Wall street hates it because there would be millions of beady eyes on their crimes and swindles, not because it it a dud, because it is highly profitable.
Almost certainly, the paranoid po-lice told fantastic stories of riot, destruction and insurrection in persuading the governor to veto the bill.
Unfortunately, this is normal (not to say nuts) for them, and very few politicians can resist a bunch of gold-starred and shiny-badged cops telling such stories.
Microswift has money to burn harassing Google, but little to spend taking care of their real business. Yesterday, their new cloud app failed because they didn't know it was leap year!
Last year their SW failed on the London Stock Exchange, making Linux obligatory for Exchanges. The more incompetent they get, the more childish they act.
From comment to Y Combiner re "How to kill Hollywood"
You ask "How do you kill the movie and TV industries?" Not easily, but as you point out, they are showing many of the signs of dementia and decrepitude typical of dying businesses.
To prevent their taking the whole Internet down with them, consider some important points:
1. The enemy of my enemy is my friend! A famous economist, Mr. Galbraith, wrote a famous book "Countervailing Power." The upshot was that when the plutocrats are straining hard to kill each other, customers and the public always benefit.
2. In that vein, content is king, and the cable companies are now rather desperately looking for worthwhile content to escape the chains of the media monopoly and the pap it sells; Netflix and many others can't easily get what they need. To get an idea of why, just look at the recent film "Planet of the A's" (substitute your own noun!); the thirty-year old original was watchable, if rather silly, but the remake was dreadful, despite the gushing of the NYTimes about the film's special-effects. Point out that Hollywood and TV are more moronic every day; the public has already received that message; emphasizing it will only help.
Push hard to show that a very large amount of Internet-available, independently produced content is good and getting much better. PBS has generally converted much of its content to an online format. I watch all PBS stuff online, even if it is a day or two late. The more that cable and Netflix, eventually all online, get away from TV and Hollywood dreck, the more important and essential the Internet.
3. Try hard to accelerate the demise of broadcast TV, happening, but too slowly, and really important for only a small minority. The government and its friends in high-tech development want this, but cannot impose a sudden free TV blackout with nothing to replace it. These frequencies are vital for next generation wireless Internet, and quite importantly, for other kinds of business and personal communication.
4. This will also compel the telco/cable duopoly to vastly improve their very costly and incredibly decrepit "barf-bag" networks for low-cost IP TV/telephone everywhere. Cellphone technology, while useful and important, cannot substitute for pervasive IP. Emphasize that the duopoly cannot just continue to gouge the maximum, while giving and investing very little in return. Otherwise, they will disappear, and their IP future with it.
5. Mention that successful "middle-mile" fiber networks built by private companies are becoming the powerful muscles and nerves of the Internet, providing access to many small and medium sized ISPs; phone companies have some of this business, but less and less at time goes on. They do not seem to be much interested. Fine, others will do it cheaper and better.
6. Celebrate the offbeat Internet applications, which will surpass TV and telephone in importance eventually; music lessons by Skype is one. Another was the Internet reorganization of the lunch take-out trade in San Francisco. Congress cannot kill music lessons, or full bellies after a good lunch from happy chefs making a good living.
Email to Sen Rubio of Florida:
Dear Sir,
You sponsored and later withdrew the PIPA copyright law in the U.S. Senate. I would like to offer a few thoughts on the same subject.
In 1934, Disney made a short "talkie" cartoon film "Steamboat Willie" with Mickey Mouse. Anyone viewing this should bow very deeply, because that wretched little cartoon mouse will be copyright for centuries! How that squares with the clear Constitutional requirement that copyrights be granted for "limited times" is no mystery: Congress just makes up laws as it goes along, depending on what greedy media lawyers and their clients want.
Nobody approves of the flagrant distribution of copyright works for profit, as in the case of the group just arrested and shut down in New Zealand; they got what they deserved. However, it's important to note that about a third of the users of that group were innocent people storing personal and business material and not violating any copyrights at all.
Copyright law is a difficult exercise in choosing between a restricted monopoly for limited times as the Constitution demands, and the public interest. Congress has failed miserably in that job; instead they have just stampeded in the direction of the biggest "campaign contributions."
Copyright reminds me about the two Kings: Dr. Martin Luther King the Afro-American cleric and speaker, whose memorial holiday we just observed, and Mr. Stephen King the novelist.
It's now perfect feasable and cheap to copy Mr. King's popular and widely-read novels, violate his copyright, and distribute his works online, or in other electronic form. But there would be no point! His works are widely available in printed or electronic form at reasonable prices; they can be borrowed from public libraries, and bought and sold second-hand without any problem at all. A good, proven, copyright business model protects his interests far better than any Congressional manipulation of copyright. But media interests and their mouthpieces in Congress have fought tooth and claw to cripple the public interest limitations of copyright law, public library access and limited copyright terms especially.
In the case of Dr. King, his important and profound writings and speeches are copyright for ridiculously long times, locked up in vaults somewhere, little noticed and remembered. No one objects to his heirs making a few occasional dollars from them, but the occasions will be very few as time goes on. In the process, important facts of history will be forgotten.
Congress still has a lot of work to do about copyright; please keep the public interest in mind as you go about it.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by jfleni.
Wall street hates it because there would be millions of beady eyes on their crimes and swindles, not because it it a dud, because it is highly profitable.
Almost certainly, the paranoid po-lice told fantastic stories of riot, destruction and insurrection in persuading the governor to veto the bill.
Unfortunately, this is normal (not to say nuts) for them, and very few politicians can resist a bunch of gold-starred and shiny-badged cops telling such stories.
Microsoft vs Google
Microswift has money to burn harassing Google, but little to spend taking care of their real business. Yesterday, their new cloud app failed because they didn't know it was leap year!
Last year their SW failed on the London Stock Exchange, making Linux obligatory for Exchanges. The more incompetent they get, the more childish they act.
Making Hollywood disappear.
From comment to Y Combiner re "How to kill Hollywood"
You ask "How do you kill the movie and TV industries?" Not easily, but as you point out, they are showing many of the signs of dementia and decrepitude typical of dying businesses.
To prevent their taking the whole Internet down with them, consider some important points:
1. The enemy of my enemy is my friend! A famous economist, Mr. Galbraith, wrote a famous book "Countervailing Power." The upshot was that when the plutocrats are straining hard to kill each other, customers and the public always benefit.
2. In that vein, content is king, and the cable companies are now rather desperately looking for worthwhile content to escape the chains of the media monopoly and the pap it sells; Netflix and many others can't easily get what they need. To get an idea of why, just look at the recent film "Planet of the A's" (substitute your own noun!); the thirty-year old original was watchable, if rather silly, but the remake was dreadful, despite the gushing of the NYTimes about the film's special-effects. Point out that Hollywood and TV are more moronic every day; the public has already received that message; emphasizing it will only help.
Push hard to show that a very large amount of Internet-available, independently produced content is good and getting much better. PBS has generally converted much of its content to an online format. I watch all PBS stuff online, even if it is a day or two late. The more that cable and Netflix, eventually all online, get away from TV and Hollywood dreck, the more important and essential the Internet.
3. Try hard to accelerate the demise of broadcast TV, happening, but too slowly, and really important for only a small minority. The government and its friends in high-tech development want this, but cannot impose a sudden free TV blackout with nothing to replace it. These frequencies are vital for next generation wireless Internet, and quite importantly, for other kinds of business and personal communication.
4. This will also compel the telco/cable duopoly to vastly improve their very costly and incredibly decrepit "barf-bag" networks for low-cost IP TV/telephone everywhere. Cellphone technology, while useful and important, cannot substitute for pervasive IP. Emphasize that the duopoly cannot just continue to gouge the maximum, while giving and investing very little in return. Otherwise, they will disappear, and their IP future with it.
5. Mention that successful "middle-mile" fiber networks built by private companies are becoming the powerful muscles and nerves of the Internet, providing access to many small and medium sized ISPs; phone companies have some of this business, but less and less at time goes on. They do not seem to be much interested. Fine, others will do it cheaper and better.
6. Celebrate the offbeat Internet applications, which will surpass TV and telephone in importance eventually; music lessons by Skype is one. Another was the Internet reorganization of the lunch take-out trade in San Francisco. Congress cannot kill music lessons, or full bellies after a good lunch from happy chefs making a good living.
Best regards,
John Lenihan
PIPA/SOPA
Email to Sen Rubio of Florida:
Dear Sir,
You sponsored and later withdrew the PIPA copyright law in the U.S. Senate. I would like to offer a few thoughts on the same subject.
In 1934, Disney made a short "talkie" cartoon film "Steamboat Willie" with Mickey Mouse. Anyone viewing this should bow very deeply, because that wretched little cartoon mouse will be copyright for centuries! How that squares with the clear Constitutional requirement that copyrights be granted for "limited times" is no mystery: Congress just makes up laws as it goes along, depending on what greedy media lawyers and their clients want.
Nobody approves of the flagrant distribution of copyright works for profit, as in the case of the group just arrested and shut down in New Zealand; they got what they deserved. However, it's important to note that about a third of the users of that group were innocent people storing personal and business material and not violating any copyrights at all.
Copyright law is a difficult exercise in choosing between a restricted monopoly for limited times as the Constitution demands, and the public interest. Congress has failed miserably in that job; instead they have just stampeded in the direction of the biggest "campaign contributions."
Copyright reminds me about the two Kings: Dr. Martin Luther King the Afro-American cleric and speaker, whose memorial holiday we just observed, and Mr. Stephen King the novelist.
It's now perfect feasable and cheap to copy Mr. King's popular and widely-read novels, violate his copyright, and distribute his works online, or in other electronic form. But there would be no point! His works are widely available in printed or electronic form at reasonable prices; they can be borrowed from public libraries, and bought and sold second-hand without any problem at all. A good, proven, copyright business model protects his interests far better than any Congressional manipulation of copyright. But media interests and their mouthpieces in Congress have fought tooth and claw to cripple the public interest limitations of copyright law, public library access and limited copyright terms especially.
In the case of Dr. King, his important and profound writings and speeches are copyright for ridiculously long times, locked up in vaults somewhere, little noticed and remembered. No one objects to his heirs making a few occasional dollars from them, but the occasions will be very few as time goes on. In the process, important facts of history will be forgotten.
Congress still has a lot of work to do about copyright; please keep the public interest in mind as you go about it.