Latest Plan To Save Newspapers: Let Everyone Else Break News First

Stupidity

from the you-can't-be-serious dept

In what at first sounds like it must be a “modest proposal” sort of satire, but actually appears to be serious, W.B. McNamara writes in to point out a suggestion in the San Francisco Chronicle written by journalist/lawyer Peter Scheer, that all newspapers and wire services agree to embargo all content from the “free” internet for a period of 24-hours. He suggests they agree to do this while somehow avoiding anti-trust violations — which is pretty much impossible. He claims this will highlight the value of paper newspapers:

“A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals — Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN — with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from “mainstream” media and blogosphere musings on yesterday’s news. Digital fish wrap. And the portals know from unhappy experience (most recently in the case of Yahoo) just how difficult it is to create original and timely news content themselves.”

I would guess that Mr. Scheer doesn’t play chess very often, because he doesn’t seem to have considered what happens in response to this opening move. Assuming that somehow, miraculously, all newspapers and wire services agree to do this without violating antitrust law (which is basically impossible), it opens up a huge opportunity and a hole for someone to step in and serve that need. He ignores that there are plenty of other sources of news outside of newspapers, from TV to radio to online only sources already. Newspapers don’t have a monopoly on the news, and taking them out of the game doesn’t help them — it just promotes everyone else. He thinks that the portals can’t create original content and timely news (which he’s wrong about, first of all), but they would have a much easier time if the entire competition voluntarily stayed home each day. All this would do is clear the playing field for others to fill the need and make newspapers even less relevant in a matter of days (if that long). At what point do people realize that the strategy on the internet isn’t about putting up artificial barriers and making things more expensive and more difficult for users, but in adding value and making life easier and better?

Belgian Newspapers Ask To Be Banned From MSN As Well

Stupidity

from the take-us-down! dept

In their ongoing effort to get less traffic by making it more difficult for people to find them, a group representing French and German language newspapers in Belgian has taken their “success” in getting Google to remove them from their index to now go after Microsoft as well, sending a cease-and-desist letter concerning MSN’s news search site. They claim that MSN has been far more cooperative in engaging them in discussions — though the article also notes that MSN has started removing the Belgian publications as well. The Belgian publishers claim that all they want is a “win-win” solution, but they already had that: these news search engines drove more traffic to them which they had every opportunity to use to make money. Hopefully MSN realizes they should call the publishers’ bluff, as should Yahoo and any other search engines. Then, once they’re no longer findable online, we’ll see how “win-win” the solution is. How hard is it for these publishers to realize that search engines give them traffic for free, and that this helps them?

Generally Speaking, You Probably Shouldn't Get A Tattoo Of The Felony You Plan To Commit

Stupidity

from the just-a-suggestion dept

No one ever said criminals were intelligent. If you’re going to go out and commit a crime like “grand theft auto,” we might recommend that you not first tattoo the words “Grand Theft Auto” to your back. While it may not have anything to do with the actual crime… it probably doesn’t do much to help your case either. The news report, of course, assumes that the tattoo was in reference to the video game, though it’s not clear if the tattoo had anything to do with the game, or was just what the guy wanted on his back. However, while some will want to use this as evidence of the guy being inspired by the game, I think it’s fair to argue that, instead, this particular individual just wasn’t particularly smart.

Custom Online Papers: More Expensive Than Plagiarized, But Likely To Suck Just As Much

Stupidity

from the no-surprise-there dept

A year and a half ago, we pointed to a (not even remotely scientific) study suggesting that the sorts of pre-written papers students buy online were pretty much likely to suck and not get you a very good grade. With professors being a bit more wise to online plagiarism these days, it seems like a different type of homework site is getting more attention: these sites will hire people to write custom papers for you on a topic of your choice. Not surprisingly, it’s a lot more expensive than the pre-written ones, but a (once again, not even remotely scientific) NY Times experiment suggests that they’re likely to suck just as badly. It’s true that the papers do seem pretty weak, but the quotes from professors asked to look at them might not carry much weight, since they knew they were looking at writer-for-hire papers. Still, it probably isn’t all that surprising that papers you buy online aren’t going to be very good — so perhaps the best course of action is just to let the students get screwed over twice: first in how much they pay and again in the bad grade they’ll get.

Samsung Lets The World Know Its Phones Are Breakable

Stupidity

from the just-reminding-you dept

Psst… have you seen the video about how to easily the Samsung Ultra Edition mobile phone can break? Neither had we. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much talk of it at all. But now a lot of people are going to hear about how breakable the Samsung Ultra Edition is, as the company has foolishly said it may take legal action against the creator of the video. What does Samsung think it could possibly accomplish with this? There’s no way to suppress the video, now that it’s been released; there’s no meaningful monetary reward that it could get. There’s simply no possible outcome other than alerting more people to the video and the alleged weakness of its phones. Eventually, companies will come to understand the Streisand effect, and fire the lawyers who keep encouraging them to make stupid legal decisions.

How Not To Defend Yourself Against An RIAA Lawsuit

Stupidity

from the just-saying dept

There are plenty of reasonable ways to defend yourself against an RIAA lawsuit over file sharing. For example, you can show how your IP address is shared by many others and it’s impossible for the RIAA to know who was actually responsible. However, one thing you should absolutely not do is erase your hard drive — especially when there’s a court order demanding you produce the hard drive as evidence. Yes, that’s what one guy did, and the judge (not surprisingly) has sided with the RIAA and ruled in their favor.

Hollywood Upset At Newspapers For Daring To Give Away DVDs It Licensed Them To Give Away

Stupidity

from the oh,-boo-hoo dept

Comboman writes “Hollywood claiming ‘lost revenue’ from declining DVD sales is nothing new, but this time the alleged culprit is not piracy but UK newspapers and magazines that give away free DVDs with certain issues. Nevermind the fact that the publications legally paid for the UK distribution rights to these films that were near the end of their profit cycle anyway. Once again, instead of embracing an alternative distribution method, Hollywood only sees it as “devaluing the format in the eyes of consumers”. Heaven forbid they would be forced to sell DVDs at fair price.” Yes, that’s right. The movie studios licensed the newspapers to give away the DVDs. They got paid for it. Now they’re complaining that in giving away these DVDs, the newspapers are “devaluing” DVDs. And you wonder how the industry has stayed in business this long.

Why You Don't Surf For Porn If You Work For The Government

Stupidity

from the defies-reason dept

Data leaks are bad. Data leaks by government agencies are slightly more irritating. But how about a data leak at a government agency, thanks to a state employee getting a computer infected with a trojan by surfing porn? In another triumph for reactive security, the trojan sat on the computer undetected for four months, and only came to light after the employee got caught surfing porn at work and was fired. Oregon officials say its “anti-malware filters” didn’t pick up the trojan because it was so new, the security software didn’t recognize it. Uh, okay, but the real cause of this problem is the bonehead employee looking at porn on a state-owned computer. Though the person got fired, will there be any repercussions for either them personally, or the state? That’s pretty doubtful. Until that changes, don’t expect to see these data leaks subside.

Recording Industry Still Trying To Shut Down Allofmp3.com

Stupidity

from the damn-them-for-selling-a-product-customers-want dept

Last week there was all sorts of concern from online music buyers, because the Russian download music store Allofmp3.com was offline for a few days. It came back, but it appears that the recording industry has stepped up efforts to get it shut down, claiming (once again) that it is does not pay the correct royalties, and even if it did, you shouldn’t be able to download songs from it outside of Russia (others contend that downloading songs from the site is no different than going to Russia, buying legal music, and then traveling back to your country of origin — though, that may be a stretch). They now say that prosecutions against the firm have begun. Of course, a year ago, they pushed the police to shut down the firm, and following an investigation, the police said no criminal charges would be filed. No matter what the legality of the situation is, in the Recording Industry’s odd focus on how downloading is evil, they’ve apparently never stopped to recognize that Allofmp3.com completely disproves the basic point of their argument on copy protection. They’ve said for years, that without copy protection, no one would buy downloadable music, since it would all just be available for free. The fallacy, of course, is that most of that music is already available for free — so the only thing copy protection is doing is limiting actual customers (that is, lowering the value of the music). What companies like Allofmp3.com and eMusic have shown is that there’s a real market for unencumbered digital music at a reasonable price. While the industry likes to assume the worst of its customers, it’s clear that many people are perfectly happy to pay a reasonable price for the music they want — knowing that it doesn’t limit them and lock them into a proprietary solution. So rather than learning from a perfect example of giving the customers what they want, and seeing that they’re willing to pay for it, the industry spends all this time and effort working to shut it down.

Forget Lobbyists, Now Energy Policy Guided By Viral Email

Stupidity

from the send-this-to-five-people-you-know dept

Last week, one of those viral emails got passed around, which claimed to offer an ingenious way for consumers to force the price of gasoline down. To summarize, it called upon consumers to boycott just one chain of gas stations (Exxon), thus forcing them to lower their prices to get their customers back (There are several problems wrong with this plan, which people can probably figure out). The email specifically demanded that drivers not buy from Exxon until they lower prices to $1.30. Now, a judge in Texas is pushing a resolution, encouraging consumers to take action to reduce the price of gasoline. You guessed it; he wants to boycott Exxon until they reduce their prices to, yes, $1.30. There are lots of examples of misguided government policy; pressure from lobbying groups and simple foolishness are among the chief causes. This may be one of the only examples of policy almost certainly attributable to viral email.