You may have seen some of the rather popular videos by Common Craft, which has built a rather large following based on these videos about technology and social media using paper diagrams on whiteboards. What the videos are really good at is simplifying things in a way that's easy for people to understand. For example, the video, Twitter in Plain English has received nearly 1.7 million views and is often sent around to people who are trying to understand Twitter.

Like most viral video efforts, the videos are hosted on YouTube, which makes them easy to embed and share. Except, apparently, that's not working within Common Craft's business model. An anonymous reader sent over a story about how the company has set up a new licensing scheme for embedding its videos on websites, and the fees get pretty high pretty quickly. Digital Inspiration notes that embedding one of those videos on a popular website or blog could cost thousands, since the prices are based on views. Lee LeFever, of Common Craft, responded in the comments that this was targeted at companies, rather than "bloggers." However, it's not clear if this means the videos will remain on YouTube -- in which case, companies can just embed them automatically -- or if they'll keep them off of YouTube.

Either way, it's difficult to see this working out. I'm sure some companies will pay, but on the whole, it seems to break the value chain here. Common Craft could, instead, offer up the ability to make custom videos for companies, but on its website, it says that they'd rather just focus on their own videos -- and points anyone who wants custom videos to a series of other video producers. The thing is, if you want your video to be viral, you can't also charge for it. There are three options that I can see, and none of them seem that good:

1. They leave the videos on YouTube as embeddable, and just hope that companies will pay them anyway.
   
   In this case, many companies would likely embed the videos anyway, not even realizing that CC wanted them to pay up. That leads to confusion and no legal basis for CC's request. After all, it put the video on a video sharing site and allowed embedding. That seems like a pretty clear authorization to embed the video.
   
   
2. They leave the videos on YouTube, but not as embeddable, and make companies pay to embed
   
   As we saw with the band Ok Go, when EMI disabled embedding for the band's videos, traffic plummeted 90%. You don't go viral if you don't allow embeds.
   
   
3. They stop using YouTube altogether, and don't release the videos publicly themselves
   
   It's hard to be viral when the videos aren't anywhere online.

So with all of that, I'm still confused as to how this offering works. It seems like an attempt at the honor system to pretend that an abundant resource isn't abundant. Instead of doing that, why not focus on the scarcities -- such as creating custom videos (as mentioned), consulting (scarce knowledge) or advertising/sponsorship (selling the scarcity of attention). It just seems like other models would make a lot more business sense.

Apparently, the town of Tracy, California (a bit east of the Bay Area) has decided to turn 911 emergency calls into a profit center. Karl Bode points us to the news that the town now wants people to pay $300 for every 911 call. Of course, if you think you might be a frequent 911 caller, they've got a plan for that. For the low, low, low price of just $48 per year, you can call 911 as many times as you want. Yes, that's right folks, there's a special deal for those of you who regularly have emergencies. Make sure to order now!

This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I've heard in a while. Does the town really want to discourage people from calling in the event of an emergency? In my life, I think I've called 911 four times -- and three of those were after witnessing car crashes by other people. With this rule in place, I would have much less incentive to call to get the police if I witness something bad happening, whether it's a car crash, or someone getting mugged. 911 is a public service. You shouldn't have to pay for a 911 call.

Update: As pointed out in the comments, there may be more to this story, and the CBS link above might not be that accurate. Another report notes that the $300 will only apply to cases where the fire department needs to respond to medical emergencies. Still seems a bit questionable, but not as bad...

We were troubled last month by reports that SOCAN, a music collection society up in Canada, was looking to get buskers (street performers) to pay performance fees. Now more details are coming out on this story. It really involves TransLink, the Vancouver-area transit authority, and SOCAN, with SOCAN demanding a lot more money from TransLink. Apparently, TransLink quickly caved and agreed to a massive increase in fees, which it is immediately dumping on the buskers themselves -- even though most "venues" cover any such fees themselves. It turns out that Buskers in TransLink stations already had to pay $75/year -- but now if they want to play during the Olympics, that will be a separate $50 fee just for the Olympics, and the new annual fee will probably be around $300. For busking. I wonder what they want to charge you for humming or singing along?

There are banks that have worked out ways to charge you both for using and for not using your account enough, but hearing about Midwest utility Xcel Energy trying to justify its reasoning for charging homes with solar panels for not using their services is just mindbogglingly ridiculous:

"We just don't think it's fair that customers that don't have solar panels on their homes should subsidize these solar panel customers any further."

No, that doesn't make any sense. After all, isn't the whole point of those with solar panels being that they don't need much (if any) energy from the utility? I know in many places, the local utility will actually buy excess solar energy from home owners. But, here we are again with "entitlement society" at work. The idea, via Xcel, is that it's somehow owed its fees -- and if people are willing to go with an alternative, then they need to keep paying up anyway.

We've seen all sorts of nasty fees and sneaky tricks by broadband companies to try to get you to pay more, but Broadband Reports highlights how RCN not only raised its rates, but then told customers it would cost them a "$5 downgrade fee" to switch their plan to a less costly option in response to the higher rates. And there are people out there who still wonder why so many subscribers hate their broadband providers?

When I was in the UK recently, I was surprised to hear just how much most folks hate PRS -- the collections society in charge of getting various businesses to pay for playing music. PRS is also the group that has caused music videos to be pulled from YouTube after demanding much more money than was economically feasible. But, where PRS really shines is in threatening tons of small businesses. Over the years, we've had stories on PRS threatening car repair shops, because mechanics in the garage were playing their radios loud enough that customers in the waiting room could hear them. That's a public performance, according to PRS. Then they went after a police station because some cops were listening to radios. Then they went after a children's charity for singing Christmas carols without paying up. The group has even been known to call up small businesses and if they hear music in the background, demand payment, including one case involving a guy working at home with his dog. Apparently, that constitutes a "public performance."

The latest (sent in by a few folks) is that PRS has now threatened a woman who plays classical music to her horses in her stable to keep them calm. She had been turning on the local classical music station, saying that it helped keep the horse calm -- but PRS is demanding £99 if she wants to keep providing such a "public performance." And it's not just a one-off. Apparently a bunch of stables have been receiving such calls.

Obviously, this is not a case of random excessive attempts by PRS to squeeze more money out of people. It's become systematic. The group seems to believe that playing music in almost any situation now constitutes a public performance and requires a licensing fee. You just know they're salivating over the opportunity to go after people playing music in their cars with the windows down.

MusicFIRST, a recording industry lobbying group that already has some controversy surrounding it due to contributions from groups not allowed to be involved in lobbying, is continuing to push forward with its campaign to claim that radio is a kind of piracy and demanding legislation that forces radio stations to pay extra to play music. For most of the history of radio, radio stations have paid songwriters and publishers royalties for playing music on the radio, but they didn't pay the musicians (really: the record labels). In fact, the money often (illegally) went in the other direction, with the labels paying the radio stations to play certain artists to help promote them.

However, these days, with the recording industry unable to adapt to the changing marketplace, they've taken to demanding that others (individuals, ISPs, video games, Apple, webcasters, etc...) simply give them money instead. Their latest target, of course, is radio stations. It started with that silly claim that radio is a form of piracy -- then advanced to a bill, being introduced by a Congressional Rep, John Conyers (whose last campaign was heavily funded by those connected to the labels and this lobbying group), to force radio stations to pay the record labels as well.

MusicFIRST's latest effort was to drag its dog and pony show to Congress, where it paraded a bunch of musicians in front of Congresscritters to whine about how unfair it was that radio stations helped promote their music without paying them. Of course, it looks like MusicFIRST should have talked to the musicians a bit more carefully first. One of the musicians they trotted out, Matt Maher, less than 24 hours before going before Congress, noted on his Twitter account how such royalties could hurt radio stations and worried that it would cause some stations to shut down. Apparently, someone went a bit off the reservation and made exactly the opposite point that MusicFIRST wanted him to make....

For years, we've pointed out how various telcos get away with adding extra fees to increase the price of service without technically "increasing the price." The sneakiest of these add on those fees with names that make them sound like they're required by the government -- even though they rarely are. A few times, we've asked how those sorts of fees might be applied to other businesses. Of course, we did so as a joke, using it to show how ridiculous some of those fees really were. However, it appears that perhaps it wasn't such a joke. Reading this NY Times article about all the new fees that airlines are charging passengers, it has to remind you of the sorts of fees seen on your telco bills lately. As far as I know, I haven't seen any airlines disguising fees as gov't taxes yet -- though it may just be a matter of time. Of course, the airlines are doing their best to ignore the criticism of things like charging $7 for a pillow or $2 for some water -- but as political cartoonists are noticing, it may not be long before people expect to be charged for oxygen masks or use of the bathroom.

I recently got into a conversation with an academic, who had to jump through some ridiculous hoops to get a paper published. Apparently, part of the experiment had been published elsewhere, and even though it was in a somewhat different context, a journal that was interested in publishing a different paper wouldn't touch it because an editor there was afraid of the copyright issues from the first publisher. So, unless the professor was willing to do an entirely new experiment to create new (the same) results, it wouldn't publish. This, of course, seems to go against everything that academia should be about: which is the open sharing of research results and ideas to further the course of knowledge. But, of course, thanks to copyright, that's rarely what happens.

Witness this bizarre story, relayed by William Patry, about the American Psychological Association's assault on a Congressional requirement that any NIH-funded research get published openly a year after its published in a journal. Let's be entirely clear here: we're talking about publicly (tax-payer) funded research that gets published in a journal. The journal does not pay for the research at all. The research is paid for by the NIH. Much of the salaries of the academics involved are often paid for by public institutions as well. On top of that, the journals do not reimburse the academic for publishing the research. The journals also do not reimburse the "peers" who peer review the research. In other words, these journals contribute very little to the publication, and get tremendous benefits for free (often at the expense of taxpayers). And, then, of course, the journals claim copyright over the papers and charge insane fees to subscribe to the journals that publish them.

Recently, Congress realized this was a problem, and ordered that all NIH-funded research (and that's hardly peanuts: the NIH funds nearly $30 billion in research per year) be published online in the PubMed Central archive, a year after publication in a journal. This still granted the journals plenty of time to get a return on whatever little "investment" they put into the publication. Most university libraries would still pay the exorbitant fees for the journal, but this tax-payer funded research would then be available to others after one year for free.

The American Psychological Association had other ideas, however. While it's not disobeying the rule, it is taking a rather draconian approach to it. It's decided that it will charge the institution the academic comes from $2,500 for "depositing" the paper with PubMed. It will not allow the researchers to submit the paper themselves (and avoid the fee). It also will not let the researcher submit the paper to any other open research publication and (of course) will not let the author retain the copyright on the publications. While it appears that the APA is rethinking some of this policy thanks to some of the outcry, it shows yet another old school academic journal clinging to not just an outdated business model, but one that actively stifles academic sharing of research and cross-pollination of ideas.

Have you flown lately? It's becoming less and less enjoyable by the day, it seems. Many airlines are dumping features, adding fees and making sure customer service is about as frustrating as possible. On top of all that, it appears that airlines are so focused on cost cutting that they're looking to do whatever possible to shave the slightest bit of weight from each flight (fewer passengers would be one suggestion) including one airline that discovered removing seatback magazines saved thousands of dollars by making the airplane lighter (yes, seriously).

So, what do you have to look forward to on flights these days? Well, advertisements! There's a new startup that is promising to put contextual ads everywhere from your boarding pass to the check-in terminals and (we're sure) to the seatbacks in front of you on the plane. Now, of course, this idea isn't entirely new. Over in Europe discount airlines have been offering up cheap fares while making it up with all sorts of other fees and services. But, then again, no one's talking about cheap fares in the US either. In the meantime, if they're looking for ideas, I still think the flying casino may be the best idea yet. Get people to simply gamble away their money while flying across the country. However, until that comes to pass, expect worse service, fewer amenities, more fees... and tons of advertising.