been a lot of fun and quite educational at the same time. We've still got lots of things planned and will be trying a few new things as well, but thanks to everyone who participated and a big thanks to all the authors and musicians who partnered with us, along with the team here at Floor64 for helping to make this all work.

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Some Questions For Lily Allen

Mike Masnick — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:06:15 PDT

Lily Allen has continued to post statements from various artists on her blog against file sharing, and most are of the "yeah, file sharing, it's bad!" variety. While she still doesn't quite seem to realize what was hypocritical about her decision to copy a Techdirt post while claiming that copying was bad, she did recently post something where she tried to "answer some questions" that others seem to be having about her effort. The problem is that the "questions" she's answering aren't really the questions that people have been asking. Her explanation is that she's trying to show what file sharing is doing to new artists. Furthermore, she complains that comments about people getting cut off from the internet are misguided, since the proposals are no different than cutting someone off for not paying their bill. Then she attacks the concept that music could be free, saying:

"It's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?"

And goes on to say that not enough people are paying for music, so that's "threatening new music." Anyway, her "answers to some questions" mostly raise more questions from me, so I'd like to present them here. If Lily Allen is serious about dealing with these issues (and serious about being "sorry" -- even if she apologized for the wrong thing), then it would be great to see her directly address these questions, rather than responding to some made up questions.

You claim that file sharing is harming new music. Yet, at the same time, a recent study has shown that more new music is being created today than ever before in history. Partly, that's because new tools have made it cheaper than ever to create and record new music. But those same technologies are also making it cheaper to promote and distribute that new music. All of those factors seem to outweigh the "piracy" issue. So, how can you claim that it's harming new music, when the evidence suggests more new music is being created than ever before?
You claim that "not enough people are paying for music." However, just a few months ago, the economists employed by PRS, which is a big part of the UK music industry, released a study suggesting that the music market was growing, not declining. They agreed that retail sales have dropped, but that live show attendance and other offerings (merchandise, etc.) have outweighed the decline in music sales. In other words, people are spending more on music, it's just going into different things -- just like 50 Cent said. Given that the economists who represent your industry are saying the opposite of what you claim must be happening, can you support the claim that not enough people are paying?
According to many reports, you benefited greatly yourself by promoting your music via MySpace, which allowed people to listen to your music for free. Other reports have suggested that you have complained in the past that your record label does not give you much, if any, money from CD sales. Given that you seem to have used "free music" to your own advantage in the past, how can you say that "music can't be free"?
You are posting your blog on a Blogspot.com domain, which is provided by Google to you, for free. It cost Google money to create this service, and all of its services, and yet it has been able to create a business model whereby it makes money by giving away certain aspects of its business for free. Google is one of the most successful companies in the world. Why do you insist with such certainty that using free as a part of a business model is a bad thing?
There are a growing number of artists -- big, medium and small -- who have learned to embrace file sharing, and have found that it has helped them to better connect with their audience, and when combined with a smart business model, makes them more money than in the past. Given that's the case, is it possible that the problem is artists choosing a bad business model rather than "piracy" being the problem?
Despite your shading of the issue, there have been and continue to be proposals in the UK that would lead to people being kicked off the internet -- yes, for a limited time, but still removed from the internet. Can you explain how that makes people any more likely to buy your music?

By the way, it's also worth noting that many of the ideas for these questions come from the comments to the post on Lily's blog. While there were some nasty and childish comments on some of the earlier posts (such as the one where she copied my post), going through the comments on this particular post show that the vast majority of them are well thought-out, well-argued and thought-provoking. And most of them disagree with Allen's statements.

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Lily Allen, Don't Apologize To Me, Apologize To Everyone Else

Mike Masnick — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:36:00 PDT

It seems that a few folks misunderstood the point of my post yesterday in joking about Lily Allen's double standard in ranting against unfair copying while copying blog posts from other sites. And Lily herself appears to be among those people. She's posted an apology, though, a bit petulantly, starting in all capital letters:

I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS THAT I WASNT TRYING TO PASS OF THOSE WORDS AS MY OWN , HERE IS A LINK TO THE WEBSIITE I ACQUIRED THE PIECE FROM . Apologies to Michael Masnick

While I appreciate the "apology," that's really missing the point. First, the reason TorrentFreak and I both brought it up wasn't because I was upset about her using the post. As I clearly said in my response, I thought it was great that she wanted to use our post, and I encouraged her to do so. The point, though, was that it was a bit hypocritical of her to be going on and on about how evil it is to copy another's work without their permission, when she went and did the same thing. Furthermore, the point is that when it's natural and easy for people to copy like that, it's time to learn to accept it and use it to your advantage. So, no apology is necessary to me. My post wasn't about you trying to pass off my words as your own, but recognizing that even you, Lily Allen copy other people's work all the time, even without realizing it.

And, yet, in the very same breath, you want to kick people off the internet for doing the same thing?

If anyone deserves an apology, it's all the people you've been blasting with this complaint that it's "piracy" that's somehow harming artists, when the actual evidence shows no such thing. Plenty of artists have learned to embrace file sharing and used it to their advantage, suggesting it's not piracy that's the problem -- it's artists unwillingness to adapt and put in place smarter business models. Running to the gov't and asking them to kick your fans off the internet isn't a new business model. So, don't apologize to me. We're happy for you to use Techdirt posts however you want. We just thought it was worth calling your attention to the fact that even you seem to have no problem copying stuff when convenient, so maybe you should think twice about blasting everyone else for doing the same thing.

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Lily Allen: Copying Isn't Alright... Unless It's Done By Lily Allen

Mike Masnick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:12:48 PDT

The folks over at TorrentFreak alerted me to the news that singer Lily Allen, who made some news last week for speaking out against file sharing and against artists who have defended file sharing, has put up a blog, called "It's Not Alright," to talk about this particular subject. In one of her very first posts, she reposted an entire Techdirt post about 50 Cents' view on piracy and how it's part of the marketing. Allen goes on to then say that this is not alright and that 50 Cent is being selfish and isn't thinking about everyone else. But what's quite odd is that Ms. Allen, while complaining about such unfair copying, seemed to have absolutely no problem with copying my entire Techdirt post -- without credit or a link. As I said when asked by TorrentFreak for my response:

I think it's wonderful that Lily Allen found so much value in our Techdirt post that she decided to copy -- or should I say "pirate"? -- the entire post. The fact that she is trying to claim that such copying is bad, while doing it herself suggests something of a double standard, unfortunately. Also, for someone so concerned about the impact of "piracy" I'm quite surprised that she neither credited nor linked to our post. Apparently, what she says and how she acts are somewhat different. Still, Lily, glad we could help you make a point... even if it wasn't the one you thought you were making. Feel free to use any of our posts going forward as well. Unlike some, we're not scared of people copying our stuff. By the way, does this mean we can post her music to our site without crediting her now, too?

Enigmax, in his TorrentFreak post put it nicely as well:

Lilly, in isolation we don't think your copyright infringement is a big deal at all and neither does Mike, but in the arena of this debate it's still quite important. Infringing copyright these days is so easy to do, most people manage it every day in one way or another, and you are clearly no different. You probably didn't mean any harm or even give it a second thought but half a dozen clicks later and you're a pirate these days I'm afraid.

The next thing you know you've got God-knows-who accusing you in public of being an evil copyright infringer and telling you the sky's falling in. Oh, you're on your first strike now by the way. A couple more and it'll be off to Ofcom for disconnection for you young lady....

That said, I also think it's worth responding to Allen's attempted "point" in response to 50's comments:

this is particularly selfish in my view, he seems to only be thinking of how piracy effects him. What about the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting his posters up,the people that designed his artwork, the people that run his website. Is he giving them a cut of his live fee?

Wait... since when did any of those people get a cut of album sales? Really. None of them do. They all get paid regular fees for their work... and that doesn't change if 50 is making all his money from album sales or concerts. So, yes, they actually do get a cut of his "live fee." It comes in the form of regular payment for services... the same as if it were coming from album sales. And, if 50 is making even more money from those live shows, he can still afford to pay the studio guys, the street teams, the art designers and his web gurus more. So what point is Lily Allen making again? Because so far I can't figure it out...

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News.com Interview On CwF+RtB

Mike Masnick — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:44:00 PDT

Greg Sandoval, over at News.com, ran an interview with me about both Techdirt and our CwF+RtB experiment. The only quibble is that "full of rage" bit. As most people who know me will tell you, I'm about as far from "filled with rage" as just about anyone. I'm a pretty laid back, happy, optimistic guy. Can't think of much to have rage about -- but I could see how some might misinterpret some of my writings that way. Anyway, I'm way behind on posting about some of our findings (though, the interview reveals a few), and will try to get to it very soon. There isn't much left to buy (and we're down to limited sizes on t-shirts/hoodies of what is left), but we'll try to do a refresh with some new offerings soon. In the meantime, we've started shipping stuff out, but we're still waiting on all the signed books/music to get that out, so please hold on if you haven't received yours yet...

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Mark Helprin Stole From Techdirt Commenters (Using The Logic Of Mark Helprin)

Mike Masnick — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:02:03 PDT

Last week, I wrote about Mark Helprin's error-filled Wall Street Journal op-ed that was really just an attempt to generate attention for his new book -- attacking everyone who criticized his 2007 NY Times editorial. I, of course, am one of those who challenged Helprin's reasoning at the time. Of course, as much as I write about this stuff, I'm no Larry Lessig or James Boyle, and I certainly never expected that Helprin would even bother to read what I wrote. And, as I've been reading his dreadfully written book, I didn't notice anything to indicate that Helprin was directly addressing any of the points I raised.

However, I was just reading Larry Lessig's long and thorough takedown of Helprin's book, and noticed something odd. Early on, Lessig states:

The product of this feeding, Helprin suggests, is just so much trash. The work of the Internet is an intellectual waste. No serious reader, or especially writer, should pay any attention to this waste.

But then here's the astonishing fact about Digital Barbarism: Though the Internet is a waste, though blogs are "subliterate" and wiki's are written "the way Popeye speaks," Helprin draws exclusively upon the Internet to form the knowledge he needs to launch his attack. He cites no book, or scholarly article, that might help explain the copyright puzzle that started him on his odyssey. Literally everything he points to to explain the weirdness that is copyright is either a blog, or a wiki, or an essay in an Internet publication.

Now I like the Internet as much as the next guy, and I guess I had never really had to think about the question before. But Helprin has convinced me that you can't understand the subject of copyright law by simply reading blog posts. To get it, or at least to get it well enough to write a frakking book about it, you're going to need to read something other than techdirt.com.

Emphasis mine -- obviously. Now, while this might seem like a bit of a slap at Techdirt, I actually agree -- wholeheartedly. I certainly hope that no one gets their copyright education solely from any blog, whether it's written by me or by William Patry. However, it struck me as odd that Lessig specifically called out Techdirt, seeing as I hadn't even noticed us being mentioned at all in the 1/2 (or so) of the book that I've gotten through (and I've never spoken to Lessig, nor seen him mention Techdirt in the past). So, I pulled out my copy of the book, and went to look at the endnotes for the first time... and realized that a rather large number of the quotes that Helprin spends his time deriding are pulled from Techdirt. But not from what I wrote... but from the comments (which he refers to, oddly, as "sections").

Now, I'll be the first to admit that we have all types of folks who show up in the comments -- from incredibly intelligent knowledgeable experts in the field of copyright law to interested amateurs to the totally clueless to trolls. To pick and choose a few crazy comments, and position them as if they're representative of the common views of folks questioning Helprin's logic, is incredible. I could equally pick out some of the more ridiculous pro-infinite copyright comments on Techdirt, and make the same nutty claims about those who support stronger copyright laws. Just yesterday, someone wrote in our comments:

There is never a proper debate for copyright theft. If you create it, then you own it. Many countries have unlimited copyright. Maybe that's what North America should consider. If it is created by your intellect then it is yours. You may pass it along as you wish, but it is yours forever.

Now, this is all sorts of wrong, but I assume this is one incredibly misinformed individual, rather than a representative of, say, the RIAA. However, Helprin has no such qualms. He takes random comments from up and down that Techdirt post, and assumes they represent the secret agenda of groups like Creative Commons (who he refers to as an "informal" group building software to abolish copyright -- again, all sorts of wrong).

Even more amusing? With at least a couple of the comments that Helprin quotes, he's clearly taking them totally out of context. For example, there is one point in the book where Helprin goes against people who pointed out that he had written a book called Winter's Tale, and assumed (incorrectly) that it was based on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. In it he quotes a commenter on Techdirt ("section 20") who wrote: "So then Halpron's the guy who did the "West Side Story" job for Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale?" and uses that as evidence of us morons critiquing him. Except, he left out the rest of that comment, which made it clear that the whole thing was a joke: "Was it any good? Have they made a movie out of it yet, or was it only on Broadway?"

And, of course, even for the people who legitimately thought that Winter's Tale was based on Shakespeare, that mistake is certainly no more egregious than the many, many, many mistakes that Lessig lays out in his review of Helprin's work -- specifically taking him to task for clearly not having bothered to read a single scholarly piece on copyright, but relying entirely on hand-chosen silly comments on Techdirt.

Among the errors are things like, "It would be one thing if such a revolution produced Mozarts, Einsteins, or Raphaels, but it doesn't," to which Lessig notes: "Helprin apparently didn't notice that none of those creators enjoyed anything like the "copyright" of today. One might as well say the world of non-copyright gave us Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, while the world of copyright gave us Britney Spears. That too would be a bad argument, but just [the] sort of argument that is at home in this book." It's actually even worse than that. Some of Mozart's greatest works were derivative works that likely would be considered infringing today. Helprin also seems to not know what was in the last copyright extension act, known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension:

Helprin writes: "Previously, a copyright assigned to a publisher or a studio would remain there for all the days of its life. Now, and thanks to Sonny Bono, if it is not a work for hire (which nothing should or need be), a licensee can keep it for only thirty-five years, after which the rights return to the author, the composer, the artist, or the heir." (127). Wrong. The Sonny Bono Act didn't create the termination right. It merely extended it.

Yet, Helprin believes that a random small error (which was actually part of a joke by an Anonymous Coward on Techdirt) gives him proof that all copyright critics are clueless? Even if you consider the "errors" of equal magnitude, we're talking about an anonymous quick jokey comment vs. a "professional" book by one of the nation's top authors, from a top publishing house with (one assumes) an editor.

Still, the most amusing part of all, was Helprin's attempt to defend copyright infringement as being the same as theft -- an old argument, and one that's been dismantled many times (including, of course, by the Supreme Court, who famously stated: "interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use"). However, Helprin doesn't even bother to look at the intellectual arguments around this issue, preferring to use an emotional tale from his youth about "stealing" an ear of corn in the field, arguing with a farmer about it, and then realizing the incredible importance of never "stealing" anything.

Yet, as Lessig points out:

So should Helprin have been ashamed that he stole the farmer's food. Of course he should be! What kind of confused mind would think it right to take another person's property? There are a million reasons Helprin's juvenile behavior was wrong, not the least that it would deprive the farmer of a chance to profit from the food he was growing. Helprin's taking that ear of corn meant that the farmer couldn't sell it. It is inconceivable that this should even have been a question for him.

But what's less clear is what Helprin thinks follows from this moral tale. Does he think that it shows that one can't "take" another person's words? That when, for example, I quote a sentence from Helprin's book in this review, I am doing the same thing he was doing when he stole some corn?

Of course, as Lessig then notes, the quoting is fair use -- but according to Helprin's own corn-story description of the importance of never stealing even an ear of corn, any "taking" of one's words would also be stealing. So, by that reasoning, considering how he quoted (by my count) 12 separate comments from the Techdirt story, one can conclude that Helprin clearly believes he has stolen from the commenters here twelve times. If he's willing to send us our royalty check, I'll make sure the money is distributed to our commenters. Mark, we're waiting! In the meantime, I can't wait to see what comments you guys make on this post. Be sure to provide only the best quality stuff, since it may be the raw material for Mark Helprin's next book!

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Insight Community Participation Directly Through Techdirt

Mike Masnick — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:00:00 PDT

As you hopefully read in my last post about our new branding, Floor64 has separated out the Insight Community brand from the Techdirt blog. However, that doesn't mean the two won't still work together happily. In fact, we're also launching a new effort today, that will allow Insight Community cases to appear directly within Techdirt. You will see the first such integrated Insight Community case on the site in a short while.

Starting a Real Conversation, Rather Than Advertising

The idea here is similar to what we started last week with American Express sponsoring an Insight Community case concerning how small businesses are responding to the current financial crisis, the results of which are starting to appear on American Express' Open Forum blog. In situations like that, where we believe the wider Techdirt community would be intrigued by, and benefit from, the wider conversation, we'll be placing those cases directly on the Techdirt blog. Thus, a selection of Insight Community cases that are relevant to the Techdirt community will start appearing directly on the blog, allowing members to jump right in to respond (and for non-members to join up and participate).

This evolution fits in nicely as one of the many ways that the new Insight Community can be used by companies to generate insight and engage with the broader community. Integrating Insight Community cases into Techdirt is based on our strong belief about content and its relationship to advertising. Traditional, annoying, intrusive advertising is a market that won't last -- especially in economically troubled times. It's based on the false belief that there are still captive audiences.

While the online advertising market is still a big one, it's going to need to change. It's entirely focused on a one way push. Companies that buy advertising are pushing a message to an audience. The site is just the one-way pathway to get to that audience -- and that audience often doesn't care about the message being pushed. That's simply not that effective for the advertiser. And yes, before people point it out, we do include some advertising on Techdirt, though we think that the companies buying those ads could spend their money more effectively by actually engaging the community here.

Engage the Community, Reward the Community and Get Value Back

So, rather than focus on that one-way street of merely pushing "message" at an audience, we believe strongly that the concept of "advertising" needs to diminish, and in its place, the focus should be on providing good content that provides real value to all participants. That means not just viewing things as a one way street, but actually engaging the community of folks a company is trying to reach by getting back insight from them and then rewarding those in the community who provide that insight. This is much more of a win-win situation than advertising. It's about actually creating value -- about building an insightful discussion that everyone benefits from, and then making sure that those who participate can be rewarded both monetarily and through reputation, rather than just being seen as a "target" market.

Thus, rather than focusing on "advertising's" one way street to pushing a message on our community, we're asking companies who are interested in the Techdirt community to actually engage with them via the Insight Community, where not only can they start a real dialogue, they can learn from the community, gain valuable insights that can be used elsewhere, and reward the community for participating. That seems a lot more effective and valuable than "advertising." It's about good content and a real conversation where everyone benefits.

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Techdirt Moves On Up To The 64th Floor: Some Changes Around Here

Mike Masnick — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:00:00 PDT

We've got a bunch of announcements today (and a few more coming up as well), but I wanted to start off with the big one: Techdirt, the company, is becoming Floor64, the company -- while Techdirt, the blog, will remain Techdirt. The blog began back in 1997 as a fun side project by me. Over the years it grew into much more, and in 2000 it became a business, also called Techdirt. In 2006, we launched the Techdirt Insight Community as our main line of business and the natural evolution of what we'd been doing as a company. However, there was growing confusion over the Techdirt brand, as people weren't clear whether it meant the blog, the company or the community -- so we felt it was time to clarify. Specifically, there are now three brands related to this site:

Floor64 becomes our new parent brand. That's the brand under which all of our products will now reside. It's a brand we've used for years internally (though some have noticed), and now it represents our overall outward brand.

Insight Community is one of Floor64's two main offerings. This rebranding of the Techdirt Insight Community will allow us to expand beyond the community we've built around Techdirt, to cover much more than just technology and business. The Insight Community is totally redesigned to reflect where the business has been headed over the past few months. If you're already a member, go check out the totally redesigned system. If you're not yet a member, go sign up and start participating (and earning money). If you're interested in sponsoring a case there, go check out how it works and learn about the value of sponsoring a case and engaging with the community.

The Insight Community is all about generating insights for companies, recognizing, as we often talk about here on Techdirt, that there's value in the creation of insightful content. The Insight Community is a platform that makes it possible for companies to generate insightful expertise on demand for use in a variety of different ways.

Techdirt is our other main offering, and is now solely focused on the blog itself. This should help us avoid some confusion over our different properties and the services that we, as Floor64, offer. Techdirt will remain the same great blog it's been all along, but we'll have some cool new features which we'll be posting about shortly as well. As always, Techdirt, the blog will be focused on providing timely and insightful analysis of technology and business news, with a focus on how technology relates to innovation, public policy and economics.

We've been hard at work on this effort, and there's a lot more to come -- some of which we'll announce today, and much more will be coming in the near future. All of our efforts are, of course, made possible by the great, vibrant, often brilliant and always opinionated community that was built up through this site. So, we're excited to open this new chapter of the business and the site, as we look forward to doing plenty more in the future to continue to give back to this community.

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Talking About Tapping Into The Insight Community

Mike Masnick — Tue, 4 Mar 2008 10:10:00 PST

Brian Deagon from Investor's Business Daily spoke to me last week to discuss the details behind the Techdirt Insight Community, and IBD has now published the interview. The interview gives a good overview of the Techdirt Insight Community and the different ways companies are getting insight and analysis from the various experts in the Community, focusing mainly on how we help open up the market to allow companies (or individuals at companies) who might never otherwise have tapped into a research or analysis firm to get useful analysis from multiple perspectives.

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