Aaron deOliveira's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
You?re all under arrest. Pick an acronym: SOPA / ACTA / PROTECT-IP / CFAA. The end result seems to be the same. You?re a criminal. This week on Techdirt has been a wild ride through the arguments about and the consequences of some drastic ideas.
The Department of Justice feels that lying online should be illegal. Not just being deceptive, but being inaccurate in the information you provide. The DOJ most likely won?t be trolling Plenty of Fish, but they can potentially use your Facebook profile as the starting point of a felony investigation. This also effectively makes being anonymous online illegal. Aren?t proxies effectively lying about your IP address? Accepting the DOJ?s interpretation of CFAA effectively turns Terms of Service into private laws. How many people does this criminalize?
Once you?ve been accused of one of these pseudo-crimes the burden of proof is then on you to prove that you?re not a criminal. Organizations and companies like GEMA think so. This outward pushing of liability continues to have chilling effects. The efficiencies and opportunities created by the Internet are now juxtaposed against massive liability. If your product can potentially be used by everyone, everyone?s actions are now your problem.
The scary part of the legal framework that SOPA and its ilk are promoting is that the death penalty they create also makes phishing and other forms of fraud indistinguishable from legitimate sites. This whole exercise is like blowing up a bridge to stop people from speeding across it.
Thankfully, people have been active in expressing their outrage at such egregious laws. I love the idea that government inboxes are flooded with 23,000 messages per hour. People can be innovative and disruptive and when they are, people listen. Several members of Congress have made statements against SOPA. These laws have even become election issues for people campaigning for office.
Be aware of all the ways that these laws could affect you. Be thankful that in the end the Internet perceives these laws as damage and routes around them.
going the way of the classifieds
craigslist is ripening for disruption. several different attempts have been made to build value on top of it. pretty soon someone will find enough value to build a new platform that accepts these value builders.
Re: Memo:
4+ years of work to have sex 15 times?
Assuming Olympic athletes have sex more than just at the games, it would seem far easier just to ask the Olympic athletes themselves. You would only need a 0.3% success rate to reach 15 times.
This letter could be signed "We the Obsolete". It's nice when they self select.
give them your whole catalog
At this point, why doesn't the band use something like Boxopus to transfer their entire catalog to everyone at the show?
They've expressed interest in your music. Get them involved with everything you do. Then you've really connected with them as a fan. Now they know you better and are more likely to support you directly.
radio
Helene Lindvall's article seems to have the subtext of "on the radio" baked into every paragraph.
These days the only place I listen to radio is occasionally in my car. And because of that my musical tastes have broadened and niched. I've found so many artists that I've never heard on the radio.
I support them far more than whatever percentage they get from a CD purchase through a label.
things like this are the sound of gatekeepers dying. i would bet even more ridiculous proposals will make their rounds through the halls of government before these gatekeepers become a historical footnote.
I imagine EA still has the experience of the NFL 2k series eating their lunch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_2K
http://n4g.com/news/504781/nfl-2k13-comes-one-step-closer-to-reality-with-take-two-sales
2k was successful from 2002-2004 then they got squeezed out.
EA is ultimatly arguing the "but how do we make 100 million dollar movies/games with lower prices?"
ebook
She should write an ebook chronicling all of this with calendar dates. June 1st. Got quotes from artists for turn tables June 5th. Laid out Kickstarter campaign. June 12. Launched campaign. June 16th. Promoted campaign. June 23. Sent personal thank yous to doners. Etc. Etc.
That kind of information could be valuable to others trying to follow in her footsteps.
two phrases
two phrases i like
1) low-barrier way to (re)connect
2) bit-torrent has a bigger install base
both great realizations
Transformative Use
So what would happen if someone takes the image and does something transformative like the infamous Obama photo?
My [______]
I meet artists in Houston that use MySpace. They're working every angle they can to get their music heard. Their use of MySpace isn't exclusive, but they use it as a tool to promote.
boy who cried wolf
What I described is also called a signal vs. noise problem. Each of these organizations that let other people speak for them are creating "noise" around their message. So when they want to substantively speak to their constituents, it is that much harder to get their attention and moreover their action.
An example of this is Niger Innis'(http://www.hannity.com/guest/innis-niger/10174) recent appearance on Sean Hannity's program where he talked about the signal vs. noise problem among African-American political groups. He said that so often their discussions of issues facing the African-American community were derailed by "noise". Because these groups allow noise they will have the same problem when they try to mobilize their base.
Any group that allows their messaging, brand building, community building, etc. to be co-opted by someone else is setting themselves up for failure in their own mission.
downside
the downside is that all of the organizations that take this money and do this dirty work create a "boy who cried wolf" problem for themselves. if they ever end up in a media spotlight, someone is going to uncover all of these inane statements they've been making that have nothing to do with their core mission. there will most likely be blow-back from the press, the public or even their own members.
after a few such organizations get burned, i imagine they will be much more careful about letting others speak for them.
they are sowing the seeds of their own calamity.
Re: Jurisdiction
how will this affect sites that are intended to cause distress like thedirty.com
Re: Re: Re:
transaction costs
he said that he was willing to pay the 4 pounds for what he wanted.
the additional transaction costs that occur with purchasing a cd in another country include:
shipping & handling
waiting for it to arrive
format shifting
knowing that some of the money went to purchase other songs on the CD that he didn't want.
all of these things make it a more complicated and also more expensive, in more than just money, than just torrenting the file.
bit torrent has it's own complications and wait times. competing with free means offering something better than what i can get for free.
adkeeper
for the adkeeper. ads are just content.
Don't forget this guy has already been successful at it
The Bagle Man & Pay What You Want
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090104/2159403281.shtml
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/WhatTheBagelManSaw.pdf
Re:
i definitely agree with the idea of an easy target. being middle class and educated means that they can hit back. bully's don't like that.
if they start a fight with an educated middle class or above, they're asking for a fight with alumni organizations, trade organizations, facebook groups, etc, etc.
i really liked your imagery: "sepia-toned humans toiling against misery in dark, sweaty basements or ghetto community rooms" beautiful writing.
pricing mistakes
extreme pricing mistakes like this usually happen when they put information in the wrong field. 287593413357 is probably a serial number of a sku number for them. something that has significance somewhere. when they put it in the price field, the program just said "okay" and charged 2.8 billion.
toys
products that came from literal toys:
Flickr
Skype
---
i think he meant more that people would be dismissive and say something to the effect of "that will never amount to more than a toy compared to what we have"