Danny 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Monkey Business: Can A Monkey License Its Copyrights To A News Agency?

    Danny ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2011 @ 07:39am

    imgur????

    Copyright is public domain, but the tangible digital print may belong to the photographer.

    Strong fair use argument aside, the photographer has put his print out at imgur.com (where Mike is linking to). Imgur calls itself "the simple image sharer".

    So, if the photographer doesn't want to share his print, why does he have it available on an image sharing site? Mike isn't posting the image; Mike is linking to a www location where the photographer is voluntarily making the image available.

  • On the post: US Airways Employee Handles Complaining Passenger The 'TSA Way'

    Danny ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2011 @ 03:09pm

    Inquiring minds...

    Please do track this story in tech dirt as it develops. I'd love to know what happens to these two issue employees once calm corporate heads prevail.

  • On the post: Google Tried Bidding Geeky Numbers For Nortel Patents; How About $3.14159 Billion?

    Danny ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2011 @ 09:52am

    /smirk

    At least they didn't bid 8675309

  • On the post: Forget The Streisand Effect, I Think We've Seen The Dawning Of The Giggs Effect

    Danny ( profile ), 23 May, 2011 @ 11:05am

    Peope, who tweet people, are the pluckiest people of all

    Mike, It's your effect, so you can call it what you want. But I prefer this social media explosion of information to be called "The Giggs Corollary to the Streisand Effect"

  • On the post: RIAA Wants To Start Peeking Into Files You Store In The Cloud

    Danny ( profile ), 20 May, 2011 @ 02:49pm

    Re: Um - how about encryption?

    This is probably the next wave of service box.net, dropbox, etc will provide: built in ability to encrypt your files upon upload.

    Once they do that, they can give all our info to RIAA and it will be gibberish. Of course, if I name a file something like stairwaytoheaven.mp3, encryption won't hide much (though some us us will have fun naming soft porn files like that just beggin' them to peek.)

  • On the post: Doing A Google Search For 'Blonde' A Firable Offense For High School Teacher

    Danny ( profile ), 17 May, 2011 @ 11:44am

    Mmm mmm good

    I know sugar is bad for kids and all, but this is overkill for looking up vanilla brownie recipes.

  • On the post: The Senators Who Say Merely Linking To Certain Sites Should Be A Felony

    Danny ( profile ), 13 May, 2011 @ 01:05pm

    Re:

    Was thinking the same thing. More than content just being dynamic, it can link to other sites (ad infinitum) that have dynamic content.

    So, is the crime only for linking to an offending page, or would I have responsibility for all of that page's links (down through all the turtles, if you get my drift)?

    And am I expected to monitor changes to the directly linked URL (or the full tree of URL links) forever? Do I have to sit and monitor 24/7, or would there be a reasonable grace period after a change to find the offending content?

    And, pray tell, how am I supposed to know which content infringes or does not? (Granted, some is obvious, but a lot isn't.)

  • On the post: How Do The NY Times Paywall Results Compare To Its Last Paywall?

    Danny ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 02:19pm

    Re: Really?

    Interesting. I'd considered becoming an ESPN Insider years ago when it was cheap - and didn't include a dead tree magazine. I see it is no longer cheap and I gotta kill trees now.

    But it is their right to bundle. Just like I can't buy one NHL Playoff game on Versus, I have to get the whole thing.

    Perhaps they've done the math and it makes sense for them. But they don't get me.

    Re: The NYTimes. I dropped their app on my iPad and I am finding I don't miss it so much. Some of my RSS bundler apps give me unlimited NYTimes articles (other bundler apps stop me at 20 -- not sure what the difference is under the hood). But I am finding I am relying more on the Washington Post and other media sources now through those bundler apps.

    Life will go on and the market will find some sort of equilibrium.

  • On the post: Kraft Threatens Cooking Teacher With Trademark Claim For Teaching Students To Cook Beyond Kraft Mac & Cheese

    Danny ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2011 @ 01:00pm

    This lawsuit is the cheesiest!

    Or at least that is what every news headline about the case should read.

  • On the post: If You're Going To Ask People To Pay For Your App, NYT, You Should Make Sure It Doesn't Suck

    Danny ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2011 @ 09:11pm

    Re: something I focused on this morning

    After I submitted I realized I haven't been using the NY Times app since last summer; it was introduced sometime later.

  • On the post: If You're Going To Ask People To Pay For Your App, NYT, You Should Make Sure It Doesn't Suck

    Danny ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2011 @ 09:09pm

    something I focused on this morning

    I really like the New York Times and I am hopeful they find a way to stay in business. They have great content that I enjoy reading.

    In fact, I have been using their iPad app for almost the full year I've had my iPad. It is decent; it got better from the early days last summer. I don't like the UX as much as USA Today or the Washington Post (my favorite UX of the newspaper apps). It is much better than the AP app, which belongs in a UX hall of shame somewhere.

    Or at least all this holds true through late last week. The first time I hit the new paywall in the app I took Paul Krugman's advice. I deleted the app from my iPad and added several NY Times RSS feeds of interest to Google Reader (which I read on my iPad via Feeddler).

    This morning I was talking with a friend--a long time business publication editor who is just as flabbergasted as me--and surfaced the obvious in our discussion:

    I used to read the NY Times on my iPad and would see many display ads presented to me via the NY Times app. Now I read the NY Times on my iPad and never see a revenue generating ad at all.

    I didn't mind the ads before; It isn't at all clear to me what the Times thinks its gaining by pushing me away from looking at them now.

    I guess the Times could decide to shut off their RSS feeds. But the result of that wouldn't drive me to a subscription--there are so many more sources of free and interesting information than I have time to read each day. I will simply substitute some other decent sources for theirs.

  • On the post: How Else Could The NY Times Have Spent $40 Million?

    Danny ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2011 @ 02:07pm

    Serious Answer

    Most of the answers above are either frivolous or snarky; I'd like to attempt one that isn't.

    The Times might have invested in planning and then implementing a vision of the newsmedium of the future - or at least of the next generation.

    The first step of this is research. Since I haven't invested in that research, I can only guess what the outcomes would be. Here are some suggestions based on my guesses.

    1. Everyblock is a great example of what a newsmedium quilted together based on geography might look like. Everyblock is limited in its data sources, presents little news, and poorly supports community interaction. However, the core of a true nationwide repository of information organized by street address is compelling. The Times could take this basic architecture, add to it geocoded reporting (either their own, or through partnership, the reporting of many others), leverage more and better geocoded databases, and build a true interactive social community around these news and data items. Such an integrated whole would be compelling. There is little in this that plays to the Times brand or core competencies (in fact I see it as a better project for Gannett), but it is one way the times might have invested that would have a greater long term payback.

    Note that I haven't directly addressed revenue model for this. Several models (advertising, subscription for value added features, a "groupon-like" sales model all might play a role.) The basic idea here is the value proposition is inherent online and mostly new.

    2. The Times could go the route of Zite or Flipboard and present views of the news totally customized to the individual. While Z and F are limited to repurposing other org's RSS feeds to provide content to the user; here both the Times' brand and high quality original content (plus its ability to negotiate content trade with other high quality publications) enables them to produce a compelling product. It could still contain RSS feeds, Facebook, Tweets, etc. But the news content would set it apart.

    They would need to develop a compelling interface (Zite's is great, but could still be improved upon). Forty million can buy lots of good UX work. The interface could support display advertising, but advertising could also be individualized as well.

    Anyway, those are two ideas to move the discussion forward.

  • On the post: Replay Six Months Of A German Politician's Life Thanks To His Mobile Phone Data

    Danny ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2011 @ 10:11am

    Gander

    So does this mean we can use FOIA to get our hands on the Wisc Governor's phone records?

  • On the post: Good Question: How The Hell Did The NYT Spend $40 Million On That Paywall?

    Danny ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2011 @ 01:52pm

    A better question

    First, it was dumb of the nytimes to make a dollar figure public. They should have recognized it would open them to ridicule.

    Second, while they said it was $40 million for a pay wall, it probably was $40 million for a whole new content management system, including a pay wall. Forty million is high for an enterprise CMS, even one as strategically critical as it would be at the nytimes, but a figure that isn't quite as out of line as the cost for just a pay wall would be.

    Third, a better question to be asking is this. If is was late 2009, you are sitting on top of the brand, the marketshare, and the operational infrastructure of the nytimes, and you had $40 million to spend in order to ensure your enterprise remained at the forefront of American journalism for the next generation, how would you spend that money?

    I am guessing no reader of this blog would spend it wholly on a pay wall. I am guessing that if the Times had turned to Tom Friedman (who is not an expert on online media, but is a very creative thinker) and asked him to take two months to research a solution, he would have recommended something very different from a pay wall.

    I think the interesting though exercise is: how would we recommend they have spent that $40 million.

  • On the post: For Lady Gaga, Copyright Not About Music, But Her Image

    Danny ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2011 @ 11:03am

    Re:

    I sort of agree with this, except I do see her as a performer: in particular, as a performance artist.

    Given that, it makes sense she is concerned about copyrighting all dimensions of her performance art (at least this dimensions that are captured on a permanent medium.)

    Her issue with photographers seems to be a contract or licensing issue. She is talking about photographers who are provided privileged access at her shows, I imagine. I can see how she might try to leverage copyright in exchange for that privileged access. I don't know if what happens if she asserts photo copyright as part of the standard admission ticket license.

    Gaga is not alone as a musician cum performance artist. Clearly OK Go fits within this realm, as did David Byrne and David Bowie a generation ago.

  • On the post: Does Re-Imagining Lord Of The Rings From The Perspective Of Mordor Violate Tolkien's Copyrights?

    Danny ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2011 @ 07:19am

    And Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are still dead.

    Just because the two Ender books were written by OS Card does not constitute an argument that he has sole rights to do so.

  • On the post: How NBC Wanted Conan O'Brien Dump His Twitter Account

    Danny ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2011 @ 02:42pm

    ahem

    "And, most recently, it was the company that fired the guy who uploaded the amusing Today Show clip of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric discovering the internet."[italics mine]
    Al Gore is going to be so pissed when he finds out Gumbel and Couric are now claiming credit for this.

  • On the post: How Denial Works: Library Of Congress Blocks Wikileaks

    Danny ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2010 @ 09:32pm

    Re: asanage is the new US hero, for making the US look like morons..

    If they must block all of wikileaks due to some offending content, then to be consistent they must block all of the NY Times due to some of the same offending content.

    Bet they aren't doing that.

  • On the post: Is It A First Amendment Violation For Public Universities To Tell Athletes They Can't Tweet?

    Danny ( profile ), 02 Dec, 2010 @ 06:41am

    Old school

    John Wooden to Bill Walton: "I can't tell you how short to cut your hair, but I can tell you who is going to play on my basketball team."

  • On the post: Gibson Sues Everyone Over Paper Jamz Paper Guitars, Specifically Goes After eBay

    Danny ( profile ), 22 Nov, 2010 @ 02:27pm

    What, me? A moron?

    I am with Gibson on this one. This moron in a hurry would assume that Gibson guitars is somehow associated with the paper product.

    Therefore the quality (and customer service and all) of the paper guitar company's product and delivery could well impact Gibson's reputation. I don't think Gibson is either over-reaching or double-dipping.

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