DailyDirt: Ads Gone Wrong

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Commercials are always trying to get people's attention -- sometimes by being controversial and sometimes by being shocking. But even when a company tries to broadcast only sensitive and feel-good messages, there will always be some folks pointing out that companies don't really care about people as much as profits. Here are just a few advertisements that might have just missed getting their message across.

• Why is it that car companies seem to have a hard time NOT making offensive ads? Ford India recently apologized for some terrible ads depicting bound and gagged women in the spacious hatchback trunk of a Ford Figo. But Ford wasn't the only example, Hyundai and GM also had some horrible commercials to retract recently. [url]
• Dr Pepper posted an ad on Facebook with a common geeky joke, showing the evolution of humans -- starting with a chimp-like ancestor and ending with a modern upright person holding a can of his favorite beverage. Poking the beehive of anti-evolution religious folks might be a fairly safe way of creating some controversy, but it probably doesn't sell that much more sugar water. [url]
• The Economist once ran an ad for itself, asking "Why should women read The Economist?" Maybe publications written by -- and read by -- mostly men should be a bit more careful when trying to step away from being a "Maxim for nerds"..? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: ads, advertising, commercials, economist, failures, jokes, publicity
Companies: dove, dr pepper, ford, gm, hyundai

The Economist Shreds BSA Cloud Credentials Piracy Numbers

from the more-bs-from-the-bsa dept

If my time at Techdirt has taught me anything, it's that anti-piracy groups will pull more numbers out of their collective behinds than The Count from Sesame Street. It's a strange tactic, if only because once they are caught cow-pooping their own figures it seems to indicate that the problem is not nearly what they're claiming and therefore their response and policy recommendations no longer worth considering. Unfortunately, many members of the esteemed 4th Branch are inclined to simply parrot these fudged stats and report them as news.

Fortunately, The Economist is willing to call out the BS the BSA put out about the scary uber-dangers of cloud piracy (ooooooooh!).

Let's start with the BSA claims, shall we? Did you realize that 30% of people in wealthy nations and 45% of people in less-wealthy nations "have a liklihood of sharing log-in credentials for paid [cloud] services?" That's the conclusion drawn by the BSA's latest study. And if that seems like a lofty number to you, it may be because it's utter bullshit.

The Economist begins by correcting the BSA's pretend numbers:

"The percentages come from a question in which people were asked if they had ever shared their log-in details for paid services. Some 15% of people in rich countries and 34% in poor countries said they had for personal use. For business use, it was 30% and 45% respectively...Moreover the respondents were only those who had paid for cloud services, which was a fraction of users. Cloud services are generally based on a “freemium” model, whereby basic use costs nothing and a premium version is paid for. According to the BSA's own data, only half of computer users tap cloud services, of which only one-third use it for business, of which two-thirds pay. Of the small subset that remain, the minority share log-ins. This changes things considerably. If the BSA figures were adjusted for all this, the potential piracy figures could be as low as between 2% and 6% of users—as much as 20 times less than the group claims. (The BSA's data is online here.)"

In other words, through the magic of pretending like only a small subset of data is the entire data, the BSA has magically turned the number two into the number thirty. This would be laudable if those numbers were fish, the readers were hungry, and the BSA was trying to claim it had perfected what I lovingly refer to as "Jesus' Fish Fry Miracle", but they aren't, dear readers. No, they're going to policy makers with this nonsense.

And that isn't even the end of the story. The piece also points out that the BSA's survey failed to ask what might just be an important question: does sharing log-in credentials with a friend violate that service's TOS? If it doesn't, that isn't piracy. But the BSA doesn't bother to ask that question because they don't care, they're just looking for numbers that support their conclusions, here.

The article then points out a couple of other ommissions on the BSA's part:

"There are other anomalies. The BSA only considered PC use, when many people use cloud services over tablets and mobile phones, especially in poor places. And the survey, of 14,702 people in 33 countries, presumes to speak with confidence about the “developing” world but not a single African country is represented—an odd omission, since it is a fast growing market."

In short, these BSA claims are a "study" in the same way that snake-handling is a "religion": it isn't.

Filed Under: copyright, economist, losses, piracy, software, stats
Companies: bsa

Economist Assumes That The Problem Is 'Thieves' Rather Than Bad Patent Laws

from the wow dept

cryptozoologist points us to one of the most ridiculous analyses of the current patent situation by economist, and former Ross Perot running mate, Pat Choate, who doesn't seem to have a clue how innovation actually works, in claiming that patent infringement is usually "patent theft" by big companies. Independent invention? Overly broad patents? Patent thickets stifling innovation and research? Not even possible. It's all "theft."

America's largest big tech corporations are now using a business technique called "efficient infringement," which means that they calculate the benefits of stealing someone else's patented technology against the possibility of getting caught, tried in court and being forced to pay damages and penalties. If the benefits exceed the costs, they steal.

What makes patent theft so attractive is that infringement is not a criminal act and those found guilty face no jail time. Paying up is the worst that can happen to the infringer.

Of course, someone actually knowledgeable about patents would know the difference between infringement and theft. They would also know that it's quite rare for there to be a case of a company actually copying an idea from someone else. It's almost always independent invention -- and many of the lawsuits that he's so keen on later in the article are cases where an overly broad patent is brought up in a lawsuit about an innovation the original patent had nothing to do with.

This is a problem that happens all too often in these discussions. Folks who don't know much about how innovation really occurs in the tech world, and who falsely conflate concepts in tangible property with a completely different government-granted monopoly right -- automatically assume that infringement is the equivalent of "stealing." Are there cases where big companies "copy" an idea from a small company? Yes, absolutely. But it's a lot more rare than many make it out to be. The really innovative ideas? Those are the ones that big companies don't even realize are big ideas until it's too late.

A column like Choate's is dangerous in the amount of misinformation that it puts forth, backed up with the veneer of truth without any basis in fact.

Filed Under: economist, patent

Patent Office Hires Economist To Add Some Actual Evidence To Patent Policy

from the that-would-be-a-start dept

One of our biggest complaints about the way intellectual property policy is handled around the world is how little of it is evidence-based. It almost appears entirely based on the idea that patents and copyrights must be "good" and thus "more" must be "better." Yet there is, at this point, overwhelming evidence of the harm caused by these policies, and there is almost never any attempt to actually address that and reconcile this with the fact that the Constitution is clear that copyrights and patents are only there to help "promote the progress."

Given all this, it's interesting to hear, via Jamie Love, that the USPTO has hired economist Stuart Graham to the newly created position of "chief economist." Love notes that Graham's appointment comes with the mandate to compile economic data while doing a true economic analysis of patents for the USPTO. This seems like a good thing. I did a quick search on Graham's previous research and came up with a a listing of some of his research -- and at a first pass, it bodes well. He's done work on how post-grant opposition to patents can improve quality of patents (pdf) and also has done research on patents in the pharmaceutical world, noting that there is a disconnect between patents and actual product development. In fact, that same study found that increased R&D doesn't appear to be an indicator of greater product development at all. This is an important finding -- because plenty of studies have shown that patents may increase R&D in an area, but there's is little evidence (if any) that patents actually increase innovation in any area. A while back, he also looked into the economic evidence on software patents (pdf) and appears to be at least skeptical of the need for software patents -- though, he also admits that a lot more evidence is needed there (and worries that there could be harm in just getting rid of software patents too).

Anyway, he's done a lot of research in this area, and definitely does seem to really be focused on evidence-based policy. Hopefully, having him on staff at the USPTO, and continuing to do this kind of work, while introducing a more evidence-based approach to how patents really impact "progress," the USPTO can start to move away from supporting the faith-based approach of "patents must be good for innovation and progress," towards focusing on policies that actually do lead to greater innovation.

Filed Under: economist, patents

The Economist Notices That The Patent System Is Hindering Innovation And Needs To Be Fixed

from the wow dept

A whole bunch of you are sending in one of the first mainstream articles I've seen on patents that gets almost (but not quite) everything right. The Economist has a wonderful piece that clearly explains why patents are hindering, rather than helping innovation. It notes the difference between innovation and invention -- and how patents quite often can hinder the former. It discusses how patent thickets get in the way of innovation, and the focus on using patents to force through massive cross-licensing deals simply adds transaction costs and reduces efficiency in the market. The solution to all of this put forth by the Economist is mostly the same thing we've been suggesting for years: bring back a real test for "obviousness" that gets rid of obvious patents -- though, it falls short in not suggesting an independent invention test for obviousness. The only other areas where I'd say the Economist article falls short is (1) simply assuming that patents do work in pharma and biotech -- when there's evidence that's not true, (2) assuming that a ruling in Bilski alone might clear up the obviousness issue and, finally, (3) its parting suggestion that programmers focus on copyright monopolies, rather than patents. Still, it's about as good a piece on this subject as you might expect to see in such a mainstream publication.

Filed Under: economist, innovation, invention, obviousness, patent system, patents

Magazines Looking To Raise Prices?

from the that'll-backfire dept

As newspapers are struggling with the question of whether or not to charge for content online as their print subscribers decrease, Aaron Martin-Colby points us to an article about how some magazines are also looking to increase the subscription fees for their paper magazines. Over the past few years, many magazines have followed the natural progression in a competitive market, and continually dropped their subscription prices, and made up the difference with advertising. Yet, some magazines are trying to buck that trend. The article highlights The Economist and People as examples of magazines who recently raised prices and still saw subscriptions rise. It will be interesting to see if that's sustained, however.

Oddly, the article doesn't even mention the internet as competition -- which seems to be leaving out a big part of the equation. The Economist and People are the sorts of magazines that people have subscribed to for many years, with a strong loyalty. So, I can see them sustaining subscribers even with a modest price increase -- but as alternative sources become more and more popular, you have to wonder if people will start to question if it's worth paying so much, when there's content that's just as good (if not better) available for free online.

Filed Under: economist, magazines, people, prices