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| Monday, March 11, 2002 |
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Unbound 
All-consuming trust
| | A shift from open platforms to closed appliances may be inevitable, as our consumerist desire for trustworthy PC's dovetails with information providers' obsession with control. But we should beware the haste with which some would sacrifice flexibility for control. If we can't at least temper this taming of the chaotic PC, the victims will be competition, innovation and consumer freedom. |
| | Do we want "trustworthy PCs?" No, we just want ones that don't break down. Largely a different issue. |
CRAP
| | Here's what I think right now: CARP is merely the anus of a mutant beast that was born when the DRPA was passed in 1995, and that grew all big and ugly when the DMCA was made law in 1998. Here's its fundamental problem: by the terms of both DRPA and DMCA, every song played by an Internet radio station is a "performance." No such description encumbers over-the-air radio. This apparently gives our regulators no problem at all. |
| | The DRPA kindly recognizes artists' right to be paid for the performance of their recorded work, but apparently only in this unique new medium. Thus, since DRPA passed, nearly all meaningful conversations about The Issues have happened within this beast's digestive tract, resulting ultimately in something that would have been titled more correctly as CRAP. |
| | Bottom line, the CARP Report offers a scheme for turning all internet broadcasting into a performance piping scheme in which charges will be made for every single song played for every single user. Kind of a pay-per-view scheme in which the station pays, rather than the viewer. That this is strange, unfair and highly intrusive to both station and listener is of no concern to these people. They just want a piece of the action — even if there isn't much action yet. |
| | Credit where due: there is well intended stuff here for artists, who have had issues with The System for the duration. But it pays zero respect to the Net as anything other than a plumbing system for bits. |
| | They also see the Net as fundamentally different than over-the-air broadcasting in one hugely significant respect: accountabilty. They see it is conceptually possible to track traffic and usage, and to charge for it. Given that possiblity, and the threats (not the opportunities, perish the thought) the Net poses to incumbent "content producers," CARP decided to do what only comes naturally to a regulatory bureacracy: regulate it. |
| | Of course they conceive the "market" relationship entirely in shipping terms. For example, "streaming" is not just a signal transmission method, but rather a variety of shipping also called "downloading." Streaming differs from a file download only by the likely disposal of the file while it is being received. That the listener doesn't record the signal in nearly all cases makes no difference. This is a file transfer, dressed up as a "performance." |
| | Nowhere is the concept of a commons, nowhere any awareness that the Net constitutes a place. And why should there be? The shipping metaphor does not provide a vocabulary for describing places (including marketplaces), or what happens on them. |
| | So, armed only with plumbing and shipping metaphors, CARP tortured itself trying to describe real market relationships. The groaning starts here: |
| | The criteria for setting rates and terms for the Section 114 webcaster performance license are enunciated under 17 U.S.C. § 114(f)(2)(B), which provides in pertinent part: |
| | In establishing rates and terms for transmissions by eligible nonsubscription services..., the copyright arbitration royalty panel shall establish rates and terms that most clearly represent the rates and terms that would have been negotiated in the marketplace between a willing buyer and a willing seller. In determining such rates and terms, the copyright arbitration royalty panel shall base its decision on economic, competitive and programming information presented by the parties, including — |
| | (i) whether use of the service may substitute for or may promote the sales of phonorecords or otherwise may interfere with or may enhance the sound recording copyright owner¹s other streams of revenue from its sound recordings; and |
| | (ii) the relative roles of the copyright owner and the transmitting entity in the copyrighted work and the service made available to the public with respect to relative creative contribution, technological contribution, capital investment, cost, and risk. |
| | The statute further directs the Panel to set "a minimum fee for each type of service" and grants the Panel discretion to consider the rates and terms for "comparable types of digital audio transmission services and comparable circumstances under voluntary license agreements" negotiated under the voluntary negotiation provisions of the statute. 17 U.S.C. § 114(f)(2)(B). |
| | Later the report says this: |
| | The meaning of the "willing buyer/willing seller" standard was the subject of considerable testimony and argument. |
| | No shit. Here's how it was settled by the Librarian (of Congress): |
| | The statutory standard set forth in section 114(f)(2)(B) requires the Panel to determine the rates that a willing seller and a willing buyer would agree upon through voluntary negotiations in the marketplace. The Panel must use the "willing seller/willing buyer" standard to set rates for all non-interactive, nonsubscription transmissions made under the section 114 license, including those within 150 miles of the broadcaster's transmitter. |
| | It's even more complicated than that; but the deep irony is still easy to make clear: commercial radio has no buyer/seller relationship between station and listener. That relationship only exists between station and advertiser. Therefore every commercial station's consumers and customers are different populations. |
| | This split has never been addressed in conversations about broadcasting, to my knowledge, outside my own rants on the subject. But maybe now it's time. |
| | CARP imagines a business in accountable broadcasting, which is an entirely new animal. And they're right about that, blast them. The problem is: it isn't much of a business yet, and it never will be if this ruling holds. |
| | Another thing: if accountable broadcasting ever does become a business, the woefully inefficient industry we call commercial radio is suddenly in deep trouble. And I think these guys know that, too. |
Along those same lines
| | Hayek: An age of superstitions is a time when people imagine they know more than they do. |
Came up at lunch
| | "You can't make eye contact on the Web." |
| | Context: In spite of how much some of us write, and blog, and even go on TV (in a few special cases); no matter how disclosing and personal and honest and "real" as we may be, we are still not real enough to know. I thought I knew a lot of these bloggers here. Not even close. Not even in the same time zone. |
| | They're better in real life. Knowing them (hell, just meeting them) in real life makes their writing, their blogging, their work, much more immediate and appealing. |
Maybe enough is too much
| | This morning a friend wrote to ask if I really blog less than half an hour a day. Not sure I had a good answer. Depends. |
| | [Later...] I'm sitting on the floor in the hall here, in the midst of ... let's see... fifteen geeks/writers/activists/content producers (I want to say do you produce contentment, as in, like, satisfaction or something?). Lisa is sitting to my right, struggling with her email. We're all wireless, thanks to Cory and Wes. Very handy. Before I picked up the laptop a minute ago, Peter stooped down (I'm sitting on the floor propped up against the wall) to say "Doc. Stop typing." Okay. |
Co-braining
| | Just had a nice talk with Dori, who was here for the Politics of Open Source panel. Don was on it. Did a good job. I have pix. Later... |
Fuck Sprinks
| | I've been looking up something at About.com; and I've found that, as long as the browser stays on an About.com page, a big uninvited window appears — even if you're in another program minding your own business. It says: |
| | Sprinks || Buy a Sprink Now!
Buy a Sponsored Link Now.
Start driving targeted traffic to your site with Sprinks, About's Sponsored Links program.
URL: http://sprinks.about.com/ (Cost to Advertiser: 20) |
| | If you close the window, it reappears about a minute later, again and again, ad irritaturm. Unbelievably annoying and user-hostile. |
| | So hey About.com: I am sure I speak for at least 100% of your readers when I tell you, in the strongest terms, to please go fuck off. |
Side of the Mornin'
| | Just walked over here to the Four Seasons hotel from my motel on the south side of the river. It was dawn, gray and rainy, so I was lightly soaked when I got here. My only purpose was getting on the Net through the wi-fi that saturates the lobby, restaurants and meeting rooms here. But far nicer than anything wireless this morning was the sound of a woman singing a sweet country song in the lobby lounge. She sounded too professional for a lounge singer, and too country for the venue. But she was perfectly arresting. I had to stop and listen. |
| | She turned out to be Gay Crace, who was performing live for KGSR/107.1, which is a terrific local station of a KPIGgy sort — one of those too-rare commercial stations that sounds anything but. |
| | Anyway, I've got to work. More later. |
discuss
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