Nick Coghlan 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (284) comment rss

  • On the post: Nice To See How Content Creators Have More Power Over Middlemen

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2011 @ 07:04pm

    Re: moving middlemen

    That's exactly the kind of shift the article is talking about - the role of middlemen is changing from that of gatekeepers (e.g. publishers that pay authors, printers and editors) to enablers (e.g. authors paying a cut to print-on-demand services, directly employing freelance editors, etc).

    The barrier to entry becomes building that initial audience and financing early efforts, rather than trying to gain the attention of the gatekeepers.

  • On the post: When Musicians Get Excited About Remixes, Cool Things Happen: Jay-Z, Nick Drake And Jason Parker Do Jazz

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2011 @ 06:57pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Your second paragraph agrees with your quote from the article, thus contradicting your first paragraph.

    By law, Spek's mash-ups potentially infringe copyrights. It is only working out in this case because the people involved are choosing to be sensible about it, regardless of what the law says.

  • On the post: FCC Planning To Crack Down On Cellular & GPS Jamming Devices

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2011 @ 05:24am

    Actually, they may have a valid point. If the US is anything like Australia, the rise of mobile phones means that public phones and private landlines are becoming less common. If you deliberately cut off mobile coverage in areas where mobile service is normally reliable, there may no longer be a convenient landline available as an alternative.

  • On the post: Sony Demanding Identity Of Anyone Who Saw PS3 Jailbreak Video On YouTube

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2011 @ 05:10pm

    Re: Re: Bad PR

    We can only hope that the parent company will tell the US division to pull its head in. Seems unlikely, though :P

  • On the post: Sony Demanding Identity Of Anyone Who Saw PS3 Jailbreak Video On YouTube

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2011 @ 05:05pm

    Re: Re: posting

    "PS3 root key" should do the trick.

    Will Sony go after Google for making it so easy to find this information? Or github for hosting the PS3 dev tools?

  • On the post: Do Tools Ever Die Off?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2011 @ 06:34am

    Any tools made by civilisations that have completely died out (e.g. Easter Island). *Similar* tools may be made elsewhere, but those *specific* tools are long gone.

  • On the post: Do Tools Ever Die Off?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2011 @ 06:31am

    Re:

    While the buggy whip industry is an oft-cited pale shadow of its former self, it still exists.

  • On the post: Microsoft Highlights Why Google's 'Cheater' Accusations Ring Hollow

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2011 @ 05:05am

    Re:

    Why would they? They've already made the PR point that Google is good enough for Bing to use as a fallback when Bing's own results aren't getting anything.

  • On the post: NBC Universal Study Shows That It's Hollywood's Own Damn Fault So Much Content Is 'Pirated'

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2011 @ 03:22pm

    Re:

    That's absolute garbage. If there was a video service that offered:
    - on-demand access to all current cable TV programming
    - show subscriptions that alerted you to the availability of new episodes
    - pre-caching of content to allow watching while offline/downloading during windows of low internet activity (i.e. overnight)
    - access to your subscription from multiple devices (multiple TVs, desktop, netbook, tablet, smartphone etc)
    - the ability to transfer content between subscribed devices to avoid multiple redundant downloads
    - worldwide access to your subscription
    - immediate access to content as soon as it is available either on disc or on traditional television
    - a guarantee that a share of subscription funding would be distributed to show developers based on what you actually watch
    - recommendations of shows you might like based on what you already watch
    - a nice, responsive, platform appropriate UI

    You would get *plenty* of people signing up for a service like that, since it would be a *hell* of a lot more convenient than monitoring torrent search engines for new releases of shows you want to watch. But the networks are so obsessed with control and limiting what their customers can do, that they refuse to offer a service that is better than what is available for free.

  • On the post: Apple Trying To Run All Content Sales Through Its Own Sales System

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 01 Feb, 2011 @ 06:42pm

    Re: Control of market

    Because antitrust laws are based on how you define the market. Yes, Apple are control freaks, but they don't dominate any reasonably defined market sufficiently to be realistically vulnerable to antitrust complaints.

    If people don't like Apple's controlling nature, they can opt for friendlier ecosystems like Android or pure web apps.

  • On the post: How Facebook Dealt With The Tunisian Government Trying To Steal Every User's Passwords

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2011 @ 08:51pm

    Re: Face will soon have the option to always use HTTPS

    I've been running FB mostly over HTTPS via the HTTPSEverywhere Firefox addon, and it does have a few issues.

    Most noticeably, their chat widget doesn't work under HTTPS.

  • On the post: FranklinCovey Sending A Trademark C&D Over '7 Habits' Appears To Violate A Few Of The '7 Habits'

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2011 @ 08:25am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: He seems to be taking it in stride, though.

    I read OotS as well (and have a couple of the books), although updates are rather sporadic these days due to GitP's ongoing health problems.

    One of my favourites is actually Irregular Webcomic, and that's an example of a pure hobbyist web comic where the guy doing it isn't even *trying* to monetise it, but is up to 2922 strips (8 years) without missing a single day.

    XKCD has certainly been mentioned a few times around here as an example of a web comic creator that has successfully monetised free content, but it would definitely be interesting to see more an that front. That's one of the reasons I keep submitting Schlock as a possible case study - I'd really like to see the results of Mike interviewing Howard Tayler.

  • On the post: FranklinCovey Sending A Trademark C&D Over '7 Habits' Appears To Violate A Few Of The '7 Habits'

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2011 @ 07:57am

    Re: Re: He seems to be taking it in stride, though.

    Tayler also updated the in-universe origin story to reflect the original book, the comedy sketch that parodied it, and to take a couple of pot shots at Franklin Covey (aka Covetous Franklinstein) along the way:
    http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-11-21

  • On the post: FranklinCovey Sending A Trademark C&D Over '7 Habits' Appears To Violate A Few Of The '7 Habits'

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2011 @ 07:48am

    Re: He seems to be taking it in stride, though.

    Yeah, I posted in the comments on Blogunder Schlock to say that I actually liked the new name (The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries) better than the old one. Plenty of fun snark over in the blog comments about the fact it took FC more than eight and a half years to notice :)

    I've actually been a Schlock fan for ages (I have copies of all the books published so far, including the nice slip case for the first five) and have submitted it several times to TD as a great example of someone doing an extraordinary job of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy.

  • On the post: Crowdfunding Makes Sense… But Does Crowd Creative Decision Making?

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2011 @ 08:06pm

    Artists create the poll options

    I think you misread this one Mike: the artist gets to choose the *options* that go into the polls.

    Appropriately crafted polls, where the artists themselves don't have strong feelings either way and hence will be happy regardless of the crowd's choice, sound like an *excellent* way to make people feel involved.

    To use the Donnas example: "classic cover or new song" is a good question to ask their fans. Asking their fans which *specific* song to cover (if the decision goes that way) would likely be a bad question - better for the Donnas to pick one they particularly like and can play well.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2011 @ 11:09pm

    Re: Re:

    A feature that might be cool is a live (or semi-live) page on the website that ranked the insightful/funny posts.

    Filter to the posts in the most recent completed week by default, but allow the time range to be modified if desired.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2011 @ 11:05pm

    Re: Re:

    If you can reword a statement to say the opposite and have the facts support it equally well (or better), then it really doesn't say a lot for the original statement.

    And that's the point of this particular parody.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2011 @ 11:02pm

    Re: Re:

    I assume this is the AC that was accusing Mike of *making up* the funny/insightful ratings last week, as if that was somehow easier and more likely than the post judging buttons behaving exactly as advertised.

  • On the post: Band Tries To Take 'Open Source' Lessons To The Music World

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2011 @ 09:40pm

    Yeah, I think that article could have been much stronger if it acknowledged that were plenty of other people experimenting in this space.

    Jono is an interesting specific case, given his open source community management experience, but the article definitely comes across as being more than a little ignorant of the space he is moving into.

  • On the post: RIAA Threatening ICANN About .music; Claiming It Will Be Used To Infringe

    Nick Coghlan ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2011 @ 11:07pm

    Re: Re: I predict the return of the old fashioned sneakernet.

    Given that the media these days consists of USB keys and external hard drives, good luck stopping that.

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