Here's the transcript of New Corp.'s Peter Chernin's Comdex speech decrying digital piracy. A sampling: "[D]igital copyright theft is wrong because it's destroying the ability of the technology industry to evolve." [Werblog]

Look, no one really feels that copyright holders should not be compensated. The problems come from their response to this problem. It is to constrain OUR options, even for innocent customers, in a single-minded regard to catch every thief. They also want to extend copyright so that it is, for all intents and purposes, infintite. And, they are not the creators of the copyrighted material but the marketers of it. It is not copyright that is the problem. It is their inability to alter their business models in a changing environment. It is changing and attempts to prevent the change will only hamper our culture's ability to succeed.  12:36:01 PM    

The end of free?. CBS MarketWatch: "Free access to Time Inc.'s most popular magazines could disappear from the Internet. The AOL Time Warner unit has concluded that providing Web content at no charge hurt circulation and that Web-based advertising is too meager to make up the difference, the Wall Street Journal reported."

If this happens, it could be the tipping point for commercial print content no longer being available for free on the Web. Which might not be such a bad thing. My guess is that the worthwile commercial content sources will be available for a modest fee or bundled with print subscriptions. Moreover, the elimination of this free material will make the non-commercial content such as blogs and the Web-only material such as Slate and Salon more valuable. It will create more pressure for syndication and aggregation tools to make that mass of content accessible to those without loads of free time. It would be a nice piece of symbolism. After all, Pathfinder (Time Warner's original online foray) was the project that brought big media to the Web... and showed how poorly they understood it. [Werblog]

What does Time or Newsweek offer that I can not get somewhere else? This is the problem they have to solve. The news they have IS available. The columnists they have are not important enough that I HAVE to read them. Removing themselves from the Internet will only accelerate their transition to a new business model or to extinction.  12:32:27 PM    

The Third Way. The most important political questions of our day transcend the traditional categories of left and right (Democratic vs. Republican in the US parlance). This is especially true of technology issues. Viewpoints tend to get labeled one way or the other, but the conflict is on an entirely different axis.

Take intellectual property, for example. The critique of expansive digital content protection as advocated by Larry Lessig and others is seen as a "left" argument, though Larry himself will tell you that he's a good Chicago-school economic conservative. Illustrating the point, Richard Posner, an appeals court judge and a leading conservative intellectual, attacked the expansion of intellectual property law in a recent speech. The same confusion exists with open spectrum. A spectrum commons isn't government-mandated communism; it's a true free market. Conversely, licensing and auctions lead to regulated monopolies and prevent that free market from emerging.

We desperately need a real "Third Way" that brings together the hidden political majority. Here in the US, we're locked into a two-party system that makes it particularly difficult to get there. Bill Clinton liked to talk about the Third Way, so the idea gets discredited as one of his slimy schemes. It is remembered as triangulation, a tactical approach for neutralizing political opponents. But the truth is that Clinton, Tony Blair, and the others who spoke of the Third Way were right. Subsequent events have only proved them more so.

The Third Way I'm talking about isn't just tactics. It's a strategic vision with normative values standing behind it. At a time when everyone is trying to block things or tear things down, it's a constructive agenda. Maybe once things die down after Supernova, I'll expand on this point. [Werblog]

A Third Way will come. We just can ot see it yet. But it will be something that affects us at all levels:personal, society, government, business. I hope the transition is less damaging than the Civil war was.  12:25:32 PM    

A solution to big media.

What happens when you blog a Fox executive? Blox

Jonathan Peterson deconstructs the comments of Fox CEO Peter Chernin in a Comdex keynote. Great stuff. Thanks for the link to David Weinberger, who adds his own astute comments.

It all comes down to the notion that programming is scarce or, at least, needs to retain the appearance of scarcity to sustain its value. In fact, if you make connections and let value flow, the investment in programming made today can be much more profitable than it is in the broadcast model.

[RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

» Folks the solution is simple:

• Stop watching TV.
• Stop going to the Movies.
• Don't buy Music, Videos, Games, Books or Magazines.
• Don't by a Tivo, DVD player, stereo, WEGA tv, PlayStation

In a couple of years all the media-related companies (and their dependents) will be bankrupt.  It might teach these guys that they need to treat us with a little respect if they want to survive.

We won't do it of course...

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

This is for my mom, who is just getting an inkling of the coming battles. Jonathan's annotated speech by a Content Cartel CEO is interesting.Just remember that we are simply consumers to them, with no subsequent rights. They fail to see that WE do have such rights, as well as the right not to consume anything they decide to make. The Fox executive's arguments are specious, his choice of words are provocative and his intent, I believe, is not to build a bridge but to threaten.  12:20:03 PM    

Guy in charge of non-profit company that runs the SAT is getting paid $800k a year, bonuses to top officers exceed $2 million. [ via fark] [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]  The top dog at Consumers Union gets over $400k.  There are similar reports of excessive compensation for nonprofit managers at the Red Cross (one local chapter CEO got $309,000) and many other organizations.   [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

When non-profits treat their top officers in the same fashion as business CEOs, then they are in real trouble. Top down approaches to charity are usually bad in the long run. They pull i lots of money but do not use the money very efficiently.  12:09:18 PM    

CNet.  100 poor schmucks at the Naval Academy are about to get double banged by the RIAA.  The combination of the Academy's honor code and the military justice system will make consequences of their use of downloaded MP3s a living hell.  I bet the 3-4,000 people at the other academies (and those at the Naval Academy that weren't using the P2P network when the snooping took place) are quickly erasing their collections right now.  I propose a "don't snoop, don't tell" policy for the military re:  MP3s. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Not the best article because I want to know what the legal procedure is to seize a computer. Can they just walk in and take my computer (probably)? What safegaurds are there? (Can they use incriminating material that has nothing to do with copyright violations?) I mean, what happens if some executive at Sony really wants to see the laptop of someone? Could he get the appropriate people to take the appropriate laptop and feed him any important info, all under the pretext of checking for copyrighted material? Maybe not so far fetched in some parts of the country where corrupt officials are pretty common.  12:06:33 PM    

Finances of U.S. States Called Worst Since World War II. Plunging tax collections and soaring medical costs have created the worst fiscal problems for states since World War II, the National Governors Association said today. By Robert Pear. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]  Natch, since we are likely entering WW3 even though most people don't know it yet. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

I read this article. It does not bode well for the governments. Washington state keeps having intiatives whose only purpose is to starve the state. A few years we had extra money. No more. People still want the road fixed but do not want to pay for it. They want better traffic solutions but can't decide what to pay for. We need better leaders. I think that will go a long way towards fixing these problems.  11:53:05 AM    

Delegates tagged and tracked [Nature Science Update]

How much longer bfore the government gets the great idea of placing these in our driver's licence. I am sure there will be an obstensibly good reason but the ability of individuals to abuse this should be easily seen. I am not really worried that the entire governement or most businesses will be a problem. It comes from individuals that have access to this info. there was a report in today's Seattle Times where two men in sensitive security positions were able to access credit reports and sell the info to identity theives for $60. They did this for about 30,000 people. Why make it easier for this to happen?  11:49:35 AM    

Spider and fly swap roles [Nature Science Update]

An example of how one predator exploits the innate traits of its prey. Hardwired responses to environmental cues provide many animals with very successful strategies. But it can remove flexibility, allowing another animal to exploit the response. Cuckoos are the best known example. Here is another neat one because it reverses the normal prey-predator roles of flies and spiders.  11:44:13 AM    

Origin of the specious

Both sides are right. It all depends on what they believe is important in the bell curve of variability. Pinker's group rightly looks at the mean, at the peak of the bell curve. This is where you can see trends, where you can see what fits best in the environment. But the other side examines the tails of the bell curve, the outliers. From these regions come new appraoces, new ways to successfully deal with the environment. In most species, these new changes can only spread throughout the species by genetic means, in a Mendelian fashion. But, since many of these changes for humans are cultural, they can move much more rapidly. Humans are as successful as they are because they have found a way to substantially increase variability and enhance the ability of successful variants to rapidly spread, without having to take the gentic penalty other species have to. I have to research this further, but I would suspect that trying to find purely genetic reasons for the appearance of such apparently non-Darwinian traits as homosexuality or Asperger's syndrome will not completely successful. There will be a genetic basis for these traits but there will be no obvious Darwinian reason for their high prevalence. Perhaps traits such as these increase the variability of human culture. If the effect on human culture, and thus the ability of the human species to respond to the environment, is greatly increased due to the presence of these traits, then the overall fitness of individual humans can be increased, permitting the species to thrive.

I have to spend more time to make this coherant. Variability is absolutly required for a species to succeed. Most species can only maintain variability by purely genetic means and can only propagate success combinations through procreation. Humans can maintain huge amounts of variability though largely non-genetic means, spreading successful variations in a decidedly non-Mendelian, non-Darwinian fashion. We call this culture. I think the underlying genetics can be stated thusly: Innate traits that increase cultural variability will be selected for. Cultures that permit the greatest variability will be most successful. It is the depth of human culture, utilizing innate traits that are present in our sibling species, the chimps, that makes us a successful species. In a pessimistic mood, this could also be the reason for our demise. In an optimistic mood, I feel our variability will permit us to find a solution.

If this is a proposition I can more solidly support, then beware of any attempt by anyone to limit variations in a culture. It will make that culture much more vulnerable. A successful culture accepts large amount of variable behavior because this makes the culture more successful (Yeah, I know it is a tautology but it sure sounds nice ;-)  11:24:38 AM    

Books and blogs. A while back I mentioned Erik Benson's All Consuming site. It continues to intrigue me, and I've now signed up for the weekly RSS feed. Inspired by Weblog BookWatch, Erik's service makes books, as well as people, an organizing principle of  blogspace. So here's a little experiment. I'm going to cite some books I've read recently, and have been thinking about, in order to see what kind of discussion is reflected back through All Consuming. ... [Jon's Radio]

This is a great way for the power of computers to help us learn more about what is happening by making informaiton (i.e. what people are reading) more easily dispersed.  10:12:00 AM