Has the New York Times Run Afoul of the FTC's Endorsement Guides?

from the ethics,-ethics dept

Terry Heaton and Jeff Jarvis have commented recently on the conflicts of interest implicated by the adulatory coverage of the iPad in the New York Times and other media companies. They point first to the expectation that widespread adoption of the iPad will foster consumer adoption of a platform where media giants can show their content for a fee — thus enabling them to move more easily to a paywall revenue model.

Dan Gillmor shares these concerns, but notes an even more concrete conflict of interest — Apple’s advertising of the iPad consistently features a screenshot of the New York Times app, including of course the Times’ logo. Although Apple no doubt hopes to show that its device can be used to read the Times, surely attractive content to many of its target consumers, the image is also terrific advertising for the New York Times. Gillmor indicates that he has no doubt that Times’ reviewers truly believe the contents of their swooning coverage of the iPad, but argues that the benefit that the Times is receiving is a conflict of interest that ought to be overtly acknowledged and discussed by Times management. Yet, he reports, nobody from the Times has been willing to respond to his questions about the issue, such as whether the Times has received any compensation for the display of its logo on the iPad as shown in the ads. Gillmor raised these concerns a week ago, and the Times has yet to address publicly the possible conflict.

One may well wonder whether Apple or the Times has violated the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. The placement of the Times’ logo in Apple’s ads is surely a thing of great value, and readers of the Times’ reviews might well want to take the provision of free advertising to the Times into account in deciding whether to give full credence to the objectivity of the Times’ news reports and reviews of the product. The benefit of having such advertising could well be a “material connection” that has to be disclosed both by Apple and by the Times under section 255.5 of the FTC Guides, as illustrated by Example 7.

Surely, what’s good for bloggers who praise products ought to be good for the New York Times and professional journalists.

Filed Under: apple, endorsements, ftc, ipad
Companies: ny times

Is The iPad The Disneyland Of Computers?

from the nice-place-to-visit,-but-you-wouldn't-want-to-live-there dept

It's been interesting to watch the extreme arguments about the iPad fly by over the last few weeks. As I've said before, I think the device will sell quite well and make tons of money for Apple. I just don't think it will "save media" the way some media companies believe. For some reason, a lot of folks interpreted this to mean that I don't like the iPad. That's not true at all. It looks like a beautiful device, and while I don't see a need for one for myself right now, I could see getting one at some point. I have nothing against the device at all -- and just because I don't think it will be the savior for media companies, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the iPad.

That said, Ed Felten, has put together what I think is the best explanation for how I feel about the iPad: it's the Disneyland of computers. That is, "I like to visit Disneyland, but I wouldn't want to live there."

To me, the iPad is Disneyland.

I like Disneyland. It's clean, safe, and efficient. There are lots of entertaining things to do. Kids can drive cars; adults can wear goofy hats with impunity. There's a parade every afternoon, and an underground medical center in case you get sick.

All of this is possible because of central planning. Every restaurant and store on Disneyland's Main Street is approved in advance by Disney. Every employee is vetted by Disney. Disneyland wouldn't be Disneyland without central planning....

There's a reason the restaurants in Disneyland are bland and stodgy. It's not just that centralized decision processes like Disney's have trouble coping with creative, nimble, and edgy ideas. It's also that customers know who's in charge, so any bad dining experience will be blamed on Disney, making Disney wary of culinary innovation. In Disneyland the trains run on time, but they take you to a station just like the one you left.

I like living in a place where anybody can open a restaurant or store. I like living in a place where anybody can open a bookstore and sell whatever books they want. Here in New Jersey, the trains don't always run on time, but they take you to lots of interesting places.

It goes on from there, and it's about the best explanation I've seen. There's lots to like about the iPad. It really does look like a great device for some stuff. But not everything -- and that's by design. Just like Disneyland isn't designed for people to live there permanently, the iPad isn't designed to take over all your computing needs. And that's fine.

Filed Under: disneyland, ipad
Companies: apple

Could Copyright Hold Back iPad Sales In Canada And Elsewhere?

from the ah,-licensing dept

As it's become clear that the iPad is more of a "content delivery vehicle" than an interactive device (and there's nothing wrong with that), people are quickly discovering how regional licensing issues and copyright may hold the device back in some areas. Apparently, as the device gets ready to launch in Canada, there are concerns that there won't be very much content available for it. All that content that US companies rushed out to help "save" their businesses? Well, a lot of it isn't licensed in Canada, and so the store of content available up there is likely to be greatly limited.

Filed Under: canada, copyright, ipad

Why We Need Better Metrics For Measuring User-Generated Content

from the no-more-storytime dept

Much has been made about the iPad as a consumptive, rather than creative, device. Some, including law professor Tim Wu at a recent New America event, have voiced concern that it heralds the end of a golden era of user-generated content. But to truly understand the importance and impact of user-generated content - including on the traditional media that Clay Shirky has recently argued are fatally too complex to survive - we must have better measurement of the phenomenon. Without reliable data and sensible comparative metrics, it is impossible to say if we have even experienced a golden age of open creative possibility.

For example, nearly two years ago in response to Shirky, Nick Carr bristled at the idea that the Web was the necessary component for creative production, participation and sharing. According to Carr, the people he knew back before the Web were also creating - writing, photographing, drawing, constructing and volunteering. This is undoubtedly true, but because technology did not enable the inexpensive recording, archiving, sharing and finding of this creativity, it went largely unnoticed. Of course, cheaper technology almost certainly does enable more creative production, but how much is hard to say.

When Shirky notes that an amateur video of two children has garnered more views than American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and the Superbowl combined, it is comparing apples and oranges. A minute video hardly competes with the Superbowl for eyeballs; certainly the Internet has opened opportunities to competitors to the Superbowl, but let's compare those. The problem is, we don't currently have the categories and metrics necessary to make sense of the rise (and potential fall) of creation. Some people are trying to create quantify the impact of blogs on the news cycle, but in regards to other media types, we seem to be ignoring the problem and living off anecdotes. So, how can we move ahead with better metrics for user-generated content and what should those metrics be?

Filed Under: ipad, metrics, user generated content

Early Data Says Successful iPad Paid Apps... Aren't Coming From Big Media

from the inauspicious-start dept

So we were among those questioning the idea that the iPad would somehow revolutionize the media business by suddenly getting people to pay for content again (though, amusingly, nearly all the criticism on that post focused on whether the iPad would be successful, not about the media business models the post talked about). While it's way too early to make any sort of judgment on this particular issue, the early data certainly suggests that media companies have their work cut out for them. That's because while big media players appear to be doing well on free apps, in the paid apps category, the big media brands simply aren't topping the charts. This isn't really a surprise. If you look at the details, it looks like games and specific utilities are topping the charts. As has been noted over and over again, since the iPad comes with a full browser, the media players need to offer something really, really special to actually get people to pay -- and at the prices being offered, most people are just not likely to be interested. It seems likely that the prices will start dropping quickly, though we wonder what these publications will do for the few suckers who paid up early.

Filed Under: apps, ipad
Companies: apple

The Fool's Gold At The End Of The iPad Rainbow

from the control-ain't-the-answer dept

The media has been making a huge deal about how the iPad is supposed to "save the business," because suddenly everything will return to apps, and people pay for apps, and toss in a big dose of "Steve Jobs!" and there's some sort of magic formula which includes some question marks and inevitably ends in profit! Now, the iPad does look like a nice device, and I have no doubt that it will do quite well for Apple, and many buyers will be quite happy with it. But it's not going to save the media business in any way, shape or form. It's just the media chasing a rainbow in search of gold that doesn't exist.

A few months back, I tried to ask a simple question that we still haven't received a good answer to: all of these media companies, thinking that iPad apps are somehow revolutionary, don't explain why they never put that same functionality online. They could. But didn't. There's nothing special about the iPad that enables functionality you couldn't do elsewhere. But, it goes deeper than that. People are being taken down by app madness. Because the iPhone has sold a bunch of apps, suddenly old school media players are suddenly dreaming of the sorts of control they used to have, and pretending it can be replicated on the iPad. But that's a big myth.

Danny O'Brien has a brilliant post on the similarities between the iPad and the CD-ROM. The CD-Rom was supposed to save old media (as the iPad is supposed to now) -- but tried to do so mainly by trying to make the old format move to a digital world, by retaining the control, and by adding a little digital razzle dazzle. But what it failed to do was really enable what the technology allowed -- and that was because what the technology allowed totally undercut the old business model.

The media is running to the iPad because they think it's magically going to transport them back to a world where there is scarcity and they can charge ridiculous prices again. The Wall Street Journal, for example, is apparently offering an iPad app that's more expensive per week than getting a combined subscription to both the paper version and the online version. There's a lot of wishful thinking going on here.

Cory Doctorow does a great job further unbundling this myth, by pointing out a key fallacy that many in the media are making: that the average consumer is as dumb as a doorknob and needs a super simplistic device to function:

I remember the early days of the web -- and the last days of CD ROM -- when there was this mainstream consensus that the web and PCs were too durned geeky and difficult and unpredictable for "my mom" (it's amazing how many tech people have an incredibly low opinion of their mothers). If I had a share of AOL for every time someone told me that the web would die because AOL was so easy and the web was full of garbage, I'd have a lot of AOL shares.

In effect, the iPad, as beautifully designed as it is, is trying to take away many of the benefits and flexibility in digital computing these days. It's trying to limit what you can do, because it thinks people want to be limited. And, while closed platforms often are great at the beginning to get people to move to something new, in the long run, they are regularly superseded by more open platforms.

But, as Cory points out, the whole interaction model of the iPad seems to have been developed with the mindset of the media companies, not the real end users:

But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).

The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Again, the beautiful design and the power of Apple/Steve Jobs to market the product will undoubtedly allow the product to do well initially. For Apple. But it's not going to save the media industry... and it seems unlikely to be any more revolutionary in the long run than the CD-ROM was.

Filed Under: ipad
Companies: apple

And... Here Come The iPad Patent Claims

from the live-by-the-patent... dept

Back when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, one of the points he made clear in his presentation was how Apple had applied for over 200 patents on the device. And, yet, despite all of that, Apple has been sued over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And, of course, only recently did Apple file a patent lawsuit in the other direction.

Given all of this, it was really only a matter of time until the patent litigation began flying over the iPad. Slashdot points us to the news that Elan Microelectronics is seeking to ban the import of iPads into the US via the ever-popular ITC loophole. Amusingly, the whole point of the ITC injunction process is supposed to be to protect American companies against foreign companies importing in patented technology. Yet, in this case, it's a Taiwanese company suing an American company. This seems like a pure money grab, like many of the iPhone patent lawsuits, and once again demonstrates the problems of the patent thicket around mobile devices these days.

The patent in question 5,825,352 is for multi-touch screen inputs, and was apparently originally held by Logitech. Of course, in many ways this really highlights the points we've talked about. What Apple did with the iPhone was quite innovative, but wasn't really that inventive. It took concepts that had been out for a while, including multi-touch, and did something really cool with it: putting it into a compact, mobile device that people really wanted. The other players in the space weren't working on anything like that at all, and now patent battles are simply a waste of time holding back more innovation, rather than letting companies actually continue to come up with the next great thing.

Filed Under: ipad, itc, loophole, patent
Companies: apple

Just In The Nick Of Time, Apple Gets The iPad Trademark

from the cutting-it-close... dept

You may recall, right after the Apple iPad announcement, people started noticing that Apple didn't hold the trademark on the name. Instead, Fujitsu had a pending trademark on iPad and was saying it had no intention of giving up the name (and some others had trademarks on other "iPads" as well). However, it looks like just as the iPad is about to ship, Apple figured out how to make Fujitsu change its mind (I assume it involved truckloads of cash). Copycense points out that Apple has bought the "iPad" trademark from Fujitsu. It looks like the official transfer just happened on March 17th. Makes you wonder what Apple would have done if Fujitsu hadn't been willing to sell the trademark.

Filed Under: ipad, trademark
Companies: apple, fujitsu

Are Publishers Putting Too Much Stock In The iPad, Or Are They Just Doing It Wrong?

from the either-way-their-hopes-are-too-high dept

Jim Lillicotch points us to a post by MediaPost blogger Steve Smith, who was surprised by his 18-year-old daughter's immediate dismissal of the iPad. It may be, as he speculates, an omen of the device's future in general, but he also makes some points specifically related to the publishing industry that are worth highlighting.

"I need a keyboard. Even my phone has that." It is really all about input for her, and her focus on interactivity underscores a glaring limitation of the iPad. It is primarily a media consumption device, not an interactive device. Publishers think of digital merely as a delivery vehicle, but users think of digital as a communications and interactive platform. After a life of leaning in, why would she want to lean back and consume content just to make media companies' business models work for them?

Smith lists several drawbacks to touch-screen tablet input that probably haven't occurred to those who, like me, have never gotten the chance to use one. I still think that with the right interface and after some design iterations, iPads (and other tablets) will be excellent interactive devices, but Smith is dead right in his assessment of how publishers view them. The iPad magazine demos that some have shown off are compelling and cool, but they are mostly one-way media. This is exacerbated by the obsession with native apps, which Smith notes are much less likely to explode on the iPad the way they did on the iPhone:

Unlike the iPhone, where an app can clearly trump a mobile Web site experience, the iPad makes full Web browsing much more viable. Early audience research I have seen suggests that for even those interested in the iPad, Web browsing and email are rated far above app downloads as the device's main attraction. And so, publisher apps will be competing with their own Web sites.

This is a point we've made before: everything in these fancy magazine apps can be replicated in the browser (there is one small problem to do with scrolling that remains, but even that has nearly been solved). Publishers should be working to ensure that their product—whether it's books, magazines or newspapers—is available on every platform with minimum hassle, instead of building closed apps that frustratingly trap the user. Nobody is loyal to one publication anymore, and nobody wants a dozen different news and magazine apps littering their tablet or smartphone—they want to browse the web the way they always have. It's time for publishers to stop trying to alter user behaviour, and start learning from it.

Filed Under: communications, ipad, publishing

Will The Authors Guild Freak Out About Text To Speech On The iPad?

from the yakety-yak dept

When the second generation Kindle ebook reader launched with a text-to-speech functionality, the Authors Guild freaked out, claiming that this violated a totally made up on the spot aspect of copyright law. Plenty of copyright lawyers dissected this claim in great detail and concluded that the Authors Guild was making up stories about how they wanted copyright law to act, rather than paying attention to what copyright law actually said. There simply is no copyright violation in having a computer read a book aloud to you. However, after the Authors Guild ratcheted up the threats, Amazon finally caved and let authors choose to block the text-to-speech functionality.

Now, with the iPad coming out, some are noticing that it, too, contains such text-to-speech capabilities, and yet oddly, we haven't heard complaints from the Authors Guild (found via Copycense). Have they come to their senses, or have they just not realized it yet?

Filed Under: authors, ebooks, ipad, kindle, text to speech
Companies: amazon, apple, authors guild