Simon Chamberlain 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Hitler Rants Video About DMCA Takedowns Is Taken Down Itself

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2010 @ 05:50am

    Stats?

    Any stats on rental/sales after the parodies started appearing compared with before? I know I'd never heard of it before the parodies. [I agree 100% that the takedown is stupid, just curious if there's any firm evidence for the parodies providing benefits to the original work]

  • On the post: Some More Lowlights From The Leaked ACTA Draft: Whole Thing Can Be Rammed Through With 5 Votes

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2010 @ 03:20am

    Re: Re: Er?

    From Wikipedia Ratification article: "The treaty or legislation does not apply until it has been ratified. A multilateral agreement may provide that it will take effect upon its ratification by a specified number of signatories, rather than all. [snip]. A treaty in force does not apply to signatories that have not ratified it." In other words: less than 5 states ratify: the Treaty doesn't apply anywhere. 5 or more ratify, it applies to those states who have ratified it, but not to any who have signed it, but not yet ratified. So however many bad features this has, the 5 states requirement isn't one of them.

  • On the post: Is Streaming Really Replacing Downloading?

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2009 @ 02:50am

    Spotify

    I'm not sure if they are making money, but they are certainly adding huge numbers of songs to their database: every time I look at the blog, they've added more songs in the previous week than I have in my entire collection. I obviously aren't interested in all that music, but even so, there's a huge variety.

    I'm going to a small-scale festival next month and I'm checking out the bands on Spotify. So far, I've been able to find nearly everything I want. Like Duncan, I'm using Spotify more and more. My only issues are: sometimes my connection is too slow to stream properly, and (like Mike said in his reply) the risk that the industry will screw it up. But right now, it's near-perfect.

  • On the post: The Google Trends Suicide Watch

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2009 @ 02:38am

    There has been a bit of coverage in the UK about people going to a Swiss clinic in order to commit assisted suicide. See for example this story: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/after-54-years-together-they-decided-to-die-together-1746472.html which was on the front page of one of the 'quality' national papers yesterday.

    That *might* help account for the rise in interest in the UK.

  • On the post: UK Court Says No Right To Being An Anonymous Blogger

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 17 Jun, 2009 @ 05:12am

    Agree with previous posters. The BBC article isn't totally clear, but it does say that the Judge refused the blogger's injunction against the Times revealing his name. More information on the Times' website: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6509677.ece

  • On the post: Facebook? Suicide? That's All I Need… Don't Bother Me With Facts…

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 03 Feb, 2008 @ 10:40pm

    Bebo

    Not Facebook, Bebo. FWIW.

    Dumb article. Dumber comments in this thread.

  • On the post: Last.fm Joins The Crowd In Offering Not-Really-Free Music; Press Hypes It As New

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2008 @ 01:40pm

    Pandora is cool but...

    It doesn't let you choose what song you want to hear - it lets you define a station based on tags or on similarity to a given band/song. If I understand right, last.fm is allowing you to choose to hear a specific song (albeit only 3 times). Quite a difference.

    (Also, Pandora is US-only now, sadly for the rest of us).

  • On the post: Last.fm Joins The Crowd In Offering Not-Really-Free Music; Press Hypes It As New

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2008 @ 05:38pm

    Not to mention....

    That it's only available in the USA, UK and Germany. Three big markets, sure - but what about the rest of us?

    Actually though, this looks pretty good: not as amazing as some of the media are claiming, but still pretty good. I liked last.fm a lot when it was "just" a way to find new music and stream songs that were like a particular artist or genre. Adding in the ability to listen to specific songs makes their service more useful to me.

    In reply to AC at #6: last.fm will already let you find lots of non-top 40 music. Give it a try (or try pandora.com, if you're in the US).

  • On the post: Adults Encroach Upon Youth Turf Online

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2008 @ 12:12pm

    I'm with Stretchdog and others.

    I'm 35. I love using Facebook, many of my friends are on there, and I probably use it for similar reasons that most teens do (tho' maybe with fewer vampires/zombies).

    But I'm not sure why it's a problem for kids/teens if I'm on Facebook. Don't want to interact with me? Don't add me. Set your profile to private. Then do whatever the heck you like, and I won't be able to see it. Seems fairly simple, no?

  • On the post: The University Of Google Needs Better TAs

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2008 @ 01:11pm

    Students should use the appropriate source - which

    I'm an academic reference librarian, and I point students towards Google on occasion - because sometimes what they need will be found online (I'm thinking conference papers, especially). If you're looking for government information, that will often be online (and sometimes hard to get in print).

    Students should be taught to use appropriate sources, and to evaluate the information that they find. In some cases the best source is a book in the library. In some cases it is a library database. In some cases it is sources found via Google Scholar (which is improving a lot, though I still don't think it's as good as a subscription database). In some cases the best source will be found through Google (or Yahoo! or Ask). It's unlikely that Wikipedia will be the best source for anything, but the better WP articles will give you an overview of the topic, maybe links to primary sources, maybe keywords to use in searches or the names of key researchers.

    Telling students not to use a particular source is silly. Encouraging them to think about the best sources, and giving low grades to students who fail to do so, seems more productive to me.

  • On the post: Shocker: College Aged Folks Go To The Library

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2008 @ 07:17pm

    Hi Dennis,

    A slight misinterpretation in your post, I'm afraid:

    If you look at page 19 (of the PDF), you'll see that 53% of Americans visited a public library in the past 12 months. Not 13%. The study didn't look at college libraries, just public.

    The 13% figure comes from a survey question where Pew asked: "think of a recent problem you've had. Where did you go for information on this problem?". Here, 13% said libraries (58% used the internet). As a reference librarian, I'm saddened about the low figure for libraries, and it's definitely something we need to work on.

    Of those 13%, you're right to say that 65% used the internet at the library to help solve their problem: but 62% used computers to look up library resources, 58% used library reference materials, and 42% used newspapers and magazines, so clearly libraries are being used in multiple ways.

  • On the post: Another Musician Recognizing New Business Models

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 30 Dec, 2007 @ 03:26pm

    Just to add that Kristen hopes to open up the CASH Music model to other artists, as well.

    Also that fans can choose to donate via a tip jar if they don't want to subscribe; whether you donate or not, you can still download the songs as FLACs or MP3s. (Also interesting is the read/write model that high_noonan describes above).

  • On the post: The Second Stage Of The Radiohead Experiment

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2007 @ 06:59pm

    Plenty of people?

    "Plenty of people who knew little about the band now know a lot more and are talking about and listening to the new album"

    Are there really people out there who (a) don't know much about Radiohead, and (b) heard about this project and were motivated to check it out?

    I'm sure there were a few, like #10 - but "plenty"? What are you basing this on?

  • On the post: Congresswoman From LA Wants State Dept. To Promote American Movies At US Embassies

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2007 @ 11:15pm

    Yeah, why not?

    I'm not American, and this doesn't bother me. The local US Embassy hosts some really interesting presentations relevant to my profession, with some well-known and respected presenters.

    I don't see much of a difference between doing that and promoting American movies - Embassies of other countries promote their movies all the time, here. (OK, there's an argument that everyone already knows about Hollywood movies, that Hollywood is a big business that doesn't need govt assistance, whereas maybe Brazilian (say) films do - but overall I don't really see a problem with this).

  • On the post: Does The Mobile Phone Take Away Our Ability To Make Our Own Decisions?

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 11 Oct, 2004 @ 09:41pm

    Of course

    We are all also the "someone else" who gets called up to GIVE our advice. Seems like a good thing to me - I don't have a good eye for fashion or colour, so I ask someone else which shirt I should buy. OTOH, my friends trust my taste in music, so they ask me which CD they should buy. Seems more like we're becoming reliant on each other, rather than on advertising.

  • On the post: Vodafone Wants To Stop Text Bullies

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2004 @ 05:48pm

    No Subject Given

    Netsafe seems to me to be typical of the busybody organisations that want to blame the net for everything wrong in the world.

    They're also short on factual accuracy, see:
    http://www.netsafe.org.nz/copyright/copyright_default.asp

    "You may think it is OK to copy a track from a CD onto your hard drive, or convert it to an MP3. It is not ? that is a breach of copyright. You may think it is OK to share some of your MP3 files on your hard drive with your friends, but it is not. It is a breach of copyright. You may think that it is OK to use a file sharing program like Gnutella or Limewire and download MP3 files or movie files or any other files from other people on the Internet, but it is not. It is breach of copyright."

    (The first point is correct, under New Zealand copyright law as it currently stands (though probably not for much longer). The others: well, actually it *can* be alright to download files from people on the internet. You know, if they hold the copyright, and that sort of thing).

  • On the post: Living In A Digital World

    Simon Chamberlain ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2004 @ 03:31pm

    No Subject Given

    Well, a few people are predicting the end of books (see the recent comments from the President of Drexel University: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA426274?display=breakingNews).

    The main problem with the NY Times article is that it sets up a dichotomy between books and the free web, and assumes that all libraries have to offer is books. Whereas pretty much all libraries offer access to huge amounts of information in electronic form, information which isn't available on the free web but through subscription databases. I'm a library science student, and I hardly ever go to the library but I use it every day - I dial in to subscription databases via the library's website.

    It's by selecting, arranging, and providing access to this sort of material that libraries will remain relevant.