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Monday, June 24, 2002
I knew it! 
| | I love Mark Cuban. I wish him even more $billions, bless him. The guy has brought nothing but fun to the NBA, and before that he did an amazing job of hauling radio stations all over the country onto the web, through Broadcast.com. I didn't like everything he did there, but I liked his drive and his pluck. |
| | The guy is also a fearless straight shooter. Earlier this year at the NAB convention he told broadcasters and manufacturers to ignore Hollywood. He's blown the whistle on the RIAA's anti-webcasting agenda a number of times. And now he's told Kurt Hanson that, as some of us suspected, the CARP decisions appear to be3 based to a large degree on the Yahoo/RIAA deal he had worked on before he left Yahoo (to which he had sold Broadcast.com for $billions) — a deal that was intended to aggregate supply and price out the little guy. This, presumably, was the business model (or rationalization) that CARP imagined would ultimately evolve. It's a horrible one; but at least now we know where the hell it came from. |
| | Here's one key paragraph: |
| | Now, no one asked me any of these things prior, during, or after the first or second pricing. I'm not sure that this matters. But if it does, here it is: The Yahoo! deal I worked on, if it resembles the deal the CARP ruling was built on, was designed so that there would be less competition, and so that small webcasters who needed to live off of a "percentage-of-revenue" to survive, couldn't. |
No, but let's look at that
| | It's very good. A sample: |
| | Suppose that the news media consisted of individual reporters and blogs. If someone came along and invented newspapers, CNN, or other centralized news media, would we see this as an improvement? |
| | From the standpoint of pure efficiency of disseminating information, it is not clear to me that the mass media model beats a blog-based model. However, I believe that many people consume news for entertainment value, and the mass media seem better suited at presenting news as entertainment. |
| | My prediction is that in niches where the ratio of information value to entertainment value is high, blogs will prove to be superior mechanism for disseminating news. |
| | My only concern is not with this piece, but with something it brings up, which is our general tendency to regard information as a substance, as a commoodity we "disseminate" or "distribute." I explained why a couple years ago: |
| | A few weeks ago, when I was talking with Tim O'Reilly about the patent mess, we deconstructed the noun information. Clearly it derives from the verb inform, which derives from the verb form. |
| | So in conversation, we observed, we don't just "deliver information" back and forth. We form each other. When I learn something new from you, and what I learn is meaningful — that is, I can't forget it — you have literally formed me. In other words, we are authors of each other. What's more, we are in the market to be formed. We demand it. Otherwise we wouldn't learn a damn thing. |
| | That's why it's misleading to conceive information as a substance that we "deliver" to other human beings. When we do that, we insult the verb at its heart. |
| | The difference isn't just academic. To a degree it's political. Right now Disney, the MPAA and the RIAA are lobbying Congress and regulators to exclusively conceive the Intenet in shipping terms: as a transport system for "content" and other forms of commoditized intellectual property. But information is not by exclusive nature something you strap on a skid and sell at Costco, even if it is possible to mold some of it into CDs and DVDs. Information is the commodified form of something fundamentally not quantifiable. It comes embedded with a deep irony. And we need to keep exposing that. |
"Say it again." "It." "Good."
It's more complicated than it appears
A journalistic moment of joy, preserved
| | In a bar a week ago, I witnessed what can be described as geek joy, when a mobile phone service worked. Not any service, though. This one identifies tunes when you can't. If you're in a bar and you hear something that you like, you dial a four-figure number (it's not public yet) on your mobile and hold it up to the speaker for 20 seconds. In 15 seconds, you'll get a text message that tells you the name of the song. Last week, those testing it found it identified different Ramones tracks (not easy) and Elvis doing cover versions. You would have to be a music obsessive to do it yourself. |
| | Well, as it happens, I was there, at the excellent Garlic & Shots in Soho. What's more, I recorded the moment when Charles and I both became acquainted with the service. |
| | Here's how it went down. First, Matt Jones held his cell phone up in the air at the bar, to sample the music for twenty seconds. Then it gave the result: a recent cover of an old Elvis tune. I knew the tune, but Shazam knew that and the band, and the album. |
| | It was one of those whoa-fuck! moments, and I recorded it on pixels with my camcorder, which also shoots 1-Megapixel stills. That's Ben Hammersley reacting on the left, with Matt holding the phone. Both are, indeed, joyful. On the right is Matt handing the phone to Charles, playing the objective journalist role (and I, the detached and slightly inebriated observer). |
| | Here's Charles' take-away: |
| | My suspicion is that Shazam is a great idea that fails to do what successful internet- or mobile-based products do: bring people together. Instead, it is driven by marketing people who overlook the reality of it. |
| | I agree. But the raw technology is a blast, even if the marketing is ballast. |
As if June in AZ isn't hot enough
Spurn
Superstructure?
| | It still looks to me like some kinda lock-in, which — sorry — disqualifies it as infrastructure. |
| | [Later...] Here's Jonathan, adding value to Eric, me and a buncha other sources. A sample: |
| | The real question then is to what extent can Microsoft convince corporations to pay more than they already are to a vendor who has no shown any real ability or even understanding of the needs of enterprise-level IT? Eric's explanation of where Palladium fits with Trustbridge and the cozying of IBM and Microsoft makes it obvious that Microsoft is making strides to address that shortcoming. |
| | But can Microsoft step over all those companies that would rather bolt than pay higher license fees? Seen the Journal this morning? Here's a take-away quote (if you can't get past the registration hurdle): |
| | The chief information officer of one large European financial concern who declined to be named for fear of raising Microsoft's ire said he was "70% sure" his firm would start moving its more than 30,000 computer desktops to Linux-based software made by a company called Ximian Inc. instead of re-signing with Microsoft... |
Profiles in Bureaucracy
Quote of the day
| | While large players and big media companies act like they are the main reason for the web and Internet and therefore should drive policy decisions, in actuality they are just "the biggest of the many small players" that make up the Internet. In fact, the controlling "stay within us" mentality some of them have is actually counter to the needs of the Internet for growth. The numbers show that the contributions of the myriad of small players -- individuals, non-profits, and small businesses -- are crucial to the vitality of the web and its value to people. |
Primate scream
| | Current song: Silence... :( Thanks RIAA.. I have to pay even though I don`t make a fucking dime. Listeners: 27 | Peak listeners: 204 | Average listen time: 1:24:49 |
| | Brennan Underwood, proprietory of MonkeyRadio, has a plan. It begins: |
| | Silence. I'm sorry. The new rates for Internet broadcasters were finalized yesterday, and most streams will not be able to afford to pay them. The upshot is, if you stream music, you pay. Period. And the money you pay goes to the artists on the Billboard charts. |
| | Basically they are insisting I pay a ransom to Britney so I can bring you a.p.e. I will not do that. At the very least it offends my sense of style. |
| | Even worse, they want to backdate this payment to the beginning of time, even though the rates are only being set now. |
| | If you're not pissed, you should be. The RIAA is taking away your right to hear music, by TRAINING YOU TO THINK YOU'RE NOT ENTITLED TO IT. Music is vital to life. Music is the oldest known art form. Nobody doesn't listen to music. It fills up your entire sense of hearing and stimulates your mind. It is food for your brain. You *need* music, and THEY are holding from you, for ransom. Music is your birthright. It is not mere entertainment, or a pure luxury. It is the foundation of communication and we NEED IT, thank you very much. |
Oink, cont'd
| | When I run down the list of Internet radio stations Apple kindy profides with iTunes, most of my favorites — Radio Paradise, KPIG, WOLFFM, Cowboy Cultural Society, RadioStorm (7 channels) TacoWagon, Richmond Underground Radio, Hot Hit Radio, MostlyClassical and all the Digitally Imported Radio streams — are still there. In fact, this graph from the Digitally Imported stats page shows listening is as strong as ever on all five of its channels, four of which carry music played by approximately zero commercial over-the-air stations in the U.S.: |
| | ... it's only when there's enough support for the notion that popular culture belongs to us, - and that to us as a society it really, really matters and that constitutional protection from the pigopolists, isn't just an option, but a necessity - that we'll be safe. |
| | Andrew would like to know what other stations are down. I see GRRL Radio is gone, and Prom Radio along with it (commentary is here and here). Hmm... That's all I find for now. [Later...] Heres another one: |
| | As of 2:00pm MST, Radio Free Tiny Pineapple will be closing its doors to the general public and will simply revert to what it was in the beginning: a way for me to listen to my CDs at work. |
On the road again....
| | I'm heading out early Wednesday to speak on Thursday to an ethepeople gathering in New York. Naturally, I have a fantasy about repeating my London public wi-fi experience in New York, and would appreciate any pointers either to locations or to organizations doing for New York what Consume.net does for London. |
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