ON another note, I just downloaded a 640x480 jpg of the album cover (wait, do I owe him money for that?. At 640x480, the image on my 22" monitor is larger than the actual CD cover and McCandless himself is less than 1/2" tall. I am not able to make out patches, name plates, or any distinguishing marks, not even the camera he says is around his shoulder.
I enlarged it 400% and was still unable to make out anything that would identify him. Beyond that size the image becomes to pix-elated that it becomes impossible to tell what color the suit is, let alone who is in it.
I knew astronuts tended to be arrogant pricks, but really?
"acted in concert with the other defendants with a design, and for the purpose, or injuring Plaintiff and unlawfully benefiting some or all Defendants"
So they sat down and had a meeting and decided to intentionally screw him over?
"36. Recognizing the tremendous value of McCandless' persona, Defendants have sought to link their business and products to him and thereby reap the benefits, for themselves, of the public's good will toward McCandless."
This gave me a good laugh. Sure, they decided to use that picture because of the public's good will toward him. Get over yourself you arrogant little shit.
I hope your column "A free press no more" is not the type of expert commentary we can expect on BostonGlobe.com. If so, you are doomed. I find multiple cases of complete ignorance and several logical fallacies in your column.
"I’m no economist, but I believe we ended up being the only business in the history of commerce to give our product away for free one way and charge another."
Did you do any research on the subject?
Television is free. Put up an antenna and you receive it for free. Supported by advertising. The exact business model you claim is worthless. Not only that, they sell millions of DVDs of the same TV shows that they give away for free! Radio is free. Supported by advertising. The exact business model you claim is worthless. Hell, American Idol combines the two and gives away music and television for free. Supported by advertising. Why does American Idol produce CDs, DVDs and concert tours when they give everything away for free on TV? A terrific local radio station (XPN.org) not only is commercial free, but manages to host FREE concerts every week. They put their playlists up on the internet in real time, with links to Amazon and Itunes. Why? So that I can purchase the music they play. They let me hear the music for free and make it easy to buy it, which I do, quite regularly.
The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, The Dave Matthews Band, U2 and Phish. Would you call them failures? All of them allow their fans to tapes their concerts and freely trade them with each other. Giving their music away for free. Why would anyone pay to see them in concert? Simon and Garfunkel gave a free concert in Central Park and still managed to sell two million albums/CDs of the very same concert.
Newspapers are hardly the "only business in the history of commerce" to give your product away one way and charge another. Perhaps the problem here is you are not providing compelling content that people are willing to pay for.
"Seriously, for the better part of the last decade, every high-brow thinker in the new media business has condescendingly repeated a phrase that is somehow as insidious as it is inane: Information wants to be free."
Name one.
It shouldn't be difficult since you are sure every high-brow thinker has condescendingly repeated the phrase. Perhaps it is you who are taking the quote out of context and using it to support your arguement.
Even the original quote, by Stewart Brand, isn't that "information wants to be free." The full quote is:
"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free,
because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."
The cost of getting information out is decreasing. Putting a paywall in front of the information does not change this equation.
"every half-wit who has ever uttered that absurd slogan should be lined up on Morrissey Boulevard and forced to watch an endless loop of cute kitten videos on YouTube. This is the information that wants to be free, and free is exactly what it's worth."
Apparently you and I have different ideas of the worth of these things. Whether you like cute kitty pictures or videos is irrelevant. Icanhascheezburger.com generates millions of hits every day. Supported by advertising. It is such a successful business model that last year they sold it for $2 million. Why don't you ask Google if they make any money with YouTube? Or Susan Boyle. She gave her performance away on Britain's Got Talent. Her album set a record for pre-release sales on Amazon.co.uk and was the number one album in America for six weeks before she appeared on any American TV show. Completely on the back of the YouTube videos.
You argue that all newspaper sites are free because they followed the decision of some "lunkhead in some newspaper front office" and everyone followed suit. Clearly nobody has attempted a paywall for a newspaper before then, right? Maybe it was tried and just failed horribly.
Newspapers are a failing business. The internet is not to blame. Newspapers have been in decline for decades. Television news and newspapers peacefully co-existed for decades. The six o'clock news gave people a timely recap of the days events. The morning newspaper provided in depth coverage. The arrival of 24 hour cable news channels forever changed the news industry. A once a day newspaper can no longer deliver news in a timely fashion. Today's tech savvy audience is not waiting for the newspaper to arrive tomorrow to find out what is happening. They can turn on any one of a dozen TV stations to find out. They can search the internet and find out. Hell, I have an app for that!. RSS feeds bring the news to me. Now, not tomorrow.
I do agree however, that society needs investigative journalism. Unfortunately there is precious little of it to be found. My local newspaper is pushing very hard for new subscribers. While the paper is not a Boston Globe or NY Times, I decided to buy one to take a look. In the front section there was one story by a reporter employed by the paper. The entire "hot news" section of the paper was copy/pasted from AP stories. Why on earth would I pay for that? If I want bland AP stories, I can find them from a thousand sources on the internet. What value is a newspaper providing by parroting AP stories. Very little in my mind.
Your column is an embarrassing example of why newspapers are dying. You offered no facts or any trace of "investigative journalism." All you provided was a rant. Which I can get for free, from anyone with a blog. Why should I pay to see yours?
If it is the manager's policy to kick out guests who write a bad review, how is it they have any guests? I checked out tripadvisor.co.uk and the overwhelming majority of the reviews are negative. More than half the reviews for the hotel are 1 star.
So you want Google to have a monitor in place to let them know anytime any of their employees accesses something inappropriate? Kinda like the RIAA wants the ISPs to have monitoring in place to let them know anytime someone uploads infringing content?
Google was notified of a problem and acted. What is the problem? Any time there is a system, someone will abuse it. End of story. Google fired those responsible. Why are we talking about it?
To sit at the table and debate would, in the eyes of the entertainment industry, just serve to point out that there is a legitimate debate on the subject. In their eyes, anyone who disagrees with them is a criminal. No debate needed, just lock them up please.
The coach of the Lakers is notorious for his pre-series calling out of the officials. Before a big series, he will frequently complain about the tactics of the other team, and usually a specific player. When the games are actually played, his pre-complaining usually pays off.
Sad to see corporate lawyers abusing our legal system in the same fashion. In this case, you know that the event organizers, with the help of local LEOs, will bust someone selling crappy $5 t-shirts. Maybe they should just sell some crappy $5 shirts instead. There is obviously a market for them.
Take a step back from the sarcasm machine and think about it for a minute. Nobody claimed his FaceBook profile showed "My password reset info is." What they claimed is that the answers were visible on the Facebook page. So, if I try to log into his account and fail, I can initiate the password reset and it asks me a question, the answer to which is on his Facebook page.
Pretty simple don't ya think. They call it social engineering. Is it a dumb move to have answers to secret questions that easy to find? Yes. Is it easy to lose track of all the "secret questions" you have provided answers too? Yes.
I can see this whole Wisconsin case being a pawn for the NFL. Its not like the NFL has an old, historic franchise there. One with long, strong ties to its community. I can imagine a person with the NFL's interest in mind going to some high school awards banquets in the state. They might introduce a high school league to this guy who thinks it would be a good idea to buy the exclusive rights to broadcast their games. He also knows a great lawyer who can help us out.
Again, wild speculation, but the NFL does want to sell and control everything about the NFL. Its possible ...
Telephone companies rolled over and gave up information without warrants in the name of national security. It shouldn't be a surprise when they roll over for an actual subpoenas.
Am I the only one who first pastes anything from the internet into Notepad? More than once I've attempted an internet copy/paste and gotten crap I didn't want. Even happens with email and word processors today. If the program I am pasting into does not have a paste text only option, I routinely paste into Notepad first. Problem solved.
I am a fairly savvy computer user. Every couple of months I give NoScript a try. I always uninstall it within a day.
Today I decide to try it again after reading this article.
On Techdirt alone I have to make decisions not only about Techdirt.com, but googlesyndication.com, backtype.com, fmpub.net and quantserve.com. Just for this one website. It is more trouble than it is worth. How much time is a user expected to devote to deciphering what is trustworthy and what is not? Even with NoScript, one mistake in allowing the wrong script and you have completely undone all your hard work.
Re: if not true, then AT&T should be on top of this
"AT&T warns customer emailing CEO" now gets 200,000+ results including such obscure news sources as the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and The Huffington Post.
"Daniela Cicarelli's was short. Though she succeeded in the Court of Appeals of Sao Paulo, her video is online for the world to see: http://bit.ly/9KTjIc"
Whats your point here? She got caught having sex in public and was unlucky enough to have it filmed. Bad for her, good for me.
I have for a long time been a fan of a lot of artists who have not benefited from the traditional music industry model.
Artists like Keb Mo, the Disco Biscuits, Gov't Mule, The Derek Trucks Band, Blues Traveller etc. These bands might have gotten a record contract, but they never were the front runner artists being "pushed" by the record labels. Mostly they make a living off of touring. At one point in the beginning, Gov't Mule played 300+ dates a year. They played their asses off. They connected with fans, varied their setlists and gave them something unique at each show. Most of them encouraged live taping (which was also at one point the thing that would kill the music industry).
Bands like Phish have been doing this for decades. They learned from pioneers like the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead. Connect with fans by giving them mail order tickets before they go on sale thru TicketBastard. Do a newsletter to let them know what is coming. Have a hotline for tour dates. Offer new merchandise all the time. What did this type of business model get them? Devoted followings. Phish started out this way and booked sold out show after sold out show and had the small but loyal following long before any record label even looked at them.
Blues Traveler kept a map and marked off each state they played a show in. They added another mark when they could sell out a show of 500+ in that state. They charted their progress. With almost no radio play and no record company support they were grossing over a million dollars a year by when their first album was published. Long before they had their breakout hits from the fourth album they were touring all 50 states and selling out 1000+ seat venues in almost every state. By working hard and giving their fans what they wanted.
Live concert taping provided the same service free download do. I could take one of my concert tapes and make a copy for a friend and say "you gotta hear this." Did everyone I passed a tape to become a fan? Nope. It cost the artist NOTHING to do this.
The traditional music industry model (which today has devolved even more into American Idol and Justin Beiber) has never been the only way to do things, and has never been the best way for the artists.
On the post: Months Later, Defense Secretary Gates Reveals Wikileaks Document Leak Didn't Actually Reveal Intelligence Sources
They lied?
What haven't they lied to us about?
On the post: Astronaut Sues Dido For Using His Photo In Album Cover
Re:
I enlarged it 400% and was still unable to make out anything that would identify him. Beyond that size the image becomes to pix-elated that it becomes impossible to tell what color the suit is, let alone who is in it.
On the post: Astronaut Sues Dido For Using His Photo In Album Cover
"acted in concert with the other defendants with a design, and for the purpose, or injuring Plaintiff and unlawfully benefiting some or all Defendants"
So they sat down and had a meeting and decided to intentionally screw him over?
"36. Recognizing the tremendous value of McCandless' persona, Defendants have sought to link their business and products to him and thereby reap the benefits, for themselves, of the public's good will toward McCandless."
This gave me a good laugh. Sure, they decided to use that picture because of the public's good will toward him. Get over yourself you arrogant little shit.
On the post: How Many Logical Fallacies Can You Make In A Single Column Defending A Paywall?
My response, sent directly to Brian McGrory
"I’m no economist, but I believe we ended up being the only business in the history of commerce to give our product away for free one way and charge another."
Did you do any research on the subject?
Television is free. Put up an antenna and you receive it for free. Supported by advertising. The exact business model you claim is worthless. Not only that, they sell millions of DVDs of the same TV shows that they give away for free! Radio is free. Supported by advertising. The exact business model you claim is worthless. Hell, American Idol combines the two and gives away music and television for free. Supported by advertising. Why does American Idol produce CDs, DVDs and concert tours when they give everything away for free on TV? A terrific local radio station (XPN.org) not only is commercial free, but manages to host FREE concerts every week. They put their playlists up on the internet in real time, with links to Amazon and Itunes. Why? So that I can purchase the music they play. They let me hear the music for free and make it easy to buy it, which I do, quite regularly.
The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, The Dave Matthews Band, U2 and Phish. Would you call them failures? All of them allow their fans to tapes their concerts and freely trade them with each other. Giving their music away for free. Why would anyone pay to see them in concert? Simon and Garfunkel gave a free concert in Central Park and still managed to sell two million albums/CDs of the very same concert.
Newspapers are hardly the "only business in the history of commerce" to give your product away one way and charge another. Perhaps the problem here is you are not providing compelling content that people are willing to pay for.
"Seriously, for the better part of the last decade, every high-brow thinker in the new media business has condescendingly repeated a phrase that is somehow as insidious as it is inane: Information wants to be free."
Name one.
It shouldn't be difficult since you are sure every high-brow thinker has condescendingly repeated the phrase. Perhaps it is you who are taking the quote out of context and using it to support your arguement.
Even the original quote, by Stewart Brand, isn't that "information wants to be free." The full quote is:
"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free,
because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."
The cost of getting information out is decreasing. Putting a paywall in front of the information does not change this equation.
"every half-wit who has ever uttered that absurd slogan should be lined up on Morrissey Boulevard and forced to watch an endless loop of cute kitten videos on YouTube. This is the information that wants to be free, and free is exactly what it's worth."
Apparently you and I have different ideas of the worth of these things. Whether you like cute kitty pictures or videos is irrelevant. Icanhascheezburger.com generates millions of hits every day. Supported by advertising. It is such a successful business model that last year they sold it for $2 million. Why don't you ask Google if they make any money with YouTube? Or Susan Boyle. She gave her performance away on Britain's Got Talent. Her album set a record for pre-release sales on Amazon.co.uk and was the number one album in America for six weeks before she appeared on any American TV show. Completely on the back of the YouTube videos.
You argue that all newspaper sites are free because they followed the decision of some "lunkhead in some newspaper front office" and everyone followed suit. Clearly nobody has attempted a paywall for a newspaper before then, right? Maybe it was tried and just failed horribly.
Newspapers are a failing business. The internet is not to blame. Newspapers have been in decline for decades. Television news and newspapers peacefully co-existed for decades. The six o'clock news gave people a timely recap of the days events. The morning newspaper provided in depth coverage. The arrival of 24 hour cable news channels forever changed the news industry. A once a day newspaper can no longer deliver news in a timely fashion. Today's tech savvy audience is not waiting for the newspaper to arrive tomorrow to find out what is happening. They can turn on any one of a dozen TV stations to find out. They can search the internet and find out. Hell, I have an app for that!. RSS feeds bring the news to me. Now, not tomorrow.
I do agree however, that society needs investigative journalism. Unfortunately there is precious little of it to be found. My local newspaper is pushing very hard for new subscribers. While the paper is not a Boston Globe or NY Times, I decided to buy one to take a look. In the front section there was one story by a reporter employed by the paper. The entire "hot news" section of the paper was copy/pasted from AP stories. Why on earth would I pay for that? If I want bland AP stories, I can find them from a thousand sources on the internet. What value is a newspaper providing by parroting AP stories. Very little in my mind.
Your column is an embarrassing example of why newspapers are dying. You offered no facts or any trace of "investigative journalism." All you provided was a rant. Which I can get for free, from anyone with a blog. Why should I pay to see yours?
On the post: Another Day, Another Apology From Netflix; Calls Americans Self-Absorbed
We Americans have a reputation of being self absorbed.
I'm really getting tired of our media, Techdirt included, picking apart everything people say.
On the post: Couple Kicked Out Of Hotel After Manager Accuses Them Of Writing A Bad Review
On the post: School Agrees To Pay Student $33,000 After Teacher Dug Through Her Phone To Find Private Nude Photos
Re: ZOMG NAKED BOOBIES!!
On the post: Google Engineer Fired For Spying On Teen Users; Serious Privacy Concerns Raised
Google was notified of a problem and acted. What is the problem? Any time there is a system, someone will abuse it. End of story. Google fired those responsible. Why are we talking about it?
On the post: Google Sued For Nexus One Suckiness
Re: Market works how?
On the post: Why Are Entertainment Industry Spokespeople So Scared To Debate Critics?
On the post: Music Festival Producer Pre-Sues Bootleggers
Phil Jackson tactics?
Sad to see corporate lawyers abusing our legal system in the same fashion. In this case, you know that the event organizers, with the help of local LEOs, will bust someone selling crappy $5 t-shirts. Maybe they should just sell some crappy $5 shirts instead. There is obviously a market for them.
On the post: To Find Needles In Haystacks, US Gov't Has Built Hundreds Of New Haystacks
Re: Re: Feature Rich Social Networking
Pretty simple don't ya think. They call it social engineering. Is it a dumb move to have answers to secret questions that easy to find? Yes. Is it easy to lose track of all the "secret questions" you have provided answers too? Yes.
On the post: SCO Loses Yet Again; Is It Finally Over?
Re:
On the post: Judge Says Commerce Outweighs Free Speech Issues When It Comes To Reporting On High School Football
Wild Speculation
I can see this whole Wisconsin case being a pawn for the NFL. Its not like the NFL has an old, historic franchise there. One with long, strong ties to its community. I can imagine a person with the NFL's interest in mind going to some high school awards banquets in the state. They might introduce a high school league to this guy who thinks it would be a good idea to buy the exclusive rights to broadcast their games. He also knows a great lawyer who can help us out.
Again, wild speculation, but the NFL does want to sell and control everything about the NFL. Its possible ...
On the post: EFF, Public Citizen And ACLU Ask Judge To Quash Mass Subpoenas From US Copyright Group
I wonder ...
On the post: Messing With Copy/Paste Could Present Security Issues
Copy/paste
On the post: Messing With Copy/Paste Could Present Security Issues
NoScript is
I am a fairly savvy computer user. Every couple of months I give NoScript a try. I always uninstall it within a day.
Today I decide to try it again after reading this article.
On Techdirt alone I have to make decisions not only about Techdirt.com, but googlesyndication.com, backtype.com, fmpub.net and quantserve.com. Just for this one website. It is more trouble than it is worth. How much time is a user expected to devote to deciphering what is trustworthy and what is not? Even with NoScript, one mistake in allowing the wrong script and you have completely undone all your hard work.
On the post: Did AT&T Really Threaten A Customer With Legal Action For Emailing Feedback To CEO? [Updated]
Re: if not true, then AT&T should be on top of this
On the post: Is There A Downside To Limiting Third Party Liability?
Re: Renrou Sousuo Yinqing
Whats your point here? She got caught having sex in public and was unlucky enough to have it filmed. Bad for her, good for me.
On the post: How Many Bad Assumptions Can You Make In A Single Article About Content Creation And Copyright?
Never understood how blind they are
Artists like Keb Mo, the Disco Biscuits, Gov't Mule, The Derek Trucks Band, Blues Traveller etc. These bands might have gotten a record contract, but they never were the front runner artists being "pushed" by the record labels. Mostly they make a living off of touring. At one point in the beginning, Gov't Mule played 300+ dates a year. They played their asses off. They connected with fans, varied their setlists and gave them something unique at each show. Most of them encouraged live taping (which was also at one point the thing that would kill the music industry).
Bands like Phish have been doing this for decades. They learned from pioneers like the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead. Connect with fans by giving them mail order tickets before they go on sale thru TicketBastard. Do a newsletter to let them know what is coming. Have a hotline for tour dates. Offer new merchandise all the time. What did this type of business model get them? Devoted followings. Phish started out this way and booked sold out show after sold out show and had the small but loyal following long before any record label even looked at them.
Blues Traveler kept a map and marked off each state they played a show in. They added another mark when they could sell out a show of 500+ in that state. They charted their progress. With almost no radio play and no record company support they were grossing over a million dollars a year by when their first album was published. Long before they had their breakout hits from the fourth album they were touring all 50 states and selling out 1000+ seat venues in almost every state. By working hard and giving their fans what they wanted.
Live concert taping provided the same service free download do. I could take one of my concert tapes and make a copy for a friend and say "you gotta hear this." Did everyone I passed a tape to become a fan? Nope. It cost the artist NOTHING to do this.
The traditional music industry model (which today has devolved even more into American Idol and Justin Beiber) has never been the only way to do things, and has never been the best way for the artists.
Next >>