Windows EULA: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Mr. Laporte and Mr. Thurrott, I couldn’t agree more:
Brian Will on Net Neutrality
From this post comes this great analogy of the net neutrality debate:
Imagine that your power company decides that it wanted to open a line of supermarkets. At the same time, it sends out an announcement that supermarkets (due to their refrigeration requirements) are particularly heavy users of the electrical system, and as a result, the power company will add a 15% surcharge to the power bills of any building that it deems to be a supermarket. Of course, the power company’s own supermarkets are exempt from this fee. When the existing supermarkets complain, the power company says that they’re asking for special treatment and trying to get electricity “for free” and that if they don’t like its terms, they should buy their power from someone else.
And, as Brian points out later in his post:
what the telecoms are threatening to do is to charge a premium for how the utility is used, not for how much of it is used.
I think he hit the nail right on the head. As I’ve said before, internet providers in the U.S are not interested in increasing bandwidth to increase their profit. They want to profit more on what they already have in place. If they can prevent smaller companies from competing with their services, and, therefore, are only a handful of very large corporations controlling the broadband market, then their plan to charge differently for different uses of the network becomes possible. If there were healthy competition in the broadband market, would there even be a net neutrality debate? Do countries that have better broadband penetration than the U.S have more choices down the last mile? I just wonder what, exactly, is a practical solution to this problem?
Konakkol Ensemble in Devdas?
My boss at the Afghan restaurant I work at is a huge movie buff. There is hardly a movie I can find that he hasn’t already seen. He is also a big fan of Bollywood films, and one of the biggest movies in recent history was Devdas. I am always curious in different culture’s movies and music especially so I downloaded the soundtrack from Devdas and noticed one of the tracks features parts that sound just like another group of Indian musicians I found on Emusic a while back. The earlier group is called the Konakkol Ensemble and they basically sing what would normally be played on percussion instruments. I suppose this isn’t all too earth shattering or anything, but I always like finding connections to music I’ve already heard before and new music to which I know nothing. Listen for yourself:
10.20.06For the 100th Time, Digital Piracy is NOT the Same as Shoplifting
Charles Cooper, in his latest opinion piece on news.com, argues that the U.S isn’t doing enough to protect companie’s intellectual property in regards to web 2.0. Sites such as Google News and Youtube are successful because they reuse other’s property in a way profitable for themselves. While I agree that creators should be fairly compensated for their work, I hardly think Google News’ 2 sentence summaries are outright piracy. Furthermore, Cooper makes this horrible analogy:
You can’t get away with that idea in other walks of life. Believe me, I would love to waltz into the local bookstore, browse through the aisles, and walk out with a bag full of novels without making a pit stop at the cashier. Same goes for the record store, or the neighborhood video joint. Life doesn’t work that way. Our social arrangements don’t allow some people to work for others without the remotest chance of receiving compensation. You may remember that this nation fought a civil war to eradicate that despicable practice.
Please people, stop saying digital piracy is the same thing as physical theft. It is nowhere near the same. I steal a CD, the store no longer has that CD to sell and instantly loses money since they had to pay for that physical disc. I pirate your CD, and we both have a copy. It may not be legal or the right thing to do, but it is nowhere near the same thing. Seriously, does anybody really put shoplifting and copying music on the same level? Also, a commentor on the piece added another very good against Cooper’s argument:
10.19.06The one thing that bothers me about the entire discussion of digital media is that if you are free to use the analogy of a bricks and mortar store and shoplifting, then you darn well better include the analogy of a public library too. There is an argument to be made for serving the public good, which exists beyond the profit motive, and the media needs to start placing that concept prominently as the third leg in this discussion called Web 2.0.