Moving from Units to Eunuchs Misc.10/3/2000; 2:17:46 PM 'Since this minimum per-unit cost is best spread over a large number of titles (the "economies of scale" effect), the current system favors a handful of major labels, all of which are stuck with roughly the same magnitude of distribution costs. 'The Internet upends all of that, because payment for distribution has been completely decoupled from the data delivered. Your monthly ISP bill doesn’t fluctuate, whether you download every Grateful Dead MP3 ever made or only send email to your mother on Sundays. When compared to the physical world, there is no such thing as online "distribution," in that Sony and Time Warner can’t base their markup on the costs of delivery....'Sometime in the next 12 months, someone with a large enough catalog of popular entertainment–probably music, because video isn’t yet ready for prime time–is going to begin an online price war. When that happens, all the players will quickly realize that the old pricing models no longer apply.... once the change begins, look for it to be swifter than almost anyone imagines.'Excellent article.

Web-chopping comes home to the desktop Content Integrity10/3/2000; 1:36:20 PM 'These programs, with names like DoDots, Snippets, Yodlee, Onepage and Octopus, are actually browsers on steroids that put the user in charge of the Internet experience by providing a set of tools which allow the surfer to copy and paste content from an infinite number of web sites into one personally-designed web page.... Octopus even allows users to post their personally designed web-pages on the site, so that people with similar interests can use the new design rather than have to create their own version.'What users do on their own systems is basically up-to-them; publishing the slicing & dicing instructions goes to far, but I've been over that already. What's interesting is this quote at the end: 'Analyst Jakob Nielsen is convinced that these new technologies will force content providers to come up with new concepts for revenue - such as setting up arrangements with ISP's or charging subscriptions or micro-payments.'A reminder that if you abuse a system, it can change. If you have to pay to access it ceases to be such a big deal to construct 'personalized' home pages, because as long as people get their money, they tend to be happy.

Will Personalization Be The End of Editorial Integrity? Personal Commentary10/3/2000; 1:21:46 PM I hold in my hands the latest issue of the Official Dreamcast Magazine... covering the Dreamcast, which is the latest & greatest video gaming console put out by Sega. Contained inside this magazine are:

  • Dreamcast news & editorials
  • Reviews of Dreamcast games
  • Advertising by the third-party manufacturors about their Dreamcast games and perhipherals
This is hardly an unusual magazine; there are niche magazines for every sport imaginable, every animal imaginable, every class of hardware and quite a few specific products, etc. Each of those niche magazines face the editorial integrity issue: How can we write with integrity on the very same topics that we must sell advertising for?I picked out the video game magazine because of the large number of reviews it has; most PC publications have faced the same review problem. How can we negatively review somebody's product when we depend on that company's advertising revenue? When it boils down to it, we have to take the fairness of the reviews on trust, with most magazines either finding some balance or dying due to lack of subscribers. You can also look for sources of reviews that aren't dependent on the advertising revenue of that particular type of product, because of the broad base of reviews done, like Consumer Reports. But as we enter the age of ultra-personalization, content will be divided finer and finer, and the natural effect of this division is to move the advertising even closer to the content, until you get to the point where every fishing pole review will be accompied solely by advertising for fishing poles (or fishing equipment at the very least), even if the New York Times is doing the review. The inability to target advertising at such a fine level provided shelters for editorial integrity, where it is clear that the reviewer is not recieving money (and conflicts of interest) from the reviewed topic. Thus, while there may still be entities performing broad bases of reviews, they will effectively be exactly like the niche market targetters.Will one of the effects of personalization be to render large organizations perpetually in thrall to the advertisers? If not, what will be created to combat this tendancy? (Personal websites probably aren't the entire answer; sites large enough to obtain enough credibility to seem trusted will find it increasingly desirable to sell advertisements... for instance, Tom's Hardware.)

Napster Case: Hard Queries on Copyrights
Music & MP3
10/3/2000; 12:58:07 PM 'The exchange today created a sharply different courtroom atmosphere from that of two months ago when a lower court ordered Napster to stop aiding the exchange of copyrighted music. That court's preliminary injunction was quickly stayed, setting the stage for today's hearing, during which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered whether to reinstate the injunction pending trial.'

I like the tone of what I'm hearing much more then I liked the tone of Judge Patel's case. I think Patel's decision was a strong knee-jerk reaction in favor of Big Money over those Upstart Thieving Punks. As long as we see an honest considered opinion rendered by this court, with an eye out for the future and what effects this decision will have, I will be happy. Based on this story, I think that we can at least hope for a considered opinion from this court.

China Clamps Down On Internet Country Watch: China10/3/2000; 12:48:33 PM 'It was National Day in China on Monday, the start of a weeklong holiday, and the government chose the occasion to lay down the Internet law...'The code holds websites responsible for blocking vast categories of content, from pornography and gambling to any kind of political commentary the Communist Party views as threatening....'"The government wants to increase foreign trade, not foreign ideas," [Steve Schwankert, the managing editor at internet.com] said. "ISPs have always been under the microscope. Apparently they just switched to a much higher-power lens."'

Barnes & Noble Challenge 1-Click Preliminary Injunction
Patents
10/3/2000; 12:17:52 PM 'Amazon.com Inc.'s fight to bar rival Barnes&Noble.com Inc. from using a patented single-click online purchasing method goes before a federal appeals court, which will hear arguments today in a case that could shape the future of Internet business.'

Slashdot's coverage includes some insightful comments, including one person pointing out that this is not a challenge to the patent directly, but a challenge to the preliminary finding in favor's of Amazon's suit to stop B&N from using "one-click" shopping, which the story does not make clear.

Boom Box Technology & Sociology10/3/2000; 10:09:26 AM 'On any time line that describes this phase of capitalism, you would have to include (in addition to Nov. 9, 1989) April 4, 1994 (birthday of Netscape), Nov. 10, 1994 (birthday of Amazon.com), May 5, 1996 (birthday of eBay) -- and Aug. 4, 1997. Aug. 4, 1997, was the beginning of the end of another socialistic force in American life: the mass market. Forty years from now when you have your grandson on your knee and he asks you, "Grandma, how did 50 million Americans ever let themselves be talked into buying the same mouthwash?" you will say, "Well, you have to know how things were before Aug. 4, 1997."'Granted, this isn't exactly about the Internet, but it's strongly related to the same basic trends.

Napster Vs. RIAA resumes today
Music & MP3
10/2/2000; 9:10:45 AM FYI, expect a load of Napster/RIAA posts to resume as one of the more interesting cases resumes in court.

Public Debate Between Valenti and Lessig
Misc.
10/1/2000; 10:33:06 PM A public debate between Lawrence Lessig, law professor and internet activist, and Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA has occurred, which this Slashdot story chronicles.

The debate has been archived. I haven't listened yet, and I don't know if I will find the time, but it is likely to be extremely interesting.

Contact: How Much Is Enough? Technology & Sociology10/1/2000; 10:37:09 AM This is not a news article, this is a brief essay by me.Dave recently shut down discuss.userland.com, and I think it no coincidence that today (don't be surprised if it gets pulled into a DaveNet without me noticing) we get a highly personal statement of interests, and what amounts to a ringing condemnation to the entire tech industry (because it takes corruption on both the part of the company and the press to offer bribes for good press).Discuss.userland.com probably would have flared up over this; I'm reading between the lines but is it really a stretch to say that Dave might be more comfortable this way and thus better able to say the hard things?Last year I too experienced the river-of-flame effect. When you can't step foot on the internet without seeing 10 flames aimed personally at you, it's tough, even if there are a 100 supportive e-mails (and that doesn't happen often). It took me most of this year to get over my active aversion to checking my e-mail. It creates a strong self-censorship effect, as you grow an aversion towards saying the controversial things... unfortunately, these are the things that need saying.Step back a bit and look at this in general. As the Internet moves us closer together, enabling new ways of communication with new speed, it also makes it impossible to escape from anyone. Larry Niven wrote some stories dealing with the practical consequences of instant teleportation to effectively anywhere on the planet, and it's much the same problem.Are we as a species ready for this? I don't suggest that we drop the Internet, but we may well need some more time to deal with the consequences then the normal march of technology will give us. We probably need to develop better ways to communicate with each other that don't give themselves so naturally to antagonism. LinkBack is sort of an attempt at that, albiet a poor start, and my Weblog Communities is related to why I think they are a candidate for such a form of communication.Anyhow, I encourage you to step back and think about this, and keep an eye out for possible solutions, because nobody really knows. We're all learning.(p.s.: I sort of work in a journalism sense here to so here's a full financial disclosure: I'm a poor college student and own nothing. Thank you for listening.)