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Wed Dec 17 17:13:19 EST 2008
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One More Thing: Jobs Isn't Coming To Macworld - Mac fanboys cried themselves to sleep Tuesday night with the news that Steve Jobs won't be giving any more Macworld keynotes, while Apple won't even attend the event after the January installment. There's a lot of speculation that Steve Jobs' health is behind the move, as rumors about his recovery from pancreatic cancer continue to swirl. But the more likely reason is that, like many companies, Apple's getting tired of trade shows. For many companies, the expense and complexity of exhibiting at huge shows, then having to compete with hundreds or thousands of other companies for press and industry attention, are making the shows less and less compelling. Lots of companies -- including Apple -- are instead focusing on their own events for product launches. And, of course, given Apple's penchant for control, it's hardly surprising that the company would want to go down this route. But the bigger point remains: huge trade shows used to be a great idea when physical proximity was a real barrier to business and newsgathering. But communication has gotten simpler and cheaper, travel has become much more commonplace and things like blogs and social networks give people easy ways to meet other folks in their industry, making these huge gatherings more a hassle than anything else. Meanwhile, smaller, more manageable and focused events seem to be thriving, indicating that it's the large-scale format that's getting long in the tooth.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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Can You Own The Idea Of A Reality Show For Moms Picking Brides For Their Sons? - I have to admit that I don't watch reality TV or follow what's the latest in reality TV shows. I hear people talking about them, but it seems like half of them blend together with something about models who sing while cooking and designing fashions for eligible bachelors as an angry British guy yells at them and they hope they don't get voted off the island. Sometimes Donald Trump appears. Or something like that. So I had no idea that there's a yet another reality TV show out there on NBC called Mamma's Boy that apparently involves overbearing mothers trying to pick out potential brides for sons who apparently are unable to cut the apron strings. Sounds pretty horrific to me.
However, there was apparently a lawsuit over this one, as the guy who produces a Turkish reality TV show called Perfect Bride tried to stop NBC from airing Mamma's Boy, claiming that he holds a copyright on the entire concept of mothers and sons trying to pick out a bride (found via IPMaven). The guy claims he was trying to license the idea to a competitor of NBC, and allowing NBC's show to air would endanger those negotiations. Luckily, a court wasted little time (almost none at all) in denying the injunction, noting that there seemed to be very little likelihood that the guy would succeed in his case. Still, the case moves forward, and it's yet another symptom of a culture that has lead people to believe that you can own ideas, and anyone else who comes up with a similar idea (or, hell, improves on your bad idea) somehow owes you money.
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Isn't There An Easier Way To Tax Online Gambling? - One of the founders of British online gambling site PartyGaming yesterday pleaded guilty to a charge of transmitting bets across state lines -- and agreed to pay the US government $300 million. The exec, Anurag Dikshit, wasn't one of those nabbed by US authorities as they changed planes in the US, but rather he came forward on his own in an attempt to clear the legal air surrounding him and his company. It appears that the US government has rewarded him with leniency: he's free on $15 million bond with some loose travel restrictions ahead of his sentencing -- scheduled for December 2010. This latest news follows the guilty plea of an executive of NETeller, which processed payments for gambling sites, who forfeited $100 million to the government, while the company itself coughed up $136 million. So from these three instances alone, the government has taxed, er, fined, gaming sites and execs over half a billion dollars. If revenue generation is the goal, why not simply legalize online gambling, then regulate and tax it? That way, the government gets its slice, while US citizens can enjoy some protection while betting, instead of being forced into the grey market where they're largely at the whim of site owners.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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No Joke: National Lampoon Exec Faces 25 Years In Jail Over Stock Manipulation - I have to be honest and admit that I had no clue that National Lampoon was even a public company, but apparently it is. Either way, the company probably best known for its various National Lampoon's Vacation movies (and, yes, I'm aware National Lampoon has done much more...) appears to be in deep deep trouble after both the SEC and the Justice Department came down hard on the company for attempted stock manipulation (Eric Savitz wins for best headline on this one: Coming Soon: National Lampoon's Litigation Vacation). Apparently, the company's CEO allegedly paid stock promoters to illegally manipulate the stock upwards, giving them kickbacks for buying the stock in order to increase the price beyond what the market had decided the stock was worth. On top of that, he was accused of providing the stock promoters with confidential and non-public information. If convicted, National Lampoon's CEO could face 25 years in jail. Stock manipulation is no laughing matter, apparently.
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Pennsylvania Actually Realizes That Video Game Legislation Is A Bad Idea - We've seen so many states with grandstanding politicians trying to ban the sale of certain video games to kids -- despite the fact that every single law that's been passed along those lines in the US has been thrown out as unconstitutional. In the end, politicians know this -- yet they still keep pushing for such laws, so that, come election time, they can make a false claim in their campaign ads about how they "protected the children." The truth is, all they really did, was waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit that was a clear loss from the beginning. That's why it's great to finally see one state at least investigate the issue a bit, with a Pennsylvania task force quite clearly telling state legislators that such a video game sales law is a bad idea. Instead, the task force suggests that, if the legislature really wants to do something, it could fund more research into the impact of video games on kids, or more reasonably, it could fund more educational programs, to discuss the impact of video games. So, now the question is whether or not politicians in Pennsylvania will heed this advice... or if they'll still push forward on a plan to waste taxpayer money?
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New York The Latest To Propose Taxing iTunes Downloads - Earlier this year, some politicians in California, which is struggling with massive budgetary problems, proposed adding a tax to iTunes downloads. Now, Governor David Patterson in New York is proposing the same thing. There's no functional reason for this, other than the fact that the state desperately needs money, and so it's trying to add taxes to just about anything it can find. Of course, back in the old days, the point of a sales tax like that was to contribute to gov't-funded infrastructure (roads and such) that allowed folks to go and buy something. There's no such rationale for taxing internet downloads. It's a blatant money grab and Patterson seems to have no problem admitting that.
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Cop Caught Slamming Cyclist To The Ground On YouTube Indicted - Over the summer, you may have seen the video that got passed around quite a bit of a NYC police officer going out of his way to slam a Critical Mass cyclist to the ground. As you may have heard, the officer wrote up a report claiming that the cyclist ignored his commands to stop and tried to steer his bike into the him. From the video, that's obviously false, though the cyclist ended up having to spend a day in jail based on the report:
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Gowers Slams Out Of Touch UK Cultural Secretary Over Copyright Extension Plan - Last week, UK Cultural Secretary Andy Burnham laid out a highly questionable argument in favor of copyright extension on performance rights in the UK. The logic he used made little sense, and seemed to be based on a odd belief that musicians had some sort of moral claim on money more than 50 years after they recorded songs -- ignoring plenty of evidence that any extension wouldn't actually benefit most musicians, but would enrich the major record labels.
Now, SteveD points out that Andrew Gowers has responded to Burnham's suggestion and trashed the idea impressively. Gowers, you may recall, is the former Financial Times editor who was asked to explore issues having to do with copyright by the UK government. After spending quite some time researching the issue, he produced the so-called Gowers Report, that explained why copyright extension was a bad idea. Later, Gowers admitted that all of the evidence suggests copyright should actually be much shorter, not longer.
Gowers response to Burnham is worth reading in its entirety, as it skewers pretty much every point that Burnham put forth. Here are just a few tidbits:
As political speeches go, this is pretty silly. A moral case? You might just as well say sportspeople have a moral case to a pension at 30.The rest of it is worth reading as well, and near the end he puts in a key point, addressed to the music labels: "Please focus on innovation, not on trying to eke more rent from the successes of yesteryear." Indeed.
Copyright is an economic instrument, not a moral one, and if you consider the economic arguments -- as I did two years ago at the request of Gordon Brown -- you will find that they do not stack up. All the respectable research shows that copyright extension has high costs to the public and negligible benefits for the creative community.
Consumers find themselves paying more for old works or unable to access "orphan works" where copyright ownership is unclear. Small businesses that play recorded music such as hairdressing salons and local radio stations face a hidden extra "tax" in the form of higher music-licence fees. Do they really need this at this time?
Mr Burnham will no doubt find such arguments uncool. But even on his terms, the case for extension does not work. Twenty years' extra earning power in 50 years' time does nothing to put more money in the pockets of struggling performers now: two thirds of lifetime income from an average compact disc comes in the first six years after release.
And it will not alter the incentives for creation one jot. As Dave Rowntree, Blur's drummer, told my review: "I have never heard of a single band deciding not to record a song because it will fall out of copyright in only 50 years. The idea is laughable."
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More And More Students Choosing Journalism As A Major, Even As Newspapers Face Troubles - Thanks to all the fretting and worrying about the financial trouble and potential demise of many mainstream newspapers, it's become something of a curiosity that more students than ever seem to be going into college journalism programs (found via Romenesko). However, as the article details, it all makes sense once you realize the simple fact: while newspapers may be in trouble, journalism is actually doing quite well.
Just as many people mistakenly believe that the recording industry represents the music industry, the newspaper industry is hardly a proxy for journalism. Journalism, these days, has expanded well beyond newspapers, and a big part of the problem is that newspapers just aren't as good a medium for news as various other platforms. The second important point that the article above makes clear: journalism, by itself, isn't necessarily a profession. For many students, they see journalism as important training for other professions -- such as law, PR, consulting or management. That's a point that's often ignored these days. The ability to clearly explain what's happening, gathering facts, understanding various viewpoints, and coherently summarizing all the points of view is actually a really valuable skill beyond just journalism. So, don't fear for "journalism." It's going strong. The problem is newspapers who haven't been able to shift course in the midst of a rapidly changing market.
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Subsidized Laptops With Locked In Wireless Broadband Contracts - A few years back, after noting the trend of laptop companies to start building in cellular data modems into their laptops, we wondered when it would reach the stage where mobile operators would subsidize the cost of a laptop, just as they subsidize the cost of mobile phones in many cases. In early 2006, we started to see such subsidized laptops go on sale in Europe, with the mobile operators selling the laptops directly for well below list price, as long as you bought into a long term data plan. The whole idea seemed a bit strange, as mobile operators have long ranted long and hard about how much they hate, hate, hate subsidies, and how they wish they could do away with them. So, why add them to laptops?
However, the idea has now traveled over to the US as well, in a deal between Acer, Radio Shack and AT&T allowing people to buy an Acer netbook for just $100, so long as they agree to a 2 year $60/month contract for an AT&T mobile data plan. It's still a little confusing as to why the mobile operators are agreeing to this, following so many vehement arguments against mobile phone subsidies, but perhaps they're finally realizing that those subsidies aren't such a bad thing when they get people using their services. Still, how long will it be until buyers start complaining about early termination fees for laptops like they do for mobile phones?
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Mobile Operators Say Inauguration Will Tax Systems, Provide PR Fodder - Apparently there are going to be a lot of people in Washington, DC, next month, for Barack Obama's inauguration. With up to 4 million visitors coming to DC, a city with a population of 1.1 million, there's the potential for a logistical mess. But at least one group is getting out ahead of things: the nation's wireless operators, which want to assure everybody that they're beefing up capacity ahead of the event... just like they do before every Super Bowl and other events where there are predictable swells in network traffic. So, even if you aren't traveling to Washington for the inauguration, rest assured that the country's operators are looking out for you, just in case. And, of course, that they're not missing out on any chance for some PR -- even if it really just highlights their own capacity limitations. One question, though: will any of them come back after the event to detail just how many calls didn't go through on their networks during the inauguration because of capacity constraints?
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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France Requires Online Publication Of Certain Laws To Be Valid - Laurent GUERBY writes in to point us to some news of a new decree from the French government, supposedly saying that all laws must be published on the prime minister's website to be valid (link in French, Google translation to English). Guerby's reading is that this means if the government does not publish all laws on the prime minister's website by May of next year, any unpublished law is no longer valid. Not knowing much French, it's not clear to me if that's actually the case, but I would love for anyone else to chime in on this. If true, though, it certainly makes sense, and makes you wonder why France hasn't been publishing laws online for years.
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Court Limits, But Doesn't Eliminate, Secrecy Of National Security Letters - The Patriot Act, among other things, allows law enforcement to issue "National Security Letters" to ISPs and telcos to obtain certain information about individuals. The letters are, as the name implies, designed for situations where national security is at stake, and a more thorough process of going through legal channels to gain approval would be a serious threat to national security. Except, of course, that's not how things have worked in practice. The FBI was found to have engaged in "serious misuse" of NSLs on a regular basis, issuing tens of thousands of them. Even worse, part of the rules surrounding NSLs are that they must be kept entirely secret. This raises very serious First Amendment questions. While a lower court agreed that the secrecy on NSLs violated the Constitution, an Appeals Court, that had initially seemed skeptical has allowed the secrecy to continue, though with some limitations.
Rather than saying secrecy was okay, if revealing the NSL would create "interference with diplomatic relations, or danger to the life or physical safety of any person" (the old rule), the court has said the rule should be that secrecy is allowed if revealing the NSL "may result in an enumerated harm that is related to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." It is certainly more of a limitation, though some may note that it may not make much of a difference in actual application. NSLs are still likely to be abused, and it's unlikely that most ISPs or telcos on the receiving end of such NSLs will feel concerned enough to challenge them.
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UK DVD, CD Retailers Give More Bogus Predictions About Lost Jobs Due To Piracy - It appears that the latest group to whine and complain about totally bogus "losses" from piracy are CD and DVD retailers in the UK, who have commissioned their own study claiming that 30,000 jobs may be lost to piracy. This is from the UK's Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), though the group doesn't seem to make any indication of its methodology (its own website doesn't even list the study at this point). However, from what's in the article, it certainly sounds like the usual tricks for presenting bogus stats on piracy. It only counts the changes in one direction, ignores the fact that the shift (not loss) in jobs is due to a variety of factors that go well beyond "piracy," and ignores all of the new jobs created due to the shift to digital distribution of content. But, of course, that doesn't make for nearly as interesting a story... especially when the ERA is teaming up with a bunch of famous actors to whine about how they are too incompetent to learn how to adapt to the changing market. If these folks ran the buggy whip industry a century ago, we'd all still be driving around in horse drawn carriages. Markets change, and it creates new opportunities. Stop whining about the the way things used to be, and focus on taking advantage of all of those new opportunities.
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Record Labels Disobey Court Order On How Student Info Can Be Used - Ray Beckermann points us to the news that in a lawsuit involving various record labels against some USC students, the record labels asked the court to help identify the students -- which the court granted on the condition that the only use of the student info would be to seek injunctive relief (i.e., get them to stop file sharing) rather than monetary relief. However, as LAist is reporting, it only took a few months for the record labels to, instead, demand money via a typical pre-settlement letter, that demands thousands of dollars to get the RIAA and labels to not sue you. This certainly appears to be contempt of court, going in direct contrast to the judge's order.
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Is Google Squandering Its Biggest Asset? - One of Google's biggest assets is trust. The company's founder has admitted that adopting the "Do No Evil" mantra purposely set a very high bar against which to judge every company action -- often making it impossible to take the easy way out, even when the "right" solution was more a lot complex. However, over the past few years, the company has repeatedly distanced itself from that mantra, and we've all been seeing it in certain actions the company has taken. Earlier this week, we noted that it would be a mistake for anyone to trust Google to look out for the best interests of users, but you need to admit that Google often made that explicit promise, with both its mantra and actions, that it would, in fact, look out for the best interests of users over its own short-term goals. The company's execs clearly stated that its own long term advantages would be best served by watching out for its users best interests, even if it sometimes went against short term advantage.
Yet, with actions such as Google caving on its book scanning project and other decisions such as paying newspapers to scan their headlines, Google seems to have compromised its core principles a few too many times -- and it appears that users are starting to notice. A recent survey of the top 20 most trusted companies in the US shows that Google has fallen off the list entirely from its spot at 10 on last year's list. Of course, these sorts of lists will always fluctuate, but it still should be setting off alarm bells in Mountain View.
Much of Google's success is based on that implicit trust. People stick with Google because of that trust. They use products like Gmail, desktop search, and Google Docs because of that trust. If people are starting to lose that trust, it creates tremendous opportunities for someone else to step in to put a serious dent into Google's online dominance. The guy who did the study claims that Google's fall is probably just due to "big company syndrome," where people just start trusting big companies less, but that doesn't make much sense. Plenty of the other companies on the list are quite big as well, and have no trouble staying on the list.
Even if it's just as blip, Google should be extremely concerned with such an early warning sign that one of its biggest assets is quickly losing value.
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Latest Facebook App: You've Been Served! - The process of serving legal papers on someone can be quite tricky -- especially if they're purposely avoiding it. However, a judge in Australia has now allowed a lawyer to serve a couple via Facebook with notification that they've lost their house due to defaulting on a loan. The court had already ruled that they were to lose their house for the default (the couple didn't even bother to show up in court), but before the house could actually be taken, the couple had to be served with the ruling. However, that proved to be much more difficult than usual, and after exhausting a variety of different attempts, the court finally ruled that using Facebook would be an acceptable way to serve the documents.
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Wedding Crashers In Spain Actually The Copyright Cops - I tend to believe that the various song performance "collections" organizations around the world have a history of going too far in trying to collect on every possible use of a song. However, it seems they can always go a step further. Apparently, in Spain, the collections group there, the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE), has been not just crashing weddings, but secretly videotaping them to record evidence of music being played. The venue, of course, is supposed to pay music performance royalties, and SGAE believes that it applies to such private gatherings as well -- though, it still seems a bit extreme to crash a wedding and film it. However, at least the courts in Spain realize that this seems a bit ridiculous and have fined the society for "breaching the intimacy" of the married couple with one such video. In the end, the society was fined more than the restaurant for not having the requisite license.
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RIAA Just Keeps On Suing Students: Conversation At The End Of A Gun Barrel - The folks at Warner Music Group insist that their efforts to convince universities to enforce a not-so-voluntary "usage fee" on all students is part of an attempt to start a conversation on new business models. However, they conveniently leave important stakeholders (those who would be forced to shoulder the bill) out of such a conversation, and have still refused to actually participate here in the conversation. So far, their only "participation" was having a PR person send a statement scolding me for daring to raise questions about such a plan. Apparently, the sort of conversation Warner Music wants is one where everyone lines up and agrees with Warner Music.
And, of course, it should surprise no one that the RIAA, where Warner Music has plenty of influence, is still out there filing more lawsuits, even as Warner insists it's turned over a new leaf and is looking for a more reasonable solution. In other words, this isn't a "conversation" at all. It's a protection racket. Warner Music and the other major record labels are just going to keep suing until people agree to hand them a big chunk of money, apparently.
So, Warner Music, if you really want people to believe that you've turned over a new leaf, and that you're interested in a real conversation about new music industry business models, how about you call off the legal dogs and stop filing lawsuits against both individuals and companies and actually participate in a conversation? We're still more than willing to help facilitate such a conversation.
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Monster Cable: We're Not Trademark Monsters (TM) - We've covered Monster Cable's long and illustrious attempts to abuse trademark law in trying to prevent absolutely anyone else from using the term "Monster," no matter how unrelated it is from Monster Cable's business. For the most part, the company has stayed quiet when accused of being a trademark bully, but after Monster Mini Golf did a good job whipping up public support via an eBay auction, Monster Cable has apparently started responding, by claiming it's not the trademark bully everyone makes it out to be:
Regardless of what false representations have been circulated about Monster, we are not a faceless corporate giant out to squash legitimate business concerns and rising entrepreneurs. We are in fact, a family-owned company that relies heavily on our brand name and reputation in order to continue serving our customers. We have always tried to provide our customers with the highest performance products at an affordable price.There is a lot to respond to here, and we'll let folks in the comments respond to the questions over "affordable price" since Monster is notorious for being quite high priced. However, I'm not sure why it matters that it's a family-owned company. It doesn't change the fact that it's being overly aggressive and abusing the purpose of trademark law. It tries to paint its activities as being perfectly normal, but that's simply not true. We see a lot of trademark lawsuits around here, and Monster is definitely a lot more combative on trademark than most companies.
While we are best known for our cable products, we also manufacture high performance accessories in business areas ranging in home theater, computing, gaming, portable entertainment and power management. To protect these business areas, we have sought and been awarded trademarks for each respective category. In addition to the areas above, in the past 30 years, we have also expanded the categories including sports and other lifestyle ventures. According to the trademark law, we must enforce our marks or we will lose them and they will become generic.
We were trying our best to avoid the lawsuit, and we are trying our best to settle the lawsuit.
As for the claims that because its products work in other areas, that these trademark suits are legit -- that's simply incorrect. What a trademark covers is specific to what the companies does, and the tests concern whether or not there's customer confusion or brand dilution, and anyone would be pretty hard pressed to claim that Monster Mini Golf confuses anyone or damages Monster Cable's brand name in any way.
As for the claim that it must enforce or lose the trademarks, this is a common myth about trademark law. It is true that you need to enforce the uses of the mark -- but only in those direct markets. In the case of Monster Mini Golf or the deer salt lick, such usage will have no impact on making Monster Cable's brand generic and either they know it, or they're getting terrible legal advice. Tellingly, Monster Cable does not respond to the charges many have leveled that after either blocking a trademark application or suing others, Monster Cable then licenses back the Monster name to those who it stopped. As such it becomes pretty clear that it's not at all about stopping the name's usage and that the usage is clearly not confusing. So, Monster Cable may not consider itself a trademark monster, but it should show that with actions, not words.
Update: Ah, well, great. Monster Cable is now claiming that it's dropped the lawsuit against Monster Mini-Golf but is still demanding a licensing fee of $100/month, while claiming that it will contribute that and its own matching funds to charity. While it's great that Monster has dropped the lawsuit, it's ridiculous that the company is still demanding a license fee. Also, the company should at least admit that the only reason it's dropping this is all of the negative publicity generated by its heavy handed attempt to attack a business in a totally unrelated market.
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