3 April 2008 @ 8:05AM >> Spam blogs, sometimes called “splogs,” are phony blogs set up to earn money by displaying ads. Splogs steal content from other sites so that they appear to the untrained eye as genuine blogs. When people conduct web searches, that stolen content drives traffic to the site, raising the revenue from advertising.

It’s a sleazy practice, and at times, I’ve seen posts from this site appear on splogs. Recently, I found a splog that copies text from this site, but it also does something new: it changes certain words in the post to modify the content slightly.

This page copied part of a post called Am I a Fair-Weather Friend of Free Speech?

I realize that by linking to the splog, I am helping them achieve their goal of increased traffic. Still, it’s an interesting development in the evolution of spam, and it seems worthy of note.

27 February 2008 @ 8:17PM >> The Economist has a fascinating article on how the Internet is changing Hollywood. Indoctrinate U gets a brief mention.

10 February 2008 @ 2:55AM >> Update: The review program has now ended. The offer below is no longer valid. If you’re interested in seeing the film, you can now download a copy from the Indoctrinate U online store.

---

Within a matter of days, we will be ready to launch the Indoctrinate U online store, where we will be offering the film for download as MPEG-4 files and ISO DVD files. MPEG-4 files are playable on Windows, Mac and Linux, and ISO files can also be used to create your own DVD copies of the film playable on virtually all home DVD equipment. All you need is a computer with a DVD burner, software capable of burning ISO files, and a blank DVD.

But before we open the store to the public, we will be offering free downloads of review copies to a limited number of bloggers who plan on publishing reviews of the film. If you’re interested in reviewing Indoctrinate U, please send your name (or online pseudonym), the name of your site, the site’s URL, and the e-mail address where you’d prefer to be contacted to this e-mail address:

reviews (at) indoctrinate-u (dot) com

When our online store launches, this offer will expire, so if you’re interested, e-mail us soon!

Oh yeah, non-blogger media folks are welcome, too.

2 January 2008 @ 8:57AM >> Two of my favorite creative minds in music—Thom Yorke and David Byrne—recently sat down to discuss the future of the music business. Last October, Yorke’s band Radiohead released its latest album, In Rainbows. But rather than releasing it through a traditional music label, Radiohead let fans download the music directly from its website. And rather than charging a fixed amount for the album, users were given the option of naming their own price—down to and including zero.

The sinking fortunes of the music industry establishment may have been instigated by technological change, but they are worsened by the industry’s unwillingness to let consumers buy music that isn’t locked to specific formats or media. It’s like peering into the future of the movie industry.

In both cases, you have industries whose fortunes have been protected for decades by the commingling of content and medium. Record albums weren’t just vinyl, they were vinyl with embedded music: the music couldn’t exist without the physical medium. As tapes replaced records and CDs replaced tapes, higher fidelity and increased convenience of each new format gave consumers a reason to re-purchase content that they already paid for in lesser formats. But when songs are stored as data and can be moved around like any other computer file, consumers will only ever need to buy one copy. As long as open formats are used, people will be able to play their music on any device devised in the future. There goes the upgrade gravy train.

Like the music industry, the film industry is rightfully concerned with piracy, because once music and movies aren’t tied to a physical medium, they can be copied endlessly. But consumers don’t care if this inconveniences the industry; people have shown that they want the convenience of digital content, and they are willing to pay for it. So the more that record companies lock down digital content in order to fight piracy, the less incentive legitimate customers have to buy the product in the first place. What good is the “music as a file” model if it is artificially burdened with the same limitations as physical media?

The movie business hasn’t been hurt by the shift away from physical media yet. But that’s only because technology hasn’t advanced far enough. It takes a lot more data to store a high-definition movie than an album’s worth of high-fidelity music. When a typical consumer’s Internet connection becomes fast enough to download high-definition full-length movies in a matter of minutes, the home market for movies will be subject to same technological dynamics affecting the music business today. And that future is only years away.

But that isn’t the film industry’s biggest problem right now. After all, people won’t pirate content that they don’t want to watch in the first place.

The problem with the film business is that too many insiders forgot that the rest of America doesn’t necessarily share the same view of the world as their friends in Hollywood. Instead, Hollywood has become its own echo chamber, which is why distributors keep pushing out flop after flop of military-bashing films. In Hollywood and at film festivals, such fare is highly praised. But in theaters around the country, the audience for films like Redacted is comprised mostly of empty seats. It’s almost as if Hollywood is producing films only for itself.

My experience in trying to get distribution for Indoctrinate U only confirms this. People in the film business just don’t take seriously the possibility that there’s a market for documentaries outside Hollywood’s typical Michael Moore/Al Gore worldview. I don’t know to what extent that’s out of political bias or the result of a simple Catch-22: they don’t see a market for anything different, but that’s because they’ve never tried distributing anything different.

That leaves us in the position of having to self-distribute Indoctrinate U. And because the Internet will allow us to put the film in people’s hands in the fastest, most cost-effective way possible, we’ll be able to conduct a little experiment of our own. Indoctrinate U will not be available on DVD right away. Instead, we’re going to focus our efforts on seeing whether the Internet can be used to route around the gatekeepers in Hollywood—without the shackles of physical media. (Although unlike Radiohead, I’m afraid, we’re not in a position to give our goods away for free.)

Who knows? Maybe the market can be proven without Hollywood’s help. I think it can. And once the market is proven, we’ll finally know who in the film business wants to serve customer desires instead of the dogma of Hollywood groupthink.

8 January 2007 @ 1:05PM >> A while back, I wrote about the Microsoft tax, the fee included in the price of nearly every personal computer that covers the cost of Microsoft Windows. The thing is, not everyone uses Windows. Some people (like me) use Macs, and therefore avoid the Microsoft tax altogether. But others use alternative operating systems like Linux.

Most people who use Linux manually install it on machines that came with Microsoft Windows pre-installed at the factory. If they remove Windows altogether, then they’ve ended up paying for a product that they’re not using. One intrepid Linux user tried to get a refund from Dell after removing Windows from his computer. Believe it or not, he was successful, and he outlines the steps that others can follow to avoid paying the Microsoft tax.

8 December 2006 @ 8:59AM >> E-mail as we know it today is facing certain death. Not at the hands of a newer technology that provides more features, but because the software protocols that drive Internet e-mail today are causing us to be buried in mountains of unwanted e-mail spam. More >>

20 October 2006 @ 8:45AM >> First, they came for the satellite dishes. Now they come for the broadband Internet connections:

Iran’s Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links.
In a blow to the country’s estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran’s telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.

You’ve got to wonder about a government that believes the only way to survive is to cut off its citizens from the outside world.

19 October 2006 @ 5:25PM >> Even fictional currencies in virtual words are within the reach of the taxman:

Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities.

“Right now we’re at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise — taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth,” said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

“You could argue that to a certain degree the law has fallen (behind) because you can have a virtual asset and virtual capital gains, but there’s no mechanism by which you’re taxed on this stuff,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The increasing size and public profile of virtual economies, the largest of which have millions of users and gross domestic products that rival those of small countries, have made them increasingly difficult for lawmakers and regulators to ignore.

...in much the same way that a weekend invitation to the Kennedy compound is hard for alcoholic philanderers to ignore.

16 October 2006 @ 12:13PM >> When readers of this site hear that an old media company is embracing virtual reality, it might conjure up memories of Dan Rather and some not-quite-real documents. But in this case, one of the oldest media companies in the world is breaking new ground by dedicating a full-time reporter to covering the economic happenings within a virtual universe called Second Life:

In preparing to open a Reuters bureau on a bustling island, Adam Pasick has been introducing himself to residents and interviewing entrepreneurs. After finishing such interviews, Mr. Pasick often levitates for a moment, then flies over buildings.

Mr. Pasick, a Reuters technology reporter who was formerly earthbound with the news agency, is heading up Reuters’ first virtual news bureau inside the online role-playing game Second Life. While many independent journalists and bloggers have published inside such virtual worlds, Reuters is the first established news agency to dispatch a full-time reporter to do so.

[...]

“The fact that it’s in a virtual world doesn’t change things as much as you’d think,” said Mr. Pasick, 30, a Michigan native based in London. “It’s not any different than when Reuters opens up a bureau in a part of the world that has a fast-growing economy that we weren’t in before. The laws of supply and demand hold true, it has a currency exchange, people open businesses and get paid for goods and services.”

Scientific American has more:

Created by Linden Lab in San Francisco, Second Life is the closest thing to a parallel universe existing on the Internet. Akin to the original city-building game SimCity, Second Life is a virtual, three-dimensional world where users create and dress up characters, buy property and interact with other players.

More than 900,000 users have signed up to build homes, form neighborhoods and live out alternative versions of their lives in the 3D, computer-generated world. Players spend around US$350,000 a day on average, or a rate of $13 million a year. Usage is growing in rapid double-digit terms each month.

Players buy and sell goods and services using a virtual currency, known as Linden Dollars. An online marketplace allows users to convert the currency into real U.S. dollars, enabling users to earn real money from their activities.

Adam Pasick, a Reuters’ media correspondent based in London, will serve as the news organization’s first virtual bureau chief, using a personal avatar, or animated character, called “Adam Reuters,” in keeping with the game’s naming system.

“As strange as it might seem, it’s not that different from being a reporter in the real world,” Pasick said. “Once you get used to it — it becomes very much like the job I have been doing for years.”

Over the last month, I’ve been helping Reuters launch their presence in Second Life; I was brought in as an outside consultant and was responsible for much of the programming work. It’s been a fun gig, and has helped me fill the downtime while we work out distribution kinks with the upcoming film Indoctrinate U.

But what I found most intriguing is that an old-school company like Reuters would even consider embracing virtual reality, much less with this level of commitment. Ten years ago, such a move would likely have been met with derision by other establishment media companies. But covering online communities like Second Life makes sense: there’s real economic activity, and there are important issues to cover—such as how real-world laws will be applied to environments like Second Life.

It’s a sign of a changing world...both real and virtual.

16 September 2006 @ 9:31PM >> Glenn Reynolds has some advice for vendors of electronic media:

Get this straight content providers: Our computers belong to us. If we’re in the mood, we might let you sell us some stuff to run on them. But they don’t belong to you, and we’re not likely to surrender control over our own bought-and-paid-for hardware, which we often rely on to do our jobs and run our lives, simply in exchange for letting you sell us something. (Honestly, most of what you’re selling isn’t all that good anyway, and you’re lucky that people buy it at all. So don’t get greedy. And while click-through license agreements may make it legal, they won’t make you any more popular.)

8 August 2006 @ 2:49PM >> Giant Robot Imprisons Parked Cars

4 August 2006 @ 12:15AM >> Microsoft’s next operating system—Windows Vista—is still not ready for prime-time. At least that’s the view of three prominent Microsoft watchers who have been testing pre-release versions of the system.

Paul Thurrott was once viewed at Microsoft’s main online cheerleader, although he might be losing that title:

I’ve been working with Microsoft OS betas for over 12 years now, and while it’s very clear that Vista hasn’t exactly followed a trajectory that’s at all similar to any of the other betas, it’s also true that each OS beta has its own vibe. We might call Windows Vista a “train wreck” for simplicity’s sake.

Robert McLaws writes:

I’ve been defending Microsoft’s ship schedule for Windows Vista for quite some time. Up to this point, I’ve been confident that Vista would be at the quality level it needs to be by RC1 to make the launch fantastic. Having tested several builds between Beta 2 and today, I hate to say that I no longer feel that way.

And former Microsoft employee Robert Scoble adds:

This sucker is just not ready. Too many things are too slow and/or don’t work. I’ve been on the betas of every Windows OS since Windows 3.1 and Vista is starting to feel good, but it doesn’t feel good enough to release to the factory in October. It feels like it needs a good six more months than that, which would mean a mid-year release next year.

In other news, expect some major announcements from Apple next week.

25 June 2006 @ 1:04PM >> “Bill” writes to ask about spam:

Why does spam (and email subjects of spam) have such nonsensical words inserted? I got an e-mail that included: “Colette was at deforestation when that happened baboon. trout at nocturne or even handicapped as in ding”

It has to do with the fact that many anti-spam systems rely on keywords for determining whether an e-mail should be considered spam. These programs assign spam probabilities to each word, so that some words are weighted as more likely to signal spam than others. If the overall e-mail contains a high proportion of spam words, or if it passes a certain threshold of spam words, it is more likely to get trapped in anti-spam filters.

So often, spammers will use programs that insert snippets of random sentences from other sources or other random combinations of benign words. The intent is to end up with an e-mail that is less likely to be flagged as spam.

19 June 2006 @ 4:08PM >> A number of readers have been sending links to coverage of proposed “net neutrality” regulations being considered by Congress. If you haven’t been following the debate, net neutrality is one of two things—depending on which argument you find more convincing:

1. A way to prevent Internet bandwidth providers—typically cable companies, telephone companies, or ISPs like Earthlink—from providing improved or degraded service between you and websites like Google. Some bandwidth providers are essentially trying to extort companies like Google into paying to prevent the site’s traffic from being routed through slower Internet lanes. But Google is already paying for all the data it sends to you, and you are already paying for all the data you receive. So why should Google have to pay again for what two parties are already paying for, just to prevent its site from being demoted to the slow lane?
2. A regulation that prevents Internet bandwidth providers from managing capacity effectively and according to market demands. Some traffic needs to go through the networks faster—video, for instance—and throwing all the traffic together can create bottlenecks. So, if you want to be able to watch high-quality video without dropouts, you’re going to need special “lanes” set aside for the traffic that needs to be delivered within a certain time. People already pay premiums for faster delivery with FedEx, so why can’t bandwidth providers offer similar services?

You can tell you’re in propaganda-land when neither argument really addresses the other.

It is true that special applications like high-quality video-on-demand require prioritized delivery of data. This requires a certain amount of bandwidth to be set aside for delivery of that data. This really only becomes an issue when a certain part of the network gets saturated. In order to guarantee delivery of high-priority data, there will be times when delivery of lower-priority data must be delayed. Only so much data can be pushed through Internet pipes at any given time. Other limited resources tend to go to the highest bidder. Why should data networks be immune to the basic laws of capitalism?

On the other hand, it is also true that the Googles of the world are essentially being told by bandwidth providers, “Pay up, or it might take a while for people to get to your website through our pipes.” Fearful of jacking up prices on end-users, bandwidth providers are going to the deep pockets and playing the Yahoos of the world off the Googles. So instead of high-priority service being a voluntary choice made by consumers, bandwidth providers sound like they’re trying to start a data protection racket.

In The Weekly Standard, Andy Kessler declares that there’s “no one to root for in the net neutrality debate”:

Telcos and cable companies have no choice but to lobby for legislation that bars neutrality. Because without the ability to extract money from the webbies for the use of their not-so-fast Alexander Graham Bell-era wires (forget that you and I already overpay for this), AT&T or Verizon might not have any business model going forward. With no real competition, they’d rather keep U.S. telecommunications in the Flintstone era and overcharge for calls to Grandma than upgrade their networks. Since 1998, telecommunications companies have outspent computer and Internet firms on politicians $231 million to $71 million, just to keep the status quo.

Hate to break the news, but your “fast” DSL Internet access is no longer considered high speed. In parts of the world, cell phones are faster. Have you wondered why Internet video doesn’t fill your computer monitor and look like a DVD, but instead is pixelated dreck in a tiny one or two inch square? Well, Comcast is dragging its heels, too. With better video over the Internet, who would want E!, let alone the Style Network? [...]

But the answer is not regulations imposing net neutrality. You can already smell the mandates and the loopholes once Congress gets involved. Think special, high-speed priority for campaign commercials or educational videos about global warming. Or roadblocks—like requiring emergency 911 service—to try to kill off free Internet telephone services such as Skype. [...]

A truly competitive, non-neutral network could work, but only if we know its real economic value. If telcos or cable charge too much, someone should be in a position to steal the customer. Maybe then we’d see useful services and a better Internet. Sounds like capitalism.

What new things? It’s not just more bandwidth and better Internet video—how about no more phone numbers, just a name and the service finds you? How about subscribing to a channel and being able to watch it when and where you want, on your TV, iPod, or laptop? How about a baby monitor you can view through your cell phone? Something worth paying for. And that’s just the easy stuff.

The problem isn’t lack of regulation of the Internet, it’s too much regulation in the telephone and cable industries.

All regulations are written according to a set of business assumptions that existed at a specific time. But business and technology are dynamic, ever-changing environments. Government regulations lock in one set of assumptions, so once the environment changes and those assumptions no longer apply, the regulations stifle innovation and keep the old ways in place.

Businesses that fear change—such as companies that have billions of dollars invested in old technology like copper wires and coax cables—then use those regulations to block competition, which leads to the stagnation. Why aren’t we seeing more Internet delivery innovation? My connection at home is the same speed it was five years ago. But everything else from my laptop to my iPod are twice as fast and hold ten times as much. Why is that? Maybe part of the reason is that the government doesn’t micromanage the computer industry the way it does the telecom industry.

The current system may be broken, or at least imperfect. But I don’t know if the solution is to write into law more lofty ideas that will be soon be based on outdated variables. Let’s get rid of the obsolete laws first. Open up the cable and phone companies to real competition. Then, we all might have so much bandwidth for such a cheap price that we won’t need to worry about net neutrality. If the high-priority lanes are 100x faster, are we really going to complain if everything else is only 50x faster?

This problem is easily solved by abundance. We just need to create an economic environment that encourages it.

2 June 2006 @ 12:38AM >> Computerworld columnist Scot Finnie has been running the latest pre-release version of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista operating system. He’s compiled a list of 20 gripes with Vista, and draws this conclusion:

Where does Windows Vista fit among many of the PC-based operating systems of today and the last couple of decades? With Beta 2 running on multiple test units, I feel comfortable predicting that Windows Vista will not outpace Mac OS X Tiger for overall quality and usability. It’s hard to beat Apple’s top-notch GUI design grafted onto an implementation of Unix variant BSD. Mac OS X has excellent reliability, security and usability. That isn’t to say that the user interface wouldn’t gain if Apple adopted some other best ideas of the day, but Apple has the best operating system this year, last year and next year. It’ll be interesting to see what the company delivers in its 10.5 Leopard version of Mac OS X.

Meanwhile, I’m placing Windows Vista as a distant second-best to OS X. I see Linux and Windows 2000 as being roughly tied another notch or two below Vista, with XP being only a half step better than Win 2000.

So, why is the year-old Mac OS X Tiger so much better than Windows Vista, which Microsoft won’t even ship before January 2007? It isn’t that Apple has put more effort into its operating system; Microsoft has mounted a gargantuan effort on Windows Vista. It’s that the two companies have very different goals. I’ve come to believe that Microsoft has lost touch with its user base.

That last point is absolutely true. For more than a decade, Microsoft seemed to design products more to fortify its monopoly position than to address the needs of actual customers. This led to some short-term benefits for the company (Netscape Navigator once owned the web browser market, and now Microsoft’s Internet Explorer does) but it has also led to long-term pain both for the company and customers (flaws in Internet Explorer made the product a major vehicle for delivering computer viruses, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security advises people to avoid the program).

And now, new revelations about Microsoft’s sales practices show an outright abuse of existing customers:

[A] Microsoft manager named Janet Lawless sent a series of increasingly threatening letters to Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., about how Frantz’s company appeared to be using unlicensed software and how Microsoft wanted the issue resolved.

Frantz figured this was about his Microsoft software licenses, so he kept offering evidence that he was in compliance. Tennant concluded that Lawless was trying to intimidate Frantz to land a software deal.

They were both wrong. It’s sleazier than they imagined.

See, Janet Lawless doesn’t work for a part of Microsoft that enforces licenses. Frantz thought she did. You’d think so too if you got a letter saying “a preliminary review ... indicates that your company may not be licensed properly,” then a follow-up saying “since this is a compliance issue, I am obligated to notify an officer of Auto Warehousing of the situation and the significant risk your organization may be subject to by not resolving this situation in a timely manner.”

Lawless kept insisting that Microsoft should send a consultant to Auto Warehousing to inventory its software.

But Lawless doesn’t enforce licenses. The clue is her title: She’s an engagement manager. That’s right — Lawless’s job is to drum up business for Microsoft’s consulting operation. In this case, that’s Microsoft’s software asset management consulting business.

This wasn’t about confirming license compliance or about a software deal. It was about securing Microsoft a paid consulting gig.

In other words, Microsoft is using the implied threat of legal action against its own customers in order to coerce those customers into buying consulting services from Microsoft. Classy!

Windows Vista is still pre-release software, so it may yet improve. But they’re going to have to start finalizing it soon in order to make the target ship date of January 2007. And considering Vista is getting panned by some of Microsoft’s biggest cheerleaders, the operating system that’s been six years in the making may end up being a disaster of Ishtar proportions. Of course, whether competitors would be able to take advantage of it is another story.

What would cause Microsoft to start failing? Has it developed such a corrosive corporate culture that it’s simply incapable of developing products that customers want? It’s hard to create great software when your design decisions are geared more towards stifling competitors than satisfying customer needs. Companies that lose sight of the customer do so at their own peril.

26 May 2006 @ 11:38PM >> Are these truly The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time? Judge for yourself. I’m going to keep my mouth shut, because I have friends who’ve worked on some of those projects, and I wouldn’t mind remaining friends.

Meanwhile, here’s a decision bound to appear on a future update to that list: Hollywood studios have reportly decided that the next generation of DVDs, new formats created to bring high-definition (HD) video to HDTVs, will eventually be rigged to not output HD-quality video to some HDTVs. Why? Because Hollywood wants your TV to have built-in copy protection circuitry.

So, even if you bought a brand-new, state-of-the-art flat screen HDTV today, future HD DVD players may not support the HD quality the name implies. You might think you’re buying HD; whether or not you get it is another story.

If you have an HDTV with what’s called an HDMI connector, you should be OK. But if your set relies on any other type of jack, it looks like you’ll eventually be out of luck. The only question is when.

17 April 2006 @ 9:50AM >> If this device had been invented earlier, Al Gore or John Kerry could be living in the White House today.

28 March 2006 @ 3:16AM >> My very first post to Brain Terminal, on August 22nd, 2001, covered Microsoft and its effects on the software industry. As a software developer who witnessed the rise of Microsoft from within the industry, I saw how the company’s dominance stifled innovation in virtually every market the company touched. Microsoft could simply announce a product—even if the company never actually intended to ship that product—and “freeze” the market as risk-averse technology purchasers held off on buying existing third-party products while waiting for Microsoft’s vaporware.

Now it appears that Microsoft’s size is stifling innovation within the company itself. And that is prompting some employees to start calling publicly (but anonymously) for the firing of Microsoft’s top management.

Beyond a certain size, it seems that all institutions become increasingly inefficient. Businesses at least face an incentive to be efficient: if they’re not, they risk diminished market status, the wrath of shareholders, and possibly even extinction. Perhaps these incentives will save Microsoft from its downward slide. Too bad no such incentives exist for government institutions, where inefficiency can always be papered over by handing taxpayers a bigger bill.

8 March 2006 @ 12:46PM >> London’s Daily Mail reports:

Surfing the Internet is now more popular than watching television, according to new figures.

On average, adults in Britain spend more time online at their computers - 41.5 days a year - than in front of the TV.

Government figures from the Office of National Statistics show that we spend just 37.5 days a year watching television.

It is believed to be the first time that using the Internet has overtaken what was traditionally seen as the nation’s favourite pastime.

Two-thirds of the survey respondents indicated that they spend an increasing amount of time online every year.

I suspect this trend is not limited to Britain, and it will be magnified as more people come online and as high-speed broadband connections become increasingly available.

This means that establishment media audiences will continue to become fragmented, and that there is a tremendous opportunity for distributing new content online. The traditional gatekeepers will find fewer and fewer people lining up at the gates.

5 March 2006 @ 5:52PM >> Ed Driscoll has posted an interview with me on do-it-yourself video production.

25 February 2006 @ 11:38AM >> Reader Matt Walliser writes:

Evan,

Recent news about iTunes hitting their billionth download made me think a little more about your post a while back about the recording industry not adapting to new mediums. If they’re not careful, they’ll obsolete themselves to Apple’s iTunes. Apple has made it so convenient to get music onto your iPod, that people don’t seem to mind paying a buck for a song. The lawsuits brought forth by the RIAA agianst people who download music can only serve to push people towards iTunes. If Apple creates their own label and plays their cards right, they could have channel dominance from top to bottom. The best part is, it’s being handed to them by the very channel they’re about displace!

While I’d hate for any one company to completely control music distribution, the massive success of iTunes is a wake-up call to an industry that has been hitting the snooze button on every previous wake-up call since the dawn of the Internet era. Maybe this time, the industry will pay attention.

24 February 2006 @ 9:17AM >> Over at TCS Daily, Ed Driscoll takes a look at the state of independent online video and declares that the days of the one-man TV network are “coming soon.”

Ed interviewed me for the piece, and I obligingly supplied him with this rah-rah quote:

Ten years ago, the expense associated with putting together even the most rudimentary online video would have put it out of reach for most people. Even if you had your own camera, you probably didn’t have video editing software or a computer capable of running it. If you did have access to an editing suite, then you probably didn’t have sufficient bandwidth to make the resulting video available online. And even with unlimited bandwidth, the people on the other end — the potential viewers — probably didn’t have enough bandwidth to watch what you made. Today, however, none of those are limiting factors. You can buy a usable consumer-level DV camera for around $500. You can buy a “pro-sumer” DV camera for under $3000. You can even shoot in high-definition HDV for under $5000.

And near-ubiquitous bandwidth availability is also a factor. Although high-speed broadband has been available in most corporations for a few years, broadband is just beginning to penetrate the home market in large numbers. This means that we’re really at the very beginning stages of mass viewing of online videos. We haven’t hit the inflection point yet, but I suspect we’ll see, within a few years, the same massive growth with online video that we saw with the web in the mid-1990s. Eventually, maybe 10 years from now, we’ll have full-screen, full-motion on-demand high-definition video available directly to the home [via the Web]. That’s the ideal video delivery platform, and if we’re still a decade away, it means there’s plenty of room to grow in this market.

My favorite quote from the piece, however, is Driscoll’s closing: “If Dan Rather could host a TV show for 25 years, why not you?”

3 February 2006 @ 9:33AM >> Since the beginning of the year, both Microsoft and Google have seen self-inflicted public relations disasters stem from their decisions to censor political content deemed inconvenient by the Chinese government. Now, Microsoft has decided to make own employees over its abrupt censoring of a Chinese blogger, Microsoft Corp. has formulated a new policy to deal with requests from a government that alleges that posted material violates its laws.

The measures were detailed by Microsoft’s top lawyer, Brad Smith, at the Government Leaders Forum in Lisbon today.

Smith said Microsoft will remove blogs only when given proper legal notice. And even then, it will block access to that material only within the country where it is deemed unlawful. The site will still be viewable from outside the country, he said.

[...]

“Obviously, what we are trying to do with the kinds of principles we articulated today is ... obey the law in the countries in which we do business but also pay appropriate respect to the needs of our users, both those who put information up on a blog and those who want to read that information around the world,” Smith said.

10 January 2006 @ 3:50AM >> At Slate, Edward Jay Epstein discusses the future of movie distribution and what won’t likely be in it: the Blockbuster rental chain. Interesting timing, because this weekend, I noticed that the Blockbuster store closest to me is now empty and dismantled. That’s the second nearby Blockbuster to close since I moved into this neighborhood, and for all I know, none are left in Manhattan. Four other area video stores closed within the past year as well. And come to think of it, I haven’t seen a new video store open up within the last decade.

When I first moved into my apartment, I joined a local video store and rented some Woody Allen film. On the way to work one day, I went to return the tape. Surprisingly, the video store that I joined just two days earlier was completely gutted. But the drop-slot remained operational, so I put it to use. Down slid the tape case, and falling on the no-longer-carpeted floor, it popped open and the tape tumbled out.

The following day, I walked by the store again and noticed that the building’s roof was missing, as were the internal walls. The floor was covered in debris, but I could still see that Woody Allen tape sitting there on the floor, covered in sunlight and a fresh coat of dust. By the end of the week, the entire building was gone. Who knows where that tape is now...

It looks like the entire brick-and-mortar video rental business will be following the same fate, and maybe soon. We’re witnessing the death of an entire category of retailers. When was the last time that happened?

8 January 2006 @ 9:29PM >> Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and his wife Dr. Helen Smith have begun a podcast series. The inaugural podcast contains interviews with commentator Michelle Malkin and musician Audra Coldiron of Audra and the Antidote.

Earlier today, Stuart Browning and I were interviewed by Glenn and Helen for a future podcast. We discussed the digital video revolution, Internet video distribution, our production company On The Fence Films, Stuart’s short film Dead Meat on the Canadian healthcare system, and the latest developments with our upcoming film Indoctrinate U. That podcast may appear as early as next week. I’ll post a link when it does.

3 January 2006 @ 1:48PM >> Is Microsoft helping the Chinese communists suppress speech that they don’t like? It sure sounds that way.

Reporter Rebecca MacKinnon tells the story of Zhao Jing who blogs under the handle “Michael Anti.” MacKinnon notes that “Anti is one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptible.” His blog, hosted on Microsoft’s MSN Spaces website, was recently shut down, apparently by Microsoft. So MacKinnon conducted her own tests, and discovered that MSN Spaces is systematically censoring words and removing blogs thought to be threatening to the Chinese regime:

On December 16th I created a blog and attempted to make various posts with politically sensitive words. When I attempted to post entries with titles like “Tibet Independence” or “Falun Gong” (a banned religious group), I got an error message saying: “This item includes forbidden language. Please delete forbidden language from this item.”

However I was successful in posting blog entries with non-controversial titles, but with politically sensitive words in the text body. For instance, a blog post titled “I love you” had “Tibet independence” in the text body, and a post titled “I am happy” had “Falun Gong” in the body [...]

This was on Friday December 16th. By Monday the 19th, the whole blog had been taken down [...] with an error message: “This space is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

Now, It is VERY important to note that the inaccessible blog was moved or removed at the server level and that the blog remains inaccessible from the United States as well as from China. This means that the action was taken NOT by Chinese authorities responsible for filtering and censoring the internet for Chinese viewers, but by MSN staff at the level of the MSN servers.

2 January 2006 @ 9:36PM >> A rap video spoof by a pair of Saturday Night Live veterans has become something of an Internet hit.

I can see why. It’s funny and different.

And it makes you wonder about the future of broadcast. Tivo and other DVRs give SNL an opportunity to be seen by people who are otherwise not in front of their TVs on a Saturday night, but the Internet got this video in front of people who aren’t in the habit of recording the show in the first place. That’s the way you build an audience.

It’s just another example of the increasingly blurred line between online and broadcast video. Can full-catalog video-on-demand via the Internet be far behind?

5 December 2005 @ 12:59PM >> A systems analyst recently discovered that Sony’s CD copy protection scheme can damage your computer’s operating system installation and leave your system vulnerable to hackers. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security took notice, leading to a rebuke from Stewart Baker, the department’s assistant secretary for policy, who chastised Sony: “It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer.”

8 November 2005 @ 10:38AM >> Senator Norm Coleman describes the threat:

It sounds like a Tom Clancy plot. An anonymous group of international technocrats holds secretive meetings in Geneva. Their cover story: devising a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web. Does it sound too bizarre to be true? Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does.

The Internet faces a grave threat. We must defend it. We need to preserve this unprecedented communications and informational medium, which fosters freedom and enterprise. We can not allow the U.N. to control the Internet.

Absolutely. Any organization that lets Libya, China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia sit on its Commission on Human Rights clearly can’t be trusted to keep the Internet free. Do we really want the likes of Fidel Castro having a say in what is and is not acceptable online discourse?

4 November 2005 @ 12:16PM >> Three years ago, I warned about music CDs that were deliberately corrupted by manufacturers in order to prevent copying. Because such CDs were really not CDs at all—they violate the published standard for music CDs—some computers had trouble handling them, and the corrupted discs could cause those computers to crash.

Now Sony Music, in an attempt to stem piracy, is putting out a new form of CD containing copy protection code that hides itself on your computer. The software, which is technologically similar to spyware and computer viruses, has no uninstall feature, and attempting to remove it manually can render your CD drive inoperable.

The Washington Post reports:

The CDs in question make use of a technique employed by software programs known in security circles as “rootkits,” a set of tools attackers can use to maintain control over a computer system once they have broken in.

People may differ over what exactly a rootkit is, but the most basic ones are designed to ensure that regular PC monitoring commands and tools cannot see whatever has been planted on the victim’s machine. Because rootkits generally get their hooks into the most basic level of an operating system, it is sometimes easier (and safer) to reformat the affected computer’s hard drive than to surgically remove the intruder.

Sony’s anti-piracy program installer pops up when you drop one of these content-protected CDs into your drive. If you agree to install it, there is no “uninstall” feature. [Mark Russinovich, who discovered Sony’s rootkit software,] was able to use his knowledge of rootkits and the Windows operating system to zero in on the offending driver files needed to run the software. Unfortunately, he found that removing the program also erased the system files that power his CD-ROM drive, rendering it useless.

Russinovich also discovered that the Sony program drivers are configured to load themselves in “Safe Mode” (a diagnostic mode of Windows that is useful for fixing problems with the operating system), which he said could make system recovery extremely difficult if any of the program drivers has a bug that prevents the system from booting.